The New York TImes’ John Schwartz has a really comprehensive piece laying out the challenges and controversies facing NASA heading into the Obama administration. The main issue is that after the Columbia shuttle exploded in 2003 the Bush administration gave the go ahead for the agency to embark on building a new system of spacecraft. Only this spacecraft can’t be ready until 2015. And funding to keep up the old spacecraft ends in 2010, meaning a five-year gap where astronauts will be borrowing Russian shuttles.

So the Bush administration gave NASA the green light for a forward-looking project. But at the same time the agency is somewhat in limbo and waiting for signals from Obama.

Again, Schwartz is good at explaining an issue that I know very little about. But he keeps cryptically referring to a "chorus of naysayers that has arisen online." Does a loyal Understanding Gov reader want to point me to the lively NASA blogging community?-MB

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