Mistakes will be made: NASA's money pit.

• Author: Balaker, Ted
• Position: National Aeronautics and Space Administration - Brief Article

IN A SEPTEMBER interview with USA Today, National Aeronautics and Space Administration chief Michael Griffin agreed that most of what NASA has been doing for the last few decades--the shuttle program and the International Space Station--has been a mistake. Don't confuse that concession with fiscal conservatism: Just a week earlier, he'd announced a $104 billion plan to revisit the moon by 2018.

Ordinarily Americans are suspicious of politicians whose backbones have been replaced by opinion polls. Griffin embodies the opposite extreme. NASA announced its new spending spree while Congress was scrambling for money to put the Gulf Coast back together. Asked about the timing of the announcement, Griffin insisted that we "deal with our...