THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 29, 1994 TAG: 9407290011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 37 lines
The recent lunar-landing anniversary articles were very interesting, in particular the July 20 article by James Schultz. But Mr. Schultz didn't quite hit the nail squarely on the head. The problems with NASA can be summed up in three words: politics, politicians and bureaucrats.
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson derailed our space program when they rejected scientific recommendations for a structured, step-by-step and permanent endeavor, while insisting on a ``space race'' leap for the moon in order to win a short-term political victory over the Soviets. Then add to this misdirection the hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of money, manpower and resources dumped down the rat holes of the Vietnam War, Great Society welfare programs and Cold War military expenditures.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened to NASA after the Apollo program ended. Politicians shot it in the knee caps, told it to leap for the stars and then criticized it when it had trouble getting off the ground. Thirty-three years of politically bungled manned spaceflight has left us with no dependable, frequent, low-Earth-orbit heavy-lift capability, no space station and no signs of real improvement in the future.
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke could have been prophesy and blueprint. Today we should be knocking at the star gate of major space exploration. Instead, we are condemned by political mistakes to wobble down the road on the technological equivalent of a bicycle built for two.
BRIAN BLOEDEL
Melfa, July 25, 1994 by CNB