Yesterday, the New York Times. reports that the National Research Council, (NRC), the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences,  issued a report on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (NASA).  ten  research laboratories, and concluded that the labs were merely 'marginally adequate.' The NRC reports warned that the decline of basic research at the NASA facilities, and the underfunding of  research, jeopardizes the agency’s ability to study and to explore the cosmos.  Joseph B. Reagan of NRC  told the Times. that if NASA continued as it is "going at the current rate, in five years the research community would not be able to support NASA’s long-term goals.” Mr. Reagan said that NASA "could easily restore the balance between basic research," which receives $500 million of the agency's $18 billion annual budget."

Well, NASA is a work project for high tech workers, and the NASA budget is spent to maintain as many of those high tech jobs as possible. NASA has facilities or contractors, across the country, in hundreds of Congressional voting districts. Maintaining those jobs, and thus Congressional support seems more important to NASA managers than funding scientific research.