With the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico washing up on the White House lawn and no reason to believe BP's latest scheme to plug the leak with mud will alleviate the mounting economic and environmental toll, it's past time for President Obama to call in the country's most pioneering engineers.

The agency that sling-shotted Apollo 13 around the moon and returned the crippled spacecraft and its crew safely home to Earth has just the right mix of pure scientific genius and engineering know-how to accomplish in inner space what it has excelled at in outer space: successful ad-hoc rescue missions in the most extreme environments known to humanity.

Under the circumstances, it may be fortunate the space agency's budget currently is under intense scrutiny by the Obama administration and on Capitol Hill. Major programs, such as Constellation, intended to return humans to permanent bases on the moon, all have been cut. With the return of Atlantis today, only two more missions remain scheduled before NASA ends the space shuttle program against its wishes, leaving the international space station dependent on Russian service flights. NASA could use a booster about now. The Deepwater Horizon may be just the ticket to restore the agency's luster and funding.

As the old song goes, there's a hole at the bottom of the sea. The oil and gas spewing from the root of the Deepwater Horizon well a mile below the Gulf surface is laying waste not just to the lifestyles and livelihoods of an entire region of Americans, it's turning the warm and lush waters of whole ecosystems into barren undersea deserts where no life will exist for a generation or more to come. And as the Gulf current goes, so go the ecosystems of the Potomac and most of the nation's eastern coastal waters.

Media are increasingly asking the question, "Is this Obama's Katrina?" and the public's answer, according to opinion polls, is increasingly "Yes."

If all goes as planned, BP may yet cap its leaking well tonight with a combination of heavy mud and cement it is now forcing into the malfunctioning blowout preventer at the well base. That would be welcome news to all Americans, including the president, who reportedly snapped "Plug the damn hole!" in frustration during one White House meeting. But BP already has failed at a series of improvised fixes and there is no particular reason for optimism that the giant oil company is accomplishing anything more than stalling for time as it struggles to meet technical challenges that industry observers agree are unprecedented.

And this is where cash-strapped NASA comes in. There is no doubt that many NASA scientists already are involved in tracking the spill, predicting its flow, understanding its composition and so forth. But there is much more manpower and many more resources available that have not been tasked against the undersea leak itself. NASA, after all, isn't just a purely scientific organization. It is, of course, the nation's most prestigious scientific organization, synonymous with beating impossible odds against such improbable events as landing men on the moon. But NASA is first and foremost a formidable army of engineers. Its men and women have met incredible challenges in robotics, differential pressurization, thermal dynamics, molecular physics and other disciplines highly adaptable to confronting and perhaps even plugging the toxic hole at the bottom of our southern sea. If NASA can't stop that hole from swallowing the economy and biodiversity of the Gulf, eating away at the lives of millions of citizens and lapping onto the Oval Office desk, then who can?

If President Obama were to guarantee NASA administrators full funding of its space programs in exchange for devising and overseeing a rapid solution to the oil leak, the administration stands a chance of netting several goals on the same half-court shot at the buzzer.

First, the administration--the much maligned "guv'mint"--could save the Gulf, its citizens and its life forms from further harm. Second, the administration could halt the spread of the economic cancer that is only just beginning to creep northward from the shorelines of this disaster. Third, the president could restore the funding that NASA desperately needs to continue shuttle flights until it can replace its aging fleet with next-generation vehicles and resume its grand purposes among the stars. (In fact, very little could stop NASA funding if it assumed the mantle of hero in this disaster.) Fourth, the reputation of science would be greatly enhanced as a vocation and in the classroom, perhaps sparking greater acceptance of global warming as fact and greater interest in science among eager young minds. And if any of this happens, the fifth fruit of a successful endeavor will be accelerated technological innovation and development needed to restore America's competitiveness abroad and success in new energy at home.

If I were Obama, I'd tell NASA administrators this: "I'm giving you one week to show me a plan that actually succeeds at stopping the leak. You have off-budget carte blanche to assemble any team or teams you need. Your plan has to be achievable in 10 days using existing technology, although I won't object to a plan that integrates disparate systems. Do it and you have my guarantee of full funding for the next decade, including 20 more shuttle missions, full support of the Constellation program as originally designed before scale-back and more. You'll have any help you need from the Navy or any other federal agency, state agency or private business. No questions asked except one: Will it work? For the answer to that, I'll be asking my science advisers and industry experts. Now snap to it. Think. Money is not an issue at this point."

There is little to risk in this idea. BP, if it fails at the top kill tonight, must be shoved aside. Regardless of what happens now and regardless of who was responsible or pays for the cleanup, the oil leak is now seen as the government''s problem to solve, and rightly so. Cue heavy rock 'n' roll and the trademark Jerry Bruckheimer slo-mo. Time to call in NASA.