"You have this enormous sense of speed," he said. "You can see the entire Andes mountain chain from the tip of South America all the way up. The whole Mediterranean basin. If we could get people to space for seven or eight days like I did, they would pay a lot of money."
Space advocates would like to see NASA become more ambitious, sending astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, perhaps once again to the moon and eventually to Mars. The budget crunch, however, may force NASA to cut the frequency of shuttle missions from six per year to four.
NASA has been forced to shelve several space station components, including a habitation module and a seven-person crew return vehicle. Without those elements, the space station can usually be occupied by only three astronauts, too few to handle much science. America's international partners in Europe are so angry about the cutback that they're threatening to pull out of the collaboration.
John J. "Tip" Talone, processing director for space station payloads, warns of a talent drain at NASA if the prospects for the space station don't improve.
"They gotta wonder where their place in life is, in the grand new scheme of things," Talone said. The space station "is merely a shadow of what we can do with it if we can proceed to put the rest of the system together. It would certainly be questionable to quit halfway through it."
Talone said some costs already have been reduced. But a visitor to the space center can see that there's nothing easy and cheap about safely putting people and hardware into orbit.
Everyone here remembers when the Challenger blew up in 1986 and rained debris into the Atlantic Ocean. "Loss of vehicle and crew" is the terse phrase that accompanies most official references to that mission. Unstated is that a relatively small detail -- a rubber O-ring that stiffened in cold weather and allowed a fiery leak in a solid rocket booster -- led to the catastrophe.
In one cavernous building at the cape, a piece of the space station was getting the fine-tooth-comb treatment last week. It will soon form a stretch of the station's backbone. Dozens of yellow and red flags alerted technicians to parts that have been fixed or still needed repair. One red card said, "Withhold. Ding on Reinforcing Web. 11:00 Position."
There's the NASA standard: No dings allowed.
Myth and Miracles
Ed Weiler, who oversees space science for NASA at headquarters in Washington, says, "Exploration is not predictable. Making miracles happen doesn't always happen on schedule."
Talking about miracles was one of the trademarks of Dan Goldin, who ran the agency for nearly a decade and abruptly announced his departure in October.
Goldin has invariably been described as a visionary, a true believer in what might be called the mythology of the Space Age. Goldin increased the number and reduced the size of unmanned spacecraft exploring the solar system -- his mantra was "faster, better, cheaper." He pushed his scientists to search for signs of life beyond Earth and for potentially habitable planets orbiting distant stars. He routinely declared that NASA's job was to make dreams come true.
His designated successor, O'Keefe, vowed Friday to make sound management principles come true. Since January, O'Keefe has been deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Until O'Keefe's nomination, the Bush administration showed little interest in the space program; Bush did not talk about space when running for office.
In his testimony, O'Keefe said that the challenges NASA faces today "are, largely, not scientific, technical or engineering in origin. . . . Rather, the challenges are more aptly described in management terms -- financial, contractual and personnel focused."
