Grounded: how NASA went from boldness and a can-do spirit to ineptitude and irrelevance. An autopsy of the American space program. (includes related article) (part 1) (Cover Story)

From: Florida Trend | Date: February 1, 1992| Author: Fishman, Charles | Copyright information

The '90s are still young, but it has already been a nasty, turbulent decade for the American space program, and from the looks of things, NASA hasn't hit bottom yet.

It's not just the obvious things, the targets of mockery in political cartoons: the Hubble space telescope, 100% over budget, seven years late and immediately in need of an orbiting optometrist; the Galileo probe, winging dutifully toward Jupiter, where it will spend two years gathering volumes of data about the...

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