Expert panel: NASA seems lost in space, needs goal

Yahoo! News ^ | 12/5/12 | Seth Borenstein - AP

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- NASA is adrift without a coherent vision for where it should be going, an independent panel of space, science and engineering experts says.

But the report by the National Academy of Sciences doesn't blame the space agency. It faults the president, Congress and the nation for not giving NASA clear direction. At the same time, the report said NASA is doing little to further the stated goal of the White House to send astronauts to a nearby asteroid.

Panel member Bob Crippen, a retired NASA manager and astronaut who piloted the first space shuttle mission, said he has never seen the space agency so adrift. He said that includes the decade between the end of the Apollo moon landings and the beginning of the space shuttle program.

"I think people (at NASA) want to be focused a little more and know where they are going," Crippen told The Associated Press.

[NormsRevenge]

No leadership, no hope, no vision.. no dough.

[The_Victor]

I thought NASA was supposed to be performning Muslim outreach?

[tumblindice]

Lost in space?

[New Jersey Realist]

I’ve got a goal for them. Send obommo on a one-way mission to Uranus!

[Darksheare]

Just wait until NASA sends the first jihadi into space.
They’ll have ‘vision’ aplenty alright.

[DoughtyOne]

Thank goodness an expert panel came around to say the same thing we’ve been saying for the last twenty years.

Now we can watch them be ignored too.

[DoughtyOne]

I liked the democrat example in ‘Lost in Space’.

LOL

If you think about it, there’s a lot of truth in this.

[battlecry]

Err, I think they have already sent one on a shuttle flight.

[Old Sarge]

NASA: Never Again Space Agendas

[SERKIT]

Bolden told Al Jazeera that when he became the NASA administrator, President Obama charged him with three things: "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering — science, math and engineering."

[falcon99]

That is what I thought the goal was not too.

[ßuddaßudd]

Learn Russian or Chinese is their only hope for now...

[Amendment10]

I grew up totally admiring NASA's space exploration projects, but now I have Constitution-related problems with NASA.

More specifically, constitutionally clueless President Eisenhower seems to have been a rhinoseros in a china factory with respect to not encouraging Congress to comply with its constitutional Article V requirement to petition the states for specific new powers before signing into law legislation that established both NASA and the nation's freeway system. Based on the following excerpt from Justice John Marshall's official writings which i've posted before, the states have never granted Congress via the Constitution the specific power to tax and spend for a "civilian" space exploration like NASA. So NASA essentially must necessarily be classified as a military research agency to survive constitutonal strutiny imo.

"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." --Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824

. Regarding the nation's highways, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, a delegate to the Constitutonal Convention, had suggested delegating to Congress the specific power to build canals. This is because waterways were superfreeways of the ancient world as they can arguably be regarded today. Dr. Franklin suggested the idea likely for the purpose of moving freight as semi trucks do today on the nation's highways.

But also note that Dr. Franklin's fellow delages to the Con-Con had decided against Congress building canals on another point which I won't go into here. In fact, here's a link to the page from Madison's daily journal of Con-Con debates which contains the discussion. Search for "canal."

"Docr. FRANKLIN moved to add after the words "post roads" Art I. Sect. 8. "a power to provide for cutting canals where deemed necessary"" --Madison Debates Tuesday September 14, 1787.

So what disturbs me about "civilian" NASA and our superhighways, along with all the constitutionally indefensible federal taxing and spending programs that Constitution-ignoring FDR started is the following. The delegates to the Con-Con had intented for Congress to successfully petition the states for amendments to the Constitution so that Congress would have the constitutional authority to tax and spend for such projects. So the reason that we have unconstitutionally big federal government today is arguably because Constitution-illiterate voters no longer use their voting power to check Congress or the Oval Office when Congress oversteps its constitutionally limited powers.

So thanks a bunch Ike.

In fact, I've recently stumbled across smoking-gun evidence imo, which I've mentined in other threads, that Congress is deliberatly ignoring its Article V requirement to successfully petition the states for specific new powers before establishing new taxing and spending programs. More specifically, former Congressman Jessie Jackson Jr. had proposed a constitutional healthcare amendment that should have proceeded Obamacare, Congress ignoring Jackson's proposal. The following excerpt from govtrack.us helps substantiate my ranting that corrupt Congress is blatantly ignoring Article V.

"The resolution's title starts with "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United." (-10%)" --H.J.Res. 30: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States regarding the right … H.J. Res. 30.

Finally, as a side note, I suggest that patriots consider the pros and cons of exercising what's left of their voting muscle to require lawmakers to put expiration dates on all constitutional delegations of power to Congress. The states can always renew such delegations of power before they expire.

[spawn44]

Hell, who needs Nasa when we have Acorn. Anyway, we can always hitch a ride with the Chinese.

[varmintman]

Expert panel: NASA seems lost in space, needs goal

Try this:

That's one of the new color images of Mars' little moon Phobos from the 06 HIRISE project. That's right; moons are supposed to be made out of dirt and rocks, not metallic strakes, and they're not supposed to reflect light all over the place like that.

[Secret Agent Man]

i thought their new mission was muslim outreach.

[jtonn]

IMHO, NASA has degenerated into a bureaucratic morass. A once-great institution has become mostly redundant. Read Roving Mars by Steve Squyers to get an idea of the political hoops NASA must jump through.

I grew up watching the Gemini and Apollo missions. I cried like a baby at the loss of Challenger and Columbia.

I hope that Space X and other private companies will reestablish our dominance.

May I invest in Harriman Enterprises?

[COBOL2Java]

NASA needs a goal? How about finding a habitable planet for liberty loving conservatives? We’ll leave this one for the statists; they can drive around in their little golf carts to their heart’s content and leave us to our SUVs.

[mo]

in all seriousness..this should be an easy agency to shutter