NASA Needs a Nudge

A NASA safety panel warned last week that congressional budget cuts threaten to throw the space agency into a crisis. Coincidentally or not, the report was released just as the House was deciding how much money to give the agency for fiscal 2000. What NASA really needs from Congress is not unfettered money but direction.

In the last decade, the agency has ingeniously designed economical and scientifically rewarding space probes that have lived up to NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin’s principle of “faster, better, cheaper.” But recently the agency rocketed into some misguided adventures. Last week, for example, it announced that the $50-billion International Space Station, a project without any sound scientific rationale, will cost $2 billion more than previously expected. To compensate, NASA said, it will scrap its decade-long, commercially promising research into building a supersonic commercial aircraft that could succeed the Concorde. Worse, the agency then said that because of proprietary agreements, it will keep from the public and potential aircraft builders the schematics and models of the plane, designed with $1.6 billion of taxpayer money.

The space station has a romantic air to it but will do little to advance science or commerce on Earth. Recognizing that, Congress should help NASA find a new trajectory that’s not only “faster, better, cheaper” but more sensible too.