NASA at 50: Lost in space?
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more from Green:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/09/29/nasa.analysis.ap/index.html#...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The signs of a midlife crisis are there: A 50th birthday approaching; a longing for the glory days of youth; a hankering to dump the aging partner of 27 years; and a costly flirtation with a new young thing.This isn't some balding businessman in a sports car. It's NASA.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which opened its doors on Oct. 1 1958, is struggling with its identity and its future. The agency's angst is Velcroed to the vehicle that NASA has been married to for more than half its life and is seeking to dump -- the space shuttle.
The shuttle has kept NASA going to the same place over and over, circling the Earth 18,449 times since 1981. For much of that time, NASA's mission has been to build the international space station, a place to do research and to learn how to live in space.
But the NASA of the future is looking to retire the shuttle in 2010 and build new space vehicles to return astronauts to the moon and, someday, to travel to Mars.
Doing that requires a clean break from the shuttle program. But a combination of pressures -- political, economic, engineering and diplomatic -- make it difficult, costly and some say unwise to ditch the shuttle as soon as planned. While NASA publicly talks about shuttle retirement, it's also quietly making sure it could postpone those plans. Divorce isn't as easy as it once looked.
