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Thanks; it's great to have an inside view. > You have some people there who are brilliant and very excited about space. You also have people there who are comp

Thanks; it's great to have an inside view. > You have some people there who are brilliant and very excited about space. You also have people there who are completely incompetent but will be able to retire in their position in 30 years as long as they don't commit a HR violation. That's true of all large institutions; how is NASA different? Is it worse that other large institutions? Nobody can hire and motivate brilliant, excited people on that scale.

planteen 10y ago
> That's true of all large institutions; how is NASA different? Is it worse that other large institutions? Nobody can hire and motivate brilliant, excited people on that scale. I agree, it is difficult. But I'd say it is different than at big companies because there it seems more likely for them to eventually cut loose chronic under-performers. Another issue they run is if there is a budget cut, NASA won't buy as many spacecraft, but they also don't let people go. So some missions will have way more personnel than needed. This can easily lead to a cost/schedule overruns by the contractors, because now the contractor is getting swarmed by requests from the extra NASA people. I've been in meetings where it is a 10:1 ratio of NASA versus contractor. A meeting that should take an hour takes a day because so many people want to get a word in.