NASA chief defends Obama’s space plan
In a lecture on Monday at MIT, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. defended President Barack Obama’s controversial plans for the U.S. space agency’s future and touted the president’s plan to invest billions of dollars in basic science research.Some in Congress have criticized Obama’s proposal to cancel the Constellation program, which would have sent humans to the moon by 2020, saying such a move will effectively cede U.S. space leadership to other nations. But Bolden noted that the White House’s plan would also invest an additional $6 billion in NASA over the next five years, including a 60-percent increase in earth sciences research funding, as well as a 20-percent increase in planetary sciences research. Such an expansion could revitalize NASA’s ties with institutions like MIT, which has played an instrumental role in the agency since NASA was founded in 1958.“The frustration for me is that we always talk about the...