Civilian Space Research and Development

The Air Force has taken over the development of a new un-manned orbital vehicle, under DARPA. NASA, the supposedly civilian space program, gave up the program in 2004. Everyone knows that the Space Shuttle program needs to make way for the next generation of manned flight vehicles, unless we're acknowledging out loud that it's too expensive and dangerous to send people out to a useless, broken International Space Station. But if space exploration, which includes the development of its vehicles, is no longer under civilian authority, we have to look seriously at the point of it all. Is NASA's budget too small now? Has the mandate changed because of the emergence of private and commercial space travel? Would NASA be better off if it let the Europeans administer, and pay, for the space station?

I'm all for the Air Force developing cool new vehicles because they do a good job of it, but the message that the military is in charge of the future of space, even though this is just one project, should make one wonder if NASA should just be in charge of launching satellites and science probes. But without a manned space vehicle, this interpretation of NASA would limit the availability of huge, modular-based space telescopes. I've got no answers, but I think NASA should stand up for itself and figure out what its own vision of the future of space exploration should be.