Shuttle mistake -- what should have been done?

ISS was a mistake if you look at it from the point of view of if it
accomplished anything to further our concept of what a space program
should be. However if you look at it from the point of view of NASA
managers at the time it was a roaring success. It kept them employed in
their highly paid administrative jobs until they could retire. There
was real concern in NASA at the time that there wasn't a big new project
for the management structure to manage. So they searched for just the
right sized project. It couldn't be too small or it wouldn't last long
enough for them to retire. It couldn't be too large or Congress would
balk at the price tag for what members of Congress view as a engineering
welfare program. And it couldn't be modular (where progress could be
measured in small successes) because that would require going back to
Congress and explaining why the next step was required again and again.
So we got ISS.

As I have for many years I still think that the best way to proceed is
to eliminate 95% of NASA and just dole out money to various research and
engineering centers for specific projects and forget the big management
projects.

Mitchell James
www.innertransit.org