The kind of engineering you have to do to make a project successful at a place like NASA is very different than many other places. If it's a larger program, yo

The kind of engineering you have to do to make a project successful at a place like NASA is very different than many other places. If it's a larger program, you need to make sure you have participation scattered across congressional districts, or at least certain important ones. This reduces defunding risk, but introduces lots of program management risks. Once you've successfully become known as a jobs creator, then your job is to spend as much as possible. You can't be looking at the efficiency of getting the program completed - you have to be looking at the efficiency of spending taxpayer money as efficiently as possible in congressional districts. The less work performed per dollar, the more efficient you are in getting the money into the economy. Hiring an engineer at $300/hour instead of $100/hour - why risk getting the cheap guy when there is no benefit to you? Efficiency in government programs has a very different meaning than in other programs.