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This is one of the nasty legacies of the Apollo program. NASA crewed spaceflight has always been a lot messier, a lot more political, and a lot more pork-barrel
by InclinedPlane 8y ago
This is one of the nasty legacies of the Apollo program. NASA crewed spaceflight has always been a lot messier, a lot more political, and a lot more pork-barrel oriented than robotic spaceflight. That goes back to the Johnson administration and the extensive politicking he did to make Apollo happen. He very cleverly figured out how to locate NASA centers and contractor jobs to areas with a lot of political power in congress. However, that legacy has outlasted the Apollo program and today we have the SLS, which has the primary purpose of funneling government money to several very specific corporations in very specific congressional districts. Results are, at best, a secondary objective.
- topspin 8y ago> NASA crewed spaceflight Fixating on the troubles of NASA's crewed programs might make sense if NASA were doing well with their uncrewed programs. Except they're not[1]. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-james-webb-space-telescope-too-big-to-fail/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-james-webb...
- InclinedPlane 8y agoJWST is just one program among many. Also, it may seem that it matches the level of problems of crewed spaceflight but it really doesn't. The JWST program's enormous budget is small (in per year amounts) compared to things like Orion or SLS. If JWST was burning through money the same way SLS was it would be a $40-50 billion program. Additionally, there is a huge number of highly successful robotic missions that have been running or are in the works. Just now in terms of active programs there is the Curiosity rover, the Juno Jupiter orbiter, the Parker Solar Probe, New Horizons, InSight, Dawn, TESS, Osiris-REX, MRO, Fermi, STEREO, and many more.