The search for intelligent life at NASA

摘要

As Recently as 1995, most NASA scien-tists still wrote their computer programs in FORTRAN, an ancient programming tongue invented in the 1950s. Some of them still do. America's space agency (strictly, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is not renowned for making sudden changes. It came as a surprise, therefore, when two of its top officials resigned their posts within a day of one another, just over a week ago. Daniel Goldin, who served as the agency's chief administrator for nearly a decade, and Joseph Rothenberg, who was in charge of the space-shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) programmes, insisted that the timing of their departures was mere coincidence. It is an even odder coincidence, then, that this should occur while the agency deals with one of the worst budget crises in its history—an overrun of roughly $5 billion on the ISS and the prospect of further funding cuts from Congress.