NASA Revival Hindered by Red Tape and Cultural Pessimism About the Future

There is a joint NASA-SpaceX launch this week. But even this collaboration is a sign of the agency’s decline before its private competitor. Elon Musk’s space company is effectively giving NASA an Uber ride into space. More than 4,000, or 20 percent, of NASA workers are opting to leave the agency, accepting the deferred resignation offered by the Trump administration to streamline government. The fact that the Trump administration scrapped the nomination of billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead the agency highlights a sense of crisis and lack of direction.

Writing in Newsweek, Riley L. Roberts and Matthew Beddingfield argue that Democrats should take up the agency as a political cause and connect it with the budding “abundance” agenda on the left. They argue that public investment in ambitious technological projects without a profit motive often yield incredible discoveries and innovations that do spawn profit-making industries and advancements in our way of life. After all, the early NASA program’s dash in the space race yielded many technologies.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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There is a joint NASA-SpaceX launch this week. But even this collaboration is a sign of the agency’s decline before its private competitor. Elon Musk’s space company is effectively giving NASA an Uber ride into space. More than 4,000, or 20 percent, of NASA workers are opting to leave the agency, accepting the deferred resignation offered by the Trump administration to streamline government. The fact that the Trump administration scrapped the nomination of billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead the agency highlights a sense of crisis and lack of direction.

Writing in Newsweek, Riley L. Roberts and Matthew Beddingfield argue that Democrats should take up the agency as a political cause and connect it with the budding “abundance” agenda on the left. They argue that public investment in ambitious technological projects without a profit motive often yield incredible discoveries and innovations that do spawn profit-making industries and advancements in our way of life. After all, the early NASA program’s dash in the space race yielded many technologies.