MICHAEL BELFIORE ON THE NEW OBAMA SPACE POLICY: HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT NEED NOT INVOLVE NASA.

The new budget calls for a course correction—for putting money back into the kind of basic research NASA does best, keeping the space station going through at least 2020, and hiring private contractors for crew and cargo flights. It’s a boon to private space flight companies such as SpaceX but an anathema to politicians who want to keep riding a very lucrative gravy train building paper spaceships. As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said today during a commercial space telecon organized in response to the budget request, “There are certain members of congress who cannot be swayed by any rational argument. They simply want the answer to be that funding continues in their district independent of any sound basis for it.”

I would argue that the new direction is not just the best option for NASA, but the only one. NASA already has no choice but to rely on the Russians for rides to the International Space Station after the shuttle retires this year. It’s an embarrassment. Obama’s budget will open the door to homegrown solutions for crew and cargo delivery to the space station, while providing much needed research funding for the development of next-gen technologies such as heavy-lift rockets and on-orbit refueling depots.

It’s a step that’s long overdue, though not one without peril.

Read the whole thing. And here’s more from Alan Boyle.

Plus, Five winners in Obama’s new space budget.

UPDATE: Economics professor E.F. Stephenson takes a healthcare lesson from the Obama Administration’s space policy:

If human spaceflight—a technically challenging endeavor—need not involve NASA, then just maybe health care need not involve the meddling feds either.

Good point!