RE: NASA administrator says space shuttle was a mistake

Very ironic. Several years ago, an ex-NASA engineer worked for me. He had worked on Voyager and the Mars lander. He was highly intelligent and capable. He got passed over for a promotion for writing an opinion that the space shuttle was a colossal waste of money. He said the opinion effectively ended his career at NASA. I'll have to get in touch with him to see what he thinks of this development.

In a related piece of irony, the person who got promoted ahead of him did so because he had a name that the HR people at NASA thought sounded Hispanic. At the time, NASA was (illegally) enacting race-based quotas to satisfy its affirmative action requirements. The guy who got the promotion was a fourth-generation Italian from New Jersey. He didn't even speak Italian.

These are two illustrations of the best reasons I can think of for getting the government out of the space business.