Stop delaying on space

Orlando Sentinel: It’s a critical time for the U.S. space program. The shuttle is scheduled to stop flying as soon as next year. NASA has started whacking jobs, and layoffs on Florida’s Space Coast could reach 10,000. The United States is facing a gap of five years or more in sending astronauts into orbit, and problems plaguing NASA’s next manned program mean a longer delay. Yet there’s a maddening lack of urgency, and interest, among federal and state policy-makers.

After months of inaction, the Obama administration was expected this week to announce a review of the next manned program, Constellation. The review would include an examination of whether the Ares I rocket is the best design for Constellation.

This is long overdue. Serious doubts about Ares have been raging for more than a year. But former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who helped design the rocket, deflected the questions and insisted the problems were not unusual or unmanageable. But Obama’s NASA transition team started asking pointed questions about Ares in December, and Griffin resigned in January.

Review

Now that a review finally is coming, it needs to be thorough but quick. NASA can’t afford to keep plowing money and time into Ares if it’s going to get dumped in favor of another launcher.

But the review leaves a more important piece of unfinished business for the Obama administration: naming a new chief for the space agency. The president has said NASA is “adrift.” What agency wouldn’t be without a permanent leader in charge?

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, who says he has the president’s ear on space policy, has resorted to publicly pleading for him to name a new administrator. With so much at stake for NASA and the nation, the delay from the White House is confounding.