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njlauren -> RE: Welcome to the Real Space Age (5/20/2013 8:32:26 PM)
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This was bound to happen and I think it is a good thing. NASA has been trying to hold onto spaceflight and quite frankly, it has gotten past the point where governments should be doing this kind of thing. Whether it is a government/private industry hybrid, space flight should now be moving into the private sector. I think things like JPL and their probes are great, and as an R and D instigator NASA (and its predecessor, NACA) made huge leaps in technology and such. I think NASA's role is in R and D and in potentially regulation (safety, for one), but after that, let it develop on its own.
The Space Shuttle was kind of the nadir of NASA IMO, it was supposed to be a reusable vehicle that could be turned around quickly, and it ended up, despite doing some great work, a 1970's era dinosaur that was expensive to fly and finicky as all hell. NASA had been developing a vehicle that could take off and land on its tail and rather than develop that, they stayed with the shuttle. I have nothing against NASA, I admire what they did and how they did it (the pinnacle can be seen in Apollo 13, with the team of geeks coming up with amazing hacks), but between budget constraints and being hamstrung by politics of where to build things and such, it can't operate as a front line space agency that way I think.
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