Giving the NY Times a Soap Box

The Irony of NASAs Nobel, editorial, NY Times

“NASA is basking in the glow of a Nobel Prize awarded to one of its scientists and to a Berkeley astronomer for research performed on a satellite built by NASA. The award is richly deserved, and the agency deserves great credit for making the work possible. Too bad the program that yielded these pioneering discoveries was reined in not long ago so that NASA could pour billions of dollars into resuming shuttle flights, finishing the international space station, and developing spacecraft to pursue the Bush administration’s ambitious space exploration program.”

Editor’s note: If NASA had a “big picture” plan in place – one wherein all that NASA does is linked into a cohesive whole – NASA would be able to respond honestly to such lopsided opinion pieces. The President’s Jan 2004 speech was a wonderful step in that direction. Too bad NASA has wandered away from it ever since, with science squeezed along the way – thus giving the anti-human space flight folks at the NY Times a soapbox to stand on.