Originally Posted: July 6, 2016
Adrift- Part 7
The new space rescue mission: Saving NASA
The legendary Christopher Columbus Kraft, who lived up to his namesake by leading NASA to the moon, has grown old.
Severe lines crease his face, and Kraft’s fingers have gnarled. Earlier this year, just before his 90th birthday, sciatica forced him to adopt a cane and, more gallingly, to give up golf.
Still, he can accept what time has done to him. It’s harder to make peace with what’s become of NASA.
In the 1960s, President Kennedy gave Kraft, the agency’s first flight director, and NASA’s other leaders a blank check and told them to boldly go. They did. The Apollo guys chomped cigars and called the shots.
Those in charge today no longer sit behind flight control consoles, conquering space. They’re at desks in Washington, D.C., politicians and bureaucrats who micromanage the agency’s budget and repeatedly move the goalposts.
Kraft feels his modern-day counterparts at Johnson Space Center have been “victimized.”
“They’ve been forced to accept a lot of things they know damn well won’t work.” READ MORE