Keith’s note: Joe Rothenberg, former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Flight and former Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, had this to say last night on LinkedIn: “What is happening at NASA has long term and potentially unrecoverable consequences to U.S. scientific and technology leadership in not only space but in technology that impacts our quality of life on Earth. Clearly the actions of the current Administration and NASA leadership have mortgaged America’s space and scientific research capabilities, well beyond the point of being able to be recovered by any potential restoration of funding by Congress. The nation’s space program in its early days inspired career pursuits in science and engineering, resulting in not only America’s leadership in space, but in developing technology that has significantly improved medical, communications, and numerous quality of life applications. America now faces the strong possibility of the reverse happening, the indiscriminate cuts in our nation’s scientific research program budgets, and government and civilian workforce, will discourage the next generation from pursuing careers in engineering and sciences. The implications of which are not only loss of leadership in these areas, but also a signicant weakening of our economic and military leadership and a continued downward position of the U.S. on the world stage.”