Stuck in a Sand Bar – One Year Later

A Speech That I’d Like To See The Next President Deliver
“When the President announced NASA’s new plans, he said that the Space Shuttle would be retired once the International Space Station would be completed. Within a short period of time, however, NASA reinterpreted that guidance and said that the shuttle will be retired on a certain date and that the resulting space station – however incomplete – would be “finished”. At the same time, NASA began to speak of the space station, something it had fought to build for two decades, as something it would no longer need – and indeed, it would walk away from – just as it was capable of doing all of the things NASA had been claiming it would. Indeed, some at NASA referred to this marvel of engineering as a “mistake”. … The vision, once clear, had now become clouded. NASA also developed a bad case of attention deficit disorder. A scant 4 years after it was announced, NASA’s new exploration mission was stuck in a sand bar when it should have been leaving port.”
Keith’s note: I first posted this in September 2008.