Oh no! I actually agree with Obama's science advisor on NASA

Obama's science advisor had some comments on NASA in an interview with Nature. I actually agree with him when he says:

"

What the president said is our space programme has been drifting. What we had in the last administration was the articulation of a grand vision for going back to the moon and going back to Mars, but no budget to go with it. The consequences of that for NASA have been quite devastating, in terms of decimating the Earth sciences programme at NASA, decimating the aeronautics programme at NASA and putting at risk the constellation of Earth observation satellites.

Clearly we need to reconcile NASA's missions and budgets. We need to think about how we manage the right balance between manned space exploration and robotic space exploration. We need to manage the balance between looking up and looking down, the Earth observation part versus the space exploration part. We need to balance the aeronautics and the astronautics. That's going to have to involve a new NASA administrator."

I do hope though that when he stresses the "looking down" / Earth science part of the NASA budget that that is not just code for pumping dollars into that area as part of the whole "fighting global warming" business. Earth observations and Earth science does have a definite place in NASA though.