Posted 6/13/2009 02:02:00 PM by Douglas

What's up, NASA?

For the first time since man set foot on the moon four decades ago, a president has ordered a wholesale review of the space program’s future and whether the U.S. can afford to — or even wants to — return to the moon or send humans hurtling toward Mars.

With new leadership poised to take command of NASA, the next few months could be pivotal to the jobs of thousands of space program employees and contractors who depend on NASA for their livelihoods. As the shuttle prepares for its future as a museum exhibit and cost projections for a new moon mission rise while the timetable slips, the space agency’s political future is very much in doubt.

Despite President Barack Obama’s repeated expressions of excitement about space exploration, his administration’s ongoing scrutiny of the manned program is stirring concern among NASA employees and aerospace contractors that jobs will be lost, multibillion-dollar contracts will be jeopardized and the planned return to the moon will be delayed or even scrapped.

Time to make up your mind on this one. I'm sick of the pro/con arguments, so I'll skip those, but I can't see how it can be scrapped. Even if NASA was totally done away with, that $15 billion a year isn't going to make much of a dent in the budget, considering we're not done handing out trillions of dollars to people that do absolutely nothing except make bad loans.