NASA and Advanced Propulsion

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin essentially told an audience that, even though advanced propulsion system research was needed for exploration beyond Mars, it would not be funded. While it's refreshing to have an Administrator who faces the reality of limited funds and the need to prioritize, the complete dismantling of research in this area is short-sighted in the extreme. An affordable level of studies and small-scale demonstration projects is needed to keep the intellectual capital in place to allow this research to be ramped up again in the future. After all, there's no commercial demand for nuclear thermal or solar sail propulsion systems: without NASA support, the people and facilities capable of working on this problem will dissipate, and a future administrator will have to face the enormous difficulty and expense of reconstituting propulsion work from scratch. Mr. Griffin has made many good decisions, but this most definitely is not one of them.