Debating NASA's Future

Neil Armstrong, Eugene Cernan, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, and the GRAIL mission's Dr. Maria Zubor all testified before Congress this week, and all decried the state of NASA's human spaceflight capability. Cernan, the last Apollo astronaut to stand on the lunar surface, seemed particularly riled. He urged Congress to bring the space shuttle back to operational status so the U. S. can meet the commitment it made to international partners to keep ISS functioning. All four argued for a long term strategy for human space exploration.

Given the state of federal finances and the apparent inability of the current crop of Washington politicians to deal constructively with major concepts, however, NASA may well be without a guiding, coherent vision to pursue, not to mention adequate financial resources, for quite some time.