NASA's decline, not all bad.

While still a prestigious government agency to be sure, NASA just ain't what it used to be. With funding starting to dwindle, the agency responsible for such incredible achievement as landing a man on the moon has largely become a sleepy backwater where public prestige is concerned. Of course, NASA still conducts some pretty awesome research missions, but the large-scale projects of potentially history-making proportion have all but ceased; the Atlantis Space Shuttle was permanently shut down last year, and the Constellation Program was cancelled due to budget constraints. 

Because of NASA's effectual shrinking as an agency, over 9,000 employees and contractors have been laid off. This includes not only skilled machinists and highly trained IT experts, but Physicists, Engineers, and Scientists of all types. An employment market previously dominated by NASA has suddenly been opened wide, and employers from all different sectors have been greedily snatching up such valuable personnel. Conversely, some truly enterprising souls have actually began their own start-ups, some focusing on exploiting the wildly exciting and promising Space Frontier. 

The Aurora Australis, as breathtakingly observed from Space Shuttle Discovery.

As Olga Kharif of Bloomberg Businessweek Technology reports:

 "...The NASA émigrés are working on projects ranging from enterprise software to robotics. Several stuck close to what they already know. Former NASA Chief of Staff George Whitesides is president and chief executive officer of Virgin Galactic, the project backed by Richard Branson that plans to offer suborbital space flights to tourists. Alan Stern, NASA’s associate administrator for the science mission directorate before leaving in 2008, is now chief scientist and mission architect at Moon Express, which is developing unmanned spacecraft that would take cargo, such as soil samples, to and from the moon. “Competition rocks,” Stern says. “I expect to see a lot of failure and a lot of successes.”..."

This is very, very good news. In my opinion, the future of Humanity is in Outer Space. NASA has paved the way, but the Space Frontier won't fully open until Private Industry and Individuals are able to take advantage of Outer Space on their own. If America wants to remain on the cutting edge, the wonder and excitement of Space Exploration must be reinvigorated; some serious breakthroughs driven by the power of Private Interest are just what we need. Game on, I say.