As an agency, NASA simultaneously represents the best and worst of the United States of America—it is responsible for some of the greatest engineering achievements in the history of humankind and has accomplished a long list of goals originally deemed impossible. At the same time, the agency is also crippled by a lack of direction and leadership; it has gone from being an organization capable of putting human beings on other worlds to an organization that lacks even the means to put them into low Earth orbit without assistance.

"the means" here being funding.

Although the allure of manned space exploration appeals to every ounce of my being, it may be wiser to wait it out and reduce costs and risks.

Private companies (we're looking at you, Musk) are shaking up the playing field for the better, no doubt, but they are by definition profit-oriented entities. Yes, this will reduce risk and cost for future manned missions, but let's not forget one very important thing... private companies have no incentive to fund science for the sake of science, hence why we will always require government grants to progress humankind's knowledge base. Sure, capitalism dabbles in science, but only if there's a product and profit to be gained.

Perhaps another question to ask ourselves is "How relatable are current NASA undertakings to the average citizen, or (an even scarier question) to policy makers?". Kepler's recent unveiling of 700+ extraterrestrial planets is relatable enough, but MMS's attempt to solve magnetic reconnection? James Webb's potential contributions to our cosmological theories? Not so much. Manned spaceflight is simple, and exciting.

Also, in a lot of instances, sending up a probe or telescope with instrumentation will result in better science than a crew of humans, and it damn sure cuts back on collateral damages in the event of malfunction.

As for the mentioned lack of leadership and direction... what? Just because you don't know who runs the headshed at NASA doesn't mean there isn't quite the hierarchy of functional management and many projects in various phases of development. Yeah, we're not shuttling people into space currently, primarily because we defunded the shit out of the program. Accidents like Columbia and Challenger certainly don't help the case, and there were definitely many instances where people adorned their "management hats" when they should have put on their "engineering hats". But what do you expect, Bill Nye to head up NASA? The people actually running the show typically have far too much on their plate to give a damn about PR. Besides, where are we going to get the money from to finance a decent public outreach program? The industry is currently feeling the economic crash of 2008, there's about a five year delay for it to really propagate through the science and education sectors.

One thing I will definitely knock NASA for is its rampant conservatism. We're flying technology that was developed in the 70's and 80's, just because there is an ever so slight risk of new technology failing. "Legacy" status granted to already flown technology is upheld on this stupidly high pedestal that actively stomps out the next generation of space instrumentation.

The article was certainly thought provoking though, and generally well researched.