Making NASA great again?

The eastern shore of central Florida is strangely quiet these days. In years past, mighty rockets split the sky on long pillars of flame, startling flocks of water birds and lulling huge gators out of the nearby marshes to rumble along in the infrasonic. First, it was the Saturn V, a giant among its kind, thundering almost cautiously into orbit and beyond, its tiny Apollo payload perched on top, bound for the moon. Then it was followed by the STS, better known as the Space Shuttle, a sleek winged sci-fi looking space plane piggy-backed on two solid state boosters, rising so often over the Atlantic it got to be routine. 

It was never routine for those of us who lived here. Even the widest-screen TV cannot capture the splendor and scope of a shuttle launch. Especially at night, when the SRB’s first lit up, turning the entire eastern horizon pink and orange, as if the world were ending, as if sun had gone nova and risen in fiery protest one last time. As the stack rose it would cast tremendous, flickering shadows of anti-orange on the ground, and it would throw colored, moving shadows into any lingering clouds above. You could watch it with the naked eye right into low Earth orbit until it finally winked out, curving over the far edge of the planet. It was a glorious and powerful sight.

NASA was great in those days. But those days are gone, and the political climate has reversed itself. This sudden change in both leadership style and political party could not have come at a worse time for NASA. We’ll review the primary conflict over the future of NASA in broad strokes below.