That's flatly incorrect. Both parties are pretty much equally disinterested in NASA. The current Democratic administration, for example, is no friend to NASA.

Worse is the politically-driven directives given to NASA. Human space flight, for example, generates very little science per dollar spent. It's basically PR.

Why are you bringing up the current administration? It's congress that controls the purse strings. Only 5 minutes of google searching would show you that republicans fight to lower the NASA budget and democrats fight to increase it.

Nope. Congress gave NASA more for their 2015 budget than the Administration requested [1]. In other words, the Republican-controlled Congress is more supportive of NASA than the Obama administration. Assuming it's partisan is ill-advised: the extra congressional support came from both parties.

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/space_20/20...

Human space flight also has a social engineering aspect to it, where it likely gets better returns in inspiring the next generation to be interested in science.

This isn't how NASA politics works. Congressmen of both parties see NASA (and DoD, for that matter) as a way to channel funds to their districts. Nothing more. Republicans in national office, just like Democrats, are perfectly willing to support spending that's going to create jobs among the people who vote for them.

That's why research and bureaucracy is spread all over the country instead of being more efficiently consolidated in one place. That's why mission control is done in Houston instead of Florida. That's why the shuttle SRBs were built inland in Utah instead of somewhere they could be shipped to Florida by barge (with no need for the famous o-rings).

You don't like Republicans. We get that. But maybe you should become familiar with the subject before making blanket statements like that.

Newt Gingrich was the most pro-NASA candidate in the last election.

Gingrich was pro colonizing mars which is very different than being pro-NASA. He's been anything but pro-nasa when not talking about mars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Newt_Gi...