Common Sense for the Biochemist

Thats it, these last delays are the final straw. NASA has officially become a pile of useless beaurocratic junk. Why are we spending so much time, money, and effort (the U.S. Taxpayer) on the shuttle project just to ferry people back and forth to the International Space Station while projects, such as the Hubble Space Telescope are allowed to die off (granted, a shuttle is probably needed to perform the repairs). Compare the amount of good scientific research that has come out of recent projects such as Cassini project, the martian rovers (when was the last time that things worked so well during a shuttle excursion that it was extended a couple of days, or when the shuttle returned, there were suprisingly few repairs that needed to be made before it could be launched again), and Deep Impact. I can not imagine the amount of good science that could be performed if the money spent on these "reusable" spacecraft were put towards other projects like the ones listed above. When was the last time research performed on the shuttle during one of their "experiments" was published, much less graced the cover of Science magazine? I wholeheartedly agree that man should be in space and that we should be going to the moon and Mars. I just think it can be done faster and cheaper. For evidence backing this last point, just look at the progress Burt Rutan and his group have made. Sometimes, when an appendage is wounded (such as the case with NASA), and infection has set (NASA management), the best cure is an amputation. It's time to start all over again. How, should the government go about this? I don't have the answer to that one.