On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 10:05:19 -0500, in a place far, far away, Terrell
Miller made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Greg Kuperberg wrote:

Boehlert also observes that "they can't tell us what research will
be done on the Station." But that's "not a criticism of the Agency"
because "they can't provide answers that they don't yet have". Great.
Even though NASA has spent 20 years and tens of billions of dollars
building the station, they can't yet explain what it's for. But hey,
Boehlert doesn't mean that as a criticism.

this statement tips the old irony meter offsclae high when you consider
that NASA has repeatedly delivered specific, measurable designs for the
space station, which Congress and OMB repeatedly chopped and made NASA
go back and revise.

The fact is that NASA had a clear plan for the space station all along.

No, not really. At least not a realistic one. It always had too many
conflicting requirements, at least while it was SSF.

But they were forced by budgetary and political maneuvering to have to
go back and redesign the station, over and over again, with less budget
and less functionality and less of a program.

That, too.

There are many, many things you can criticize NASA for. How ISS has
turned out is *not* one of them.

No, NASA is as much at fault as anyone else. There's plenty of
disaster, and blame, to go around.