NASA needs a new vision

Orlando Sentinel: Don't believe the label: There's nothing bold about the policy the Bush administration has been developing for the space program.
The draft policy, billed as a "bold agenda for space exploration," breaks no new ground for NASA. Instead, it reiterates the plans to which the space agency was committed before the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven in February.
NASA desperately needs a new vision, not the status quo. In its final report, the board that investigated the Columbia disaster concluded the lack of a clearly defined mission for NASA led the agency to try to do "too much with too little," and sowed the seeds for the shuttle tragedy.
President Bush responded by appointing a high-level task force, including Vice President Dick Cheney and NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, to come up with a national space policy. O'Keefe raised expectations for the process in September by declaring that the administration was conducting a "reasoned, thoughtful, thorough assessment of U.S. space-exploration policy."
The results so far from that assessment are downright embarrassing. The vision statement from the draft policy reads like an entry in a cliche contest: "A house with no foundation falls and a journey without a plan traps us in the wilderness."
No new programs
The "bold agenda" then calls essentially for NASA to do everything it was doing before the Columbia disaster raised questions about the direction of the American space program. The policy includes no new programs, specific destinaItions or deadlines for NASA. It calls for no additional money, even though the agency's budget has been essentially flat for the past decade.
The Bush administration has subjected NASA to a spending discipline not applied to many other federal agencies. While overall federal spending has soared in the past three years, NASA has been targeted for cost cutting.
Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of 23 U.S. senators, including Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, sensibly called on Bush to seek a budget for NASA that reflects "major changes in the culture, policies, directions and goals" of the space agency.
Experts have told Congress that NASA could be revitalized with an additional $5 billion a year. That's no small sum, but it's still a lot less than the hundreds of billions in additional dollars that the president has persuaded Congress to commit to other programs and tax cuts.