NASA rocked by two scandals back to back. Will the agency recover?

Question

And how will this affect spaceflight in the long run? I'm not a big fan of NASA, but I'd be willing to bet this will blown over.

In case you haven't seen it, this was in regards to sabotage and to drunk astronauts: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070727/ap_on_re_us/nasa_woes

Answer 1

I feel that for NASA in general this will not pose a huge concern and will blow over in the end. However, it will likely mean (well, at least I hope) some big changes are in store for the astronaut corp. Hopefully these past few events will require more stringent psychological evaluations of future astronauts, continued evaluation of that status throughout training, and more stringent medical requirement controls. It seems that spaceflight has become all too routine at NASA, and that anyone can do it, even the drunk and psychologically unfit. We need to ensure that our investments of billions of dollars are in capable hands. Hopefully congress will investigate the issue thoroughly and can come up with a sensible solution. I would imagine NASA will also launch an internal investigation to find out why the other employee sabotaged the computer. Hopefully that is merely an internal case and not a reflection of the internal state of NASA. If it is the latter of those two then this doesn't bode well for NASA's future and managerial changes may need to be made.

Answer 2

NASA is looking to be privatised/commercialised in the upcoming years to about 30% to maintain efficiency.

this incident may make nasa less attractive, but there are many players right now who want to enter the space market and its a billion dollar industry

they'll want to gain a stake in nasa to have a say in its administration, to advance the cause of tourism technology, resource allocation (mining water etc), sub orbital transport units, etc

nasa has the majority of space experts/technologists in the US and it recruits internationally, so its hard to sideline them, investors will want a piece of them first and then move on- then we'll see pvt enterprises running solo or in conjunction with NASA, or each other or other space countries (ESA, china)

NASA is backed up by military interests as well, so thats something the US cannot ignore

Answer 3

I think that this will blow over and soon be forgotten. NASA is to big and to powerful to let something like this change its overall goals and mission.