Economist on NASA

NASA at 50: Many happy returns?, Economist

"It might have been better for NASA's reputation if it, too, had closed down at that point, but bureaucracies never do. Like people, their idealistic and enthusiastic youths are eventually overwhelmed by quotidian reality, and they do what they need to to survive. And survive NASA has, through a space-shuttle programme far more expensive than the "throw-away" rockets it was supposed to replace, through the construction of an orbiting space station that will have consumed $100 billion when it is finished, though it has produced little of scientific value--and also, it must be said, through a programme of unmanned scientific space probes that have, literally, pushed back the frontiers of human understanding."