There's an article over at abc.com detailing the travails of the International Space Station and Shuttle programs. There are a few quotes from spaceblogger Mark Whittington.

Not much new here, at least to anyone who's been reading my weblog for a while, but it's nice to see these things in the mainstream press. The reporter still doesn't get it, though--she's reporting it as though this is all a surprise, and news.

If plans for the space station crew aren't expanded, the panel concluded, "NASA should cease to characterize the I.S.S. as a science driven program."

Newsflash guys--NASA has lied about that from day one. It has never been a science-driven program.

"Congress needs to own up to what it had intended to do," he says. "If they really want a space station program, they have to fund it."

They did fund a space station program, which is all they ever wanted. Programs create jobs and constituencies.

What they've never cared about (and still don't really, at least not at the expense of other things that they care about) is actually having a useful space station.

I spoke to Ms. Onion for about twenty minutes last week. While some of her direct quotes attributed to me are-well-paraphrased, she did het the gist of myt views right.

There was a lot by the way that was "news" to her. She was unaware, for instance, of the five billion dollar hole that the previous administration had left in ISS as a kind of gag gift for this one.

A science driven program? No, it's program driven science.