The Death of NASA

When I visited NASA, one of the impressions that hit me most strongly was an aura of neediness. NASA desperately wants what it does to seem sexy and important. Unfortunately, studying the effects of microgravity on insect development on board the ISS will just never meet that need. For many, that is precisely why manned space exploration is so vital to NASA. It challenges the imagination in a way that their current missions simply cannot. Even the potential for missions to the moon and Mars holds psychological value in this respect. However, its current mission may spell eventual doom for NASA by robbing it of any such cutting-edge mission. Here's a good write-up on the trouble facing the space agency.