Washington

Critics of Sean O'Keefe, the new NASA administrator, are complaining that his nuts-and-bolts management style is leaving the space agency bereft of what ex-president George Bush once called “the vision thing”.

The agency's human spaceflight programme is “adrift, with no clear vision or commitment to any goals after the completion of the International Space Station”, Congressman Nick Lampson (Democrat, Texas) told the House of Representatives on 15 May.

Lampson was introducing the Space Exploration Act of 2002, which would require NASA to complete a series of specific tasks, starting with building a reusable space vehicle within eight years that is capable of carrying astronauts beyond Earth orbit to locations where large space telescopes could be constructed. Under the act, NASA would also be charged with building, within 10 years, a vehicle capable of reaching near-Earth asteroids. A lunar research facility would follow within 15 years, and a spacecraft for reaching Mars within 20.

The bill takes an approach that is becoming fashionable among long-term space planners: it proposes a series of incremental steps, rather than the grand sweep of a single mission to Mars. It calls for a competitive programme, run by a new Office of Exploration, modelled on NASA's Discovery series of planetary-exploration missions, with an initial budget of $50 million next year and $200 million in 2004.

Lampson's proposal contrasts sharply with the approach being taken by the White House and O'Keefe, who has made it clear that he envisages a period of incremental technology development for NASA, rather than identifying any grandiose new goals.

Although Lampson's bill has little chance of passing Congress, NASA's recent 'go-slow' strategy has been criticized by other politicians, including Tom DeLay (Republican, Texas), the majority whip in the House and one of Washington's most powerful figures. During a congressional hearing last month, DeLay branded O'Keefe's plans for human spaceflight “timid and anaemic”.

Most of the bill's sponsors are from districts near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas, where the US astronaut programme is based. But its arrival, observers say, reflects a growing weight of opinion that, with the space station downsized and no other large projects on the horizon, NASA's 40-year-old human-spaceflight programme is in danger of withering away.