Interesting article, now that I finally had time to go and read it. The comments were even more interesting. They point out THE fundamental flaw in the ENTIRE Nobama presidency... a DISTINCT lack of LEADERSHIP... at every level, regardless of what area you want to look at.
Nobama will go down in history as a finger-wagging playboy who, like Nero who fiddled while Rome burned, was content to play golf and make self-important speeches criticizing his opponents and little else. His self-aggrandizement is legendary, but other than the "bad deals" he made by foisting Obamacare on us and the Iranian nuke deal (which will come back to bite the entire world in the butt one day), he basically accomplished *nothing*. Oh, he was certainly an 'activist' for many causes-- from lighting up the White House in the rainbow colors of the queers to stomping on the coal industry and blocking any energy projects that he and his fellow greenies disliked or felt "environmentally damaging" (despite government information to the contrary), like the various pipeline projects he blocked... and he emboldened government agencies like the EPA to overstep their authority in many ways, including the highly dubious and potentially catastrophically damaging "Waters of the US" rules.
Obama's team correctly pointed out that the Constellation program, NASA's manned spaceflight plans for returning to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, was critically flawed in how it was being implemented, with Ares I and V (primarily Ares I, though its shortcomings were being passed on to Ares V, making it also virtually doomed to fail due to excessive demands being placed upon it to make up for Ares I's anemic deficiencies). His replacement of Mike Griffin with Charlie Bolden was simply replacing Bush's "yes man" with his own. Neither were good leaders for NASA. Obama, through Bolden, redirected NASA into "navel gazing" exercises like reaching out to the Muslim community and focusing more on climate change and other such "non-missions" regarding the environment rather than to focus on planning and carrying out research on the solar system for the coming decades.
So, all this is history... where do we go from here??
HOPEFULLY, President Trump will replace Charlie Bolden with someone who will actually be a LEADER for the space program. Someone who is familiar with the space program and its shortcomings, someone who understands what it's like to be an outsider looking in, left out in the cold because he's NOT one of the "chosen few" insiders in the governmental/industrial complex who have become the sacred cows that constantly come and go through the revolving door at NASA between its management and government and industry. Someone like, say, ELON MUSK. He would be an EXCELLENT choice for NASA Administrator! If ANYBODY could bring in a fresh perspective, has the skills to muster a successful space startup through the regulatory hurtles NASA bureaucracy has continuously placed in his path, and cut through all the red tape to put the Space Agency back on the proper path, it would be someone like Elon Musk. It might not be possible for Musk himself to serve in the role, especially with his company being one of the premier suppliers of the commercial services which NASA SO desperately needs-- such a position could be seen as a conflict of interest, especially if something like the bloated and decade-long effort to create some sort of super-rocket out of old shuttle parts (SLS) was canceled and replaced by something that made INFINITELY more sense, like Falcon 9 Heavy, or goodness forbid an all-new commercial HLV designed along the lines of a Saturn V replacement... At any rate, what NASA DESPERATELY needs is TRUE leadership-- a truly talented manager who is capable of glad-handing the politicians yet utterly committed to achieving the goal and vision of the President and making NASA *THE* preeminent space exploration agency on the planet and forwarding our goals in space. Someone NOT interested in public relations nonsense like reaching out to the Muslims and navel-gazing within NASA itself as an end unto itself; someone more interested in NASA actually ACHIEVING something than resting on its laurels of past triumphs like the Moon landings and such... Someone more interested in reforming NASA into a healthy, vital, INNOVATIVE organization than in preserving "ten healthy centers" (which has become something of a mantra in NASA).
Without LEADERSHIP, NASA will continue to founder and remain stuck on the sandy shoals in LEO (read "ISS") and navel-gazing at its own place and public relations, rather than actually moving forward in a consolidated way and laying the foundation for the further exploration of space, both manned and unmanned. It will continue to be a slave to the parochial interests of "the shuttle mafia" and others who are content to spend the last 13 years and BILLIONS of dollars building vehicles out of old shuttle parts while remaining content that NO missions for such vehicles have been funded, and content that their designs will require ANOTHER decade and billions MORE funding before they will be capable of actually performing any sort of actual exploration missions at some point in the future. So long as the money is rolling in at the right places, they don't really care if ANYTHING EVER gets done or actually flies or serves any purpose whatsoever...
Until this STOPS and REAL leadership emerges, NASA is going NOWHERE, and doing it at INCREDIBLE expense, not only monetarily, but also the expense to future generations for whom the groundwork required is NOT being laid NOW.
Later! OL J R