I strongly disagree with the notion that NASA is lost in middle management hell. Do you know how many successful missions they have running right now, that are to the benefit of all? Dawn, Chanda, Hubble, Messenger, Cassini, GRAIL, 2 current mars missions, one halfway to pluto, another on its way to jupiter. Not to mention all of the valuable earth research. Manned missions are important for inspiring and our long term survival. But we can afford to take a break. The private sector in the US is doing really well. Nasa is getting ready to send people on a long term mission. Cut them some slack.
I don't want this to turn into a huge thread listing all current NASA missions, but I just want to put in a word for Kepler, which to me could be easily the most important NASA mission going on at the moment.
In 1994 we knew of zero planets outside the solar system. Ten years ago we had a handful. Now, thanks to the Kepler mission, we're on the verge of really understanding how common planetary systems are, how they form, the typical distribution of planet sizes and orbits, and how common Earth-like planets are likely to be throughout the universe. That's a big freaking deal.
Yep, there are a lot of strong opinions on this thread that identify NASA solely with human exploration. This is a mistake, and it's frustrating to see it made by so many bright people.
It's a historical fact that the human side of space exploration has always been subject to great political influence. Consequently, it goes through these unseemly convulsions from time to time.
The political involvement in engineering processes drives rationalists nuts. Even to the extreme of believing that the way to rationalize human space exploration is to put it in the private sector.
Putting people into space is very expensive compared to putting unmanned instruments into Low and Medium Earth Orbit.
Our nation isn't doing well financially right now, and I see NASA's priorities as logical. They're getting a lot more knowledge per dollar spent right now.
