NASA @50

Mid-life crisis? I don't think that this is an appropriate description of NASA's current situation. I think that NASA is a guy who went off the rails after college and is now trying to find his way back to sanity and direction after a few decades adrift in a series of failed dreams.

Don't get me wrong - The Shuttle did a lot of good stuff and had a lot of potential. However, Dr. Griffin was right in saying that it also inadvertantly trapped manned spaceflight in LEO and trapped NASA into a trying to achieve an unreachable commercial goal. Hopefully, CxP will be able to open up the door to the Moon and beyond, even if the plan may need a few changes from the one currently being pursued

Please!
The Shuttle did not trap anything. It could have delivered the Cis (and Trans) Lunar transportation infra-structure to almost anywhere.
America decided not to build that infra-structure.
Cx is a step backwards.
GOOGLE OTV or OASIS.

"I think that NASA is a guy who went off the rails after college and is now trying to find his way back to sanity and direction after a few decades adrift in a series of failed dreams. "

Sounds like a perfect description of myself. Only thing is, the dreams I chased, spending a significant portion of my life and all my wealth on went by the names of L-5, Shuttle, NASP X-30, Venture Star X-33, X-34, Mojave Space Port, Dryden FRC, Experimental Aviation, Alt Space, just to name a few.

The reason for this post is - I Strongly encourage young people not to follow in my foot steps and find something more practical and down to earth to pursue. At least until this country gets serious about developing new operational manned space flight capabilities. Otherwise you may spend your working career as an engineer getting dressed for the party and then waiting for a few decades or more. Alas, new space flight capabilities have not been developed in the last 30 years and I have no reason to believe this will happen in the next 30 years. Prove me wrong - PLEASE !

Reading Brian Bernhard's blog filled me with a sense of profound sadness. I grew up in the exciting years of the moon race. Witnessed NASAs' triumphant first landing on the moon and America's hard won victory.

It was a time of incredable optimism. When Americans spoke of reaching for the moon, they ment it literally. There didn't seem to be anything, that we couldn't do. If we could reach the moon, in those few short years, then reaching the planets seemed just one more step for us.

Instead, America ended their moon launches and built the shuttle. The shuttle was an is a wonderful piece of technology and craftmanship. But the shuttle was a first try and should have been followed up by at least 2 more newer generations of space planes. That didn't happen.

What happened next? We had some failures, like the x-33 that was cancelled. But then we chose to build the ISS. Why did we choose to build such a hugh expensive space station?

There were many good reasons, such as to do science. But couldn't we have done most of that science on a much smaller station? Or to create international unity and good feelings. But we have all seen, how fast that dried up.

Here is one more possible reason. Could the choice of such a hugh long project as the ISS been influenced by the need of giving the shuttle a propose? Whether that is true or not, I don't know. But what I do know, was that the shuttle has been extremely expensive to fly and the ISS was (and is) very expensive to build.

Between the shuttle and the ISS, most of NASA'S budget was committed. Leaving little money to reach out farther into our solar system.

For people like me, that grew up during the space race, it feels like instead of leaping ahead in space, that we have actually lost ground.

I know that many people will write that NASA needs more money. If they had more money, they could do more. Well the fact is that more money is hard to come by and with the fiancial crisis, won't get any easier.

What can NASA do then, if it doesn't get more money? It can become more streamlined. NASA must become more cost effective. It can choose to build rockets that are NOT super complicated, so that each launch doesn't eat up a hugh amt. of its budget.

NASA has and should work closely with the new space companies like spacex, through COTS. They will give NASA the most bang for their bucks and free up money to be used on other projects.

I wish NASA the very best and still hope that within my lifetime, I will see Americans on Mars.