RIP NASA Manned Space

[unixronin]

On the seventh anniversary of the fall of Columbia, President Obama has just de-facto killed NASA Manned Space.

I have no words.

Wait, yes, I do.

"Burn in hell."

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UPDATE:

I note that Bill Gawne (wcg) linked to an article er, quoted a NASA release pointing out that although the entire Constellation program is being axed and there is no other NASA manned booster presently left in line to replace the Shuttle, the shuttle is going to fly out its final five planned missions, and NASA plans to develop a future launch program more capable than Constellation (and hopefully with less reliance on the Morton-Thiokol solid boosters).  So the picture is not as black as the news reports first made it appear.  It's not the end-of-NASA-manned-space that the news reports made it out to be.  (I won't speculate on the reasons, but it's entirely possible they simply didn't understand.)

It is still almost the most callously insensitive timing possible.  To make the announcement now is, IMHO, a slap in the face to everyone who picked up after Columbia and said "We can go on, we can overcome this and do better."

Comments

[selfishgene.livejournal.com]

'and do better' - NASA can't do better. It is a government agency with vast overhead. Anything they do takes more than 10 times longer than skunkworks used to take. In spite of vastly better facilities than were available in the 1950s. I think shutting down NASA would actually be the quickest way to space.
All these management factors, from the managers themselves to process to history to culture could better be called the corporate DNA ... I would bet you any amount of money I could get to the GAP faster starting from scratch than starting from Walmart ... Corporate DNA acts as a value multiplier. The best corporate DNA has a multiplier greater than one, meaning that it increases the value of the people and physical assets in the corporation. (http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/12/why_its_ok_if_g.html)