If PowerPoint could be converted into specific impulse, NASA would have outposts in the Andromeda galaxy by now.

I'm not sure NASA is the right agency to exploit this new paradigm. Historically, new agencies have to be created -- the way NACA itself was created -- which means another chance at doing it right. But it will be created in a maelstrom with overwhelming impetus to going the same bureaucratic way NASA has gone.

What's particularly galling is that all the technological advances in enhancing productivity over the last forty years have resulted in a negative impact on the speed of development of NASA projects. Apollo put a man on the Moon in 9 years. Time to do it these days: estimated at 15+ years. Viking was developed at a time when the first image that was sent back was visualized by engineers shading line printer output with colored pencils (I am not kidding; I have seen it). Time to develop and launch Mars landers over 30 years later: not substantially different. Every gain in computing power has been consumed by the process and procedure monster.

I don't know how much is caused by the appetite of the P&P Monster, and how much P&P became a substitute for the real work they can no longer accomplish. NASA is a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies are self-sustaining even long after their purpose has eroded. Since funding and popular support are minimal, they can't actually get much done or make meaningful plans, so they... circulate memos and extend the rule books.

I am all for the demolition and reconstruction of the national space agency. I would be loath to push the button, though, because in all likelihood the demolition would be thorough and the reconstruction... forgotten.

Oh, well the ax has fallen now. No moon project at all; no tooled-up Ares; no nothing. After the shuttle, we're to beg and buy rides into space from the Russkies and, perhaps, the Chinese and Indians. Welcome to the 2nd table!
The proposed 2011 Budget from our current anti-science administration( the same crew that scrapped the missle shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, after the hard work of selling it had already been done) does not fund these crucial programs, though there is pork aplenty for high-speed rail service to nowhere( Anaheim to Las Vegas? Orlando to Tampa? Who picked those termini, Tony Soprano or Mickey Mouse?). I suppose the jobs created or saved by those projects are deemed to be more in number and quality than those created or saved by properly( or even minimally) funding NASA. Or it might just be that the 'targeted stimulus' actually targets the supporters of ...but, no, that's paranoia, surely.
I am not surprised. Whenever the Left is In, in the past half century, research is Out( remember the Superconducting Supercollider fiasco of the early '90s?)

Could this result in a boost to the private American launch industry? How about yer XCOR, Scaled Composites, etc? Any upside for them?

The budget process is long and never comes out the way it started. We will see what happens. This is the basic problem with the Government funding a doing research (I know we don’t have much yet otherwise) It changes direction on a whim rather than feedback.
We would really be advanced if NASA would stop modifying projects because funding dries up.

I guess the answer to the subject line question is "Any way they want... except up."

The programs I listed were indeed axed, no? The ones that would actually get us ( back) to the Moon and Mars.

The logic behind them, according to one source, was that we have no real rationale for going to either place, so doing an Apollo-style effort to slap something together to achieve a limited set of questionable goals is pointless.

We need real goals. We need a real manned space program that's built on a sustainable and progressive path. We need a real space agency.

There is a in this morning's Washington Post by James Cameron (of all people) defending the change in direction. I'm not sure I buy it, but it is at least a lucid argument.

Who doesn't want to go to the moon or Mars?( Besides the current, increasingly irrelevant administration, of course.) I certainly do, but without the axed programs, we just ain't going.
This low orbit International Space Station and the absurdly scaled down 'Space Shuttle' which services it is where the real waste of money is to be found. As even the apologists for the current one-term wonder probably realize, the route to the planets, much less the stars, runs through a geo-synch space station, not one precariously parked just above the atmosphere. No one believes in the 'private enterprise' smoke-screen arguement save a few would-be entrepeneurs and those willing to back a failed administration, regardless.
These are the same arguements heard in the '70s when the original plans for a real Shuttle and Space Station were scrapped under the heavily Dem controlled Congresses that wanted to spend the resources on phony job programs ( the CETA fiasco) and welfare mothers (AFDC) instead. This did not work out so well, remember?We were left with a one-trick-pony 'space truck' that blows up about each 50 missions( as Feynman tried to demonstrate in the commisssion hearings following the first Shuttle disaster. It's entertaining to watch a statistician argue statistics with a political hack, but it is we, and the victims in the crew, R.I.P., who lose.)
Only a true international effort, led by the US, has a chance of getting off this lovely planet and taking a look around at the wider world beyond.
LOL, I'm sure the nellies and stay-at-homes of the 15th century poo-pooed Columbus in much the same terms ( budgetary restraints and all) that the liar-in-chief uses now.

I'm having trouble figuring out your point, Carl. The ISS and the Shuttle, including its discontinuance, were set many years ago, long before the current (competent or otherwise) administration.

It took 43 three-quarters of his time in office to get around to proposing an interesting, but in the end pointless exercise in duplicating the Apollo effort, leaving sufficient funding to some other administration - thereby couping what little glory there was while avoiding any responsibility for the long-term costs. (That he did this at all was surprising; in his lengthy time as Governor of Texas, he never once set foot in Johnson. I don't think much about Bush disturbed me as much as his limited intellectual horizons.)

I'd suggest that trying to fault the current administration for not proposing a hugely expensive program that doesn't save homes, jobs and families in this time of international crisis is a bit harsh. After all, if Obama were to set in motion a multibillion dollar program whose costs would fall largely on the next three administrations, you'd be all over him as a tax-and-spend socialist or something.

We had our "launch window" for a meaningful national space program. By my count, we've had about three. The last one closed two years ago. I'm not sure when the next one will open. But it is, sadly, not now.

Of course "we" want to go back to the Moon and everywhere else. Whether we should ask NASA to take us there is debatable. NASA has demonstrated that it will take as much time and money it can get for any goal whatsoever and then triple it. If anyone else can do it we should give them the chance. Private enterprise to LEO is no longer even a stretch. Some mogul is thinking hard about the Moon, you know it.

When we get out of this economic viper pit this is going to explode. There will be a technological tipping point that cuts the cost to launch by 90% and we will be heading off the planet. But it's 10-20 years away.

I would dearly love to see private enterprise exploit space travel. We've given NASA decades, and many billions of dollars since Apollo, and manned space travel has advanced not a whit. In fact the fatality rate for the Space Shuttle is infinitely higher than the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo rate, with little to no advance in technology or exploration to justify the lives wasted. Let's see what happens with the new approach. Let NASA concentrate on Earth and Solar observation and robotic missions, and let the entrepreneurs, with appropriate Government subsidies, tackle the manned programs.

Nice one Dan. I haven't read Cringely since he left print magazines.