What’s this? An editorial that actually praises NASA’s budget increase? Don’t adjust your browser: it’s true the Cleveland Plain Dealer—the hometown newspaper for NASA’s Glenn Research Center—published an editorial Thursday that complimented NASA and Congress for the agency’s $16.2-billion budget. “To gain such an endorsement in a year when war and national security threats have dominated the headlines is remarkable,” the editorial notes, “and it’s heartening.” The editorial does caution that the flexibility included in the budget required “a greater need for wisdom on the part of Administrator Sean O’Keefe and other top decision-makers.” What’s also needed, the editorial concludes, are “many consecutive years of generous budgets for NASA.”
NASA’s budget would be a positive thing if:
(a) It was actually spent on the Moon-Mars initiative
(b) It wasn’t wasted on the massive budget overruns of the shuttle or space station, whose only continuing reason for existence is… (I drew a blank here – perhaps to prevent embarrassment, an admission of failure?)
(c) The money wasn’t taken from the NSF budget
(d) It weren’t used to grow and sustain a worthless nit-picking bureaucracy that all but strangles those who try to work with them (first hand experience here)
(e) Some of it (any of it) went to me
Did I miss anything?
Oh, and the sooner the democrats stop messing around with HR 5382 for petty reasons the sooner we might have some alternatives to wishing NASA would change.
And I should add that the budget increase is an endorsement of the Moon-Mars initiative (else a reward for catastrophic failure).
NASA has no intention of using most of that extra money for the Moon-Mars initiative. Instead, the majority is about to be used to give the American public the illusion that the Shuttle and Space Station are still viable – i.e they will use it for show.