Back to the Past, editorial, NY Times
“President Obama’s call for sweeping changes in the space program got mugged by lobbyists and pork-minded legislators. An authorization bill for NASA — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — that cleared Congress will leave the agency mired in past technologies. … A primary goal of those who drafted the legislation was to provide money and save jobs at existing NASA centers and their contractors. At a time of high unemployment, it’s hard to argue with that impulse. But the result will be to postpone — possibly for decades — the development of the new technologies that could revolutionize long-distance space travel.”
