Future of NASA
I was disgusted that the shuttle program was ended without a replacement. A friend explained that what NASA does best is tackling the challenges in space flight through science and engineering. He said that the shuttle and even the earlier flights to the moon are challenges that NASA succeeded in accomplishing. The strength of NASA is to work out how to do things that have not been done before.
NASA is looking at doing the next big step in manned space exploration, going to an asteroid and to Mars. These are more difficult to accomplish than the previous missions. NASA's attitude is that they have already done the hard part to get to the moon, build shuttles that launched satellites and brought modules up for the space station. Those are things that other organizations can continue doing while NASA aims to solve the next step in exploring ever further in space.
NASA is like a great explorer, once they have blazed the trail then they move onto another challenge; allowing others to take over developing the trail. Still, it would have been nice to have another program start up as the shuttle missions wound down. The hiatus is similar to the early 70's after the moon missions and before the shuttle.
