Washington Post: NASA’s midlife crisis.

[For another take on this story, see Charlie Petit's post here.]

"NASA is looking for a rock," begins Joel Achenbach's story in Sunday's Washington Post. "It’s got to be out there somewhere — a small asteroid circling the sun and passing close to Earth. It can’t be too big or too small. Something 20 to 30 feet in diameter would work. It can’t be spinning too rapidly, or tumbling knees over elbows. It can’t be a speed demon. And it shouldn’t be a heap of loose material, like a rubble pile…"

This rock, "if it can be found," is, according to Achenbach, one of the things that NASA is pinning its future on, and if this sounds like a risky proposition, then you're already getting the drift of what Achenbach wants to say about NASA. In a story headlined "NASA's Mission Improbable," he gives us a discouraging portrait of what was once one of the government's proudest and most admired agencies. 

I never wanted to be an astronaut, but when I was growing up, I thought of NASA as a near-miraculous engineering outfit, able to accomplish almost anything in next to no time with nothing more than a box of spare parts thrown on a table. I was sad to see from Achenbach's piece that NASA is in trouble; I guess my years of reporting haven't quite cleansed me of that youthful admiration for NASA.

As Achenbach writes, "Plans, goals, dreams and technological realities are difficult to sort through these days at NASA."

-Paul Raeburn