NASA Backs Up to Its Future

摘要

With these words, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board set off a spiraling chain of events that has since touched every aspect of NASA and the U.S. human space exploration enterprise, for good or ill, directly and indirectly. Since the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia in February 2003, and after adjustment of NASA's safety culture, NASA and its advisers and advocates have run through a litany of agency mission, exploration vision and transportation vehicle goals and options. At times it sometimes seemed a pursuit designed to reassure the fully committed that there was a mission to be found "out there" rather than to address the many concerns the nation has about its future in space.