Put NASA back to work, not to pasture

How about putting one of the government’s most innovative and productive agencies to work instead of out to pasture? In July when the space shuttle Atlantis touched down on it final flight thousands of NASA workers got their pink slips. Since the 1950s NASA has more than lived up to its promise as a technology leader.

Along with scores of space shuttle missions and launching thousands of satellites, NASA has created inventions from baby formula to Teflon to cat scans/MRIs to invisible braces and more. At least 1,400 NASA patents have found their way into everyday products in one way or another. NASA personnel have also found a way of doing things in time frames no one believed possible. Remember JFK’s promise to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade? Wasn’t that supposed to be impossible?

The point is, America has an agency that understands deadlines and has the imagination to solve the most complex problems in every area from nutrition to electrical engineering. What if those laid off NASA people were called back with a new mission? What if they were given the challenges of creating a viable renewable biofuel to wean America off foreign oil, finding a way to make cars get 100 mpg without compromising safety or performance, developing the potential of wind, solar, geothermal and hydroelectric energy production?

Hundreds of furloughed NASA employees could go back to work and thousand of the subcontractors could return by retrofitting their businesses to the new missions. Who would be better to take on three of America’s most vexing problems?

Jim Gustafson

Wheaton