NASA's Problem

They forgot how to dream. The agency has all sorts of problems, but its most significant problem is the lack of imagination. As the agency lashes out at the government, presidents, and contractors in a bid to find someone to blame it need only look in a mirror. Somewhere along the line NASA lost the big dear and, understandably, people lost interest. It was only a matter of time before people began to ask, and very rightly so, "what, exactly are we giving NASA billions of dollars for?". NASA's plan for the future seemed to be 20 years and $150 billion. For the longest time it appeared that every time the agency was asked what they needed to accomplish a specific goal, they answer would be, "20 years, $150 billion". It went from an agency that put men on the moon in under a decade to one that constantly needed more time and more money to accomplish even the most mundane of tasks. At a time when the public wants to see people living on the moon NASA tells them that would be difficult it would take a long time to figure out and cost a lot of money. The sad part is that the public probably would have been happy to give NASA gold plated rockets if that's what they needed to send a man to mars, but instead the lads and ladies over there sat at their computers and in their break rooms crunching numbers nobody cared about for reasons no one could discern. As Nikola Tesla said, “Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.” In short NASA lacked audacity, if takes a certain amount to strap explosives to person rear in an attempt to launch them from this planet.