Is NASA better off than it was 4 years ago?

Saturday evening, the Romney campaign released it’s space policy white paper, Securing U.S. Leadership in Space. As Obama showed on Aug. 3, 2008 when he told the Space Coast of his unwavering support for NASA’s Constellation program, hope can be an important selling point to the Space Coast, and to winning the eastern anchor of the I-4 Corridor and Florida in 2008. Compared with what President Obama has in the last four years given the space community in general and the Florida Space Coast in particular, Romney’s space policy appears downright reassuring. Unlike the President’s 2010 space policy, Romney will, as he first discussed in Florida in January, bring together experts from several disciplines to develop new goals for NASA. This point alone would differentiate in a large way a Romney Administration in developing a roadmap for NASA from that of the Obama Administration. As Neil Armstrong noted in his May 12, 2010 testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee, Rumors abound that neither the NASA Administrator nor the President‟s Science and Technology Advisor were knowledgeable about the plan. Lack of review normally guarantees that there will be overlooked requirements and unwelcome consequences. How could such a chain of events happen? A plan that was invisible to so many was likely contrived by a very small group in secret who persuaded the President that this was a unique opportunity to put his stamp on a new and innovative program. I believe the President was poorly advised. Photo Credit: NASA Moments after the Romney campaign released its space paper, GOP Vice-Presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan gave a space policy speech at the University of Central Florida. During his speech, Ryan noted, “It’s important that we have a space program that has a clear mission, a space program where we know where we are heading in the future, and a space program that is the unequivocal leader.” The Obama re-election campaign quickly responded that the Romney campaign was only pandering to the Space Coast while giving no specifics. But as Space Coast residents will recall, in early August 2008, candidate Obama came to the Space Coast to make many specific promises, very nearly all of which were subsequently broken in February 2010. Today, there is little debate within Congress that NASA is not better off today than it was four years ago. NASA people at JSC, MSFC, LaRC, and KSC all say the same thing; that NASA’s spaceflight engineering talent is slowly being disassembled. Voters now have two visions for NASA. One that seeks to strengthen the Agency so that it can lead, with the help of the commercial space companies, the march outward from low-Earth orbit. The other will see the continued transformation of NASA into a mere contracting agency for companies whose own technical skills and understanding of human space flight do not match that of NASA circa 1964, much less today. The latter vision is one that will not get us to the Moon, asteroids, and beyond and was the reason that in 2010 Neil Armstrong came out of retirement to oppose President Obama’s vision for NASA.