Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/sc...itiKrXZazUNXdw



No, NASA did not "decline" to do anything. NASA did not "decide" to do
anything, NASA does not "choose" to do anything.

NASA is an arm of the executive branch of the federal govenment of the
USA. No more or less so than, say, the army. The army doesn't "decide
to invade Iraq" -- everybody would recognize this statement as
ridiculous. And neither does NASA "decide to build a space station" or
"fly shuttles" or any such thing.

Why do people think that these are reasonable claims to make?

NASA does whatever *congress* and *the White House* decide to do. If
the White House decides tomorrow that NASA should build the next
generation toilet brush, then that is what NASA is going to do. NASA
has a certain limited amount of leeway HOW to do any one thing, just
like the army has a certain amount of freedom in that regard. But
that's about it.

NASA does NOT choose it's mission statement. They are allowed to tinker
with the precise formulation, but what exactly they're supposed to DO
is something that aren't being asked.

The previous administration thought NASA was a great thing to use to
study, monitor, understand and protect our own planet. This
administration thinks they'd rather not know about our own planet and
rather go *other* planets instead. The next administration may well
decide that NASA should be building only military crap, or do unmanned
mining of asteroids, or build casinos in LEO -- and then that's what
they're going to do. Or maybe they'll be split into several agencies.
Or merged with some other one. Or whatever the folks in Washington come
up with. These are *policy* decisions and NASA has no say in them.

If the next administration decides to withdraw all troups from Iraq,
then that's what they're going to do. And nobody is going to proclaim
that "the army decided to withdraw from Iraq". But if the next
administration decides that the whole rewarming-Apollo nonsense isn't
really a good use of resources, there will *invariably* be some poster
again telling us how "NASA abandons moon project" or similar stupidity.


cordially

Y.T.

--
Remove YourClothes before you email me.