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Very interesting article. I can relate somewhat - I was an aerodynamics engineer at a commercial aircraft component company. We used to have a robust R&D budget that supported new concepts and improved existing applications. Gradually, the R&D money was reduced in order to make the bottom line more profitable. But then there were no new concepts to develop and sell, so we started losing contracts to European competitors who were developing new concepts. It was a death spiral. I just retired and don't miss that part of it.

One of the things I remember from my Economics 101 class is that any entity (person, company, industry, government) must invest about 3% in pure R&D in order to thrive. For an individual, that would be continuing education and research; for a company it would be R&D money devoted to new products; for a government, that is NASA and NIH and other science centers. With a $2 trillion budget, 3% means about $60 billion for R&D. My guess is that the total pure science budget of the USG is about $5 billion, if that. You can't count the Shuttle and ISS - they are into operations, not research.

Oh well - the bottom line rules, but we are now paying the piper of false promises.

Good article. I would only dispute this one thing:
The point here is that NASA is an agency of scientists and engineers.

In the 1960s this was true. Today, NASA is an agency of politically correct bureaucrats. The engineering is performed mostly by the contractors, overseen by someone that the government is hoping has enough technical expertise to spot problems. Contractual haggling is performed by lawyers who don't have the first clue about the technical side of the work on the contract. Not that NASA doesn't have talented engineers in it employ, but they are far fewer than in NASAs heyday, overworked (especially the talented ones), and hamstrung by the bureaucracy. Three decades of consistent under-funding and an expanding mission, and a civil service hiring freeze, with every executive administration altering the demands on the agency, has led NASA to where it is.

I cant' let this one go uncommented, because the author is so right, but won't mention the name of the bonehead responsible.

I watched in horror congressional testimony a few years ago where the previous head of NASA was asked by the congresspersons what he would do if the government increased his funding. After many tries the congresspersons gave up because the answer always was that NASA did not want or need any more funding and could get by with the resources it had. NASA deserved better, the nation deserved better, our future demands it.

I'm not so polite. --- Thank you, Dan Golden.

With every major disaster in the manned program the goals of returning to the Moon and on to Mars are delayed by ten years.

The US unmanned space program is healthy and much more tolerant of a reasonable expectation of failure, IMO.

The secret of the future program is to use unmanned technology to lay the groundwork for eventual manned exploration, which includes utilization of extraterrestrial resources in advance of manned expeditions.

ISS is what Dr. Werner von Braun always wanted as a base from which to assemble the spacecraft that would travel to the Moon and Mars.

While the ISS is an incredible challenge, especially to the beancounters, it is being used at a fraction of its capability. Imagine it as it could be. Or if imagination is too much trouble, watch the old movie 2001.