NASA's Confused Mission Apparent From Earth Day Talk About Mars
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NASA’s long-confused mission was evident today -- Earth Day 2014 -- when Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. keynoted a conference about Mars, the red planet, before zipping across downtown Washington to give a speech about the blue-green one.
The search for NASA's singular post cold-war or even post-Nixon identity has been op-ed fodder for years -- be it "black hole budgets" (2008), post-Moon wins (1998) or skewed priorities in (1981), to name just three. It's still lively to talk about. The writer Charles Seife took a bite out of the agency in February, asking "What Is NASA for?" at Slate.com.