The idea that the private sector alone can take mankind into space is, alas, almost certainly as much as an illusion as the notion that government had nothing to do with the development of the American West. There is a role for NASA, although it’s not the one that either the President or the organization itself envisage. There’s no better example of what NASA should be doing, ‘pure science’ basically, than the Hubble Telescope. As the writer of this op-ed in the New York Times points out, the decision to scrap it is a bad mistake.