When NASA was created in 1958, manned space travel was a daring idea that challenged the nation and the human imagination. Half a century later, critics of President Barack Obama’s proposed 2011 NASA budget make the space agency sound like a dusty old shop, ready to close its doors and abandon plans “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Casting NASA in this light is to ignore one of its most audacious, innovative and successful programs — the Space Science Enterprise.