NASA's 'Nevermind'

I've long argued America's space program is hopelessly kaput, victim of an untamable bureaucracy and a fundamentally flawed shuttle design. Fourteen deaths and $250 billion too late (with more to come), Michael Griffin, NASA boss since April, says "my bad" in a frank discussion with USA Today:

The space shuttle and International Space Station — nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades — were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday.

In a meeting with USA TODAY's editorial board, Griffin said NASA lost its way in the 1970s, when the agency ended the Apollo moon missions in favor of developing the shuttle and space station, which can only orbit Earth.

“It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path,” Griffin said. “We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can.” . . .

Griffin has made clear in previous statements that he regards the shuttle and space station as misguided. He told the Senate earlier this year that the shuttle was “deeply flawed” and that the space station was not worth “the expense, the risk and the difficulty” of flying humans to space.

But since he became NASA administrator, Griffin hasn't been so blunt about the two programs.

Asked Tuesday whether the shuttle had been a mistake, Griffin said, “My opinion is that it was. … It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible.” Asked whether the space station had been a mistake, he said, “Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.”

So what next for NASA? Griffin's preaching some of that old-time religion:

Only now is the nation's space program getting back on track, Griffin said. He announced last week that NASA aims to send astronauts back to the moon in 2018 in a spacecraft that would look like the Apollo capsule.

The goal of returning Americans to the moon was laid out by President Bush in 2004, before Griffin took the top job at NASA.

Dumb and dumber. Though the romance of space still wows some, what's inspiring about setting the "Wayback" machine to 1969? And though Mars is a genuine challenge, is post-Katrina America ready to pledge billions on "welfare for scientists?" Indeed, some skeptics question any value in manned missions.

NASA's become a paradigm for big government: another agency outliving its purpose. Perhaps the private sector can carry on, risking (value-based) capital from investors, not taxpayers. NASA's now just pork--which Congress, and citizens, won't miss.

More:

Jesse at Space Law Probe makes the NASA-pork link, but comes down in the middle:

[A]s the new age of commercial space, personal spaceflight and space tourism takes shape, space will be a mixed bag of federally and commercially funded missions and projects. In America, where everything is still possible, we can have our space and cut the ham too. So for now, if you think we are shooting into space too many or too few of your hard-earned tax dollars, don't just blog about it -- e-mail or call your reps in Congress. But whatever you do, don't offer to take them to lunch.

(via Kobayashi Maru, Instapundit)