Can NASA find “balance”?
For critics of the Vision for Space Exploration—and of NASA in general—one of the agency’s biggest failures is that it has become “unbalanced.” If the Vision’s political resiliency so far has a flip-side, it is the fact that NASA’s budget itself hasn’t changed significantly. As a result, as Syracuse University professor Harry Lambright says, “NASA probably has a $30 billion program with only a $17 billion budget.” And in order for the Vision to proceed on schedule, NASA’s other priorities—from earth sciences to aeronautics research—have begun to feel the squeeze, says Rice University provost Eugene Levy, an expert in astrophysics. “The risk there—and I think it’s a risk that is not well-understood and anticipated—is that this will be much more expensive with less capabilities than we wish, with consequences with other programs,” says Levy, who served on a council of NASA advisors before falling out with administrator Michael Griffin over the issue of science funding. Levy and others ar
