A Generation Lost In Space…

Reader Bill "NoStar" Kalles points to this USA Today article about NASA, who are always the last to figure it out:

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."

The shuttle has cost the lives of 14 astronauts since the first flight in 1982. Roger Pielke Jr., a space policy expert at the University of Colorado, estimates that NASA has spent about $150 billion on the program since its inception in 1971. The total cost of the space station by the time it's finished—in 2010 or later—may exceed $100 billion, though other nations will bear some of that.

Whole thing here.

Tangs for the memories, you magnificent bastards. And sleep well, Hayden Rorke, thou art avenged.

The Elvis of Aerospace, X-Prize Champeen Burt Rutan, inveighs against NASA here.

I mock the agency that was lifting p.r. ideas from The Simpsons here.

NASA battles a teenaged girl fighting for Gus Grissom's spacesuit here.

Grissom's widow calls NASA "a bunch of thieves" who have "disgusted and dismayed" her here.