7 ms·

It’s kind of ridiculous how often NASA has to reallocate their focus. Personally, I’d like to see a longer term 5 - 10 year plan that is voted on by congress an

It’s kind of ridiculous how often NASA has to reallocate their focus. Personally, I’d like to see a longer term 5 - 10 year plan that is voted on by congress and basically the funds are deposited in an escrow. It’s insane the waste that occurs from random political moves like this. I understand the need to be able to direct NASA, but that should be in addition to the described 5 - 10 year plans. This would give the flexibility needed, while at the same time ensuring skills and contractors are maintained and long term visions are still possible. I kind of view the “gate” in its current state as NASA knowing it’s the correct choice technically and trying to politically make it viable. Shouldn’t we listen to the experts here?

Ididntdothis 7y ago
Since Bush every incoming president has set up a “vision” that scraps all previous work and which then in turn gets scrapped by the next guy. I wonder how the people working there can keep motivated knowing that most of their work is just for show. Seems unmanned missions are fine but manned missions are just a mess.
- gyaniv 7y ago
  The problem is that since there's always a switch between Republican and Democrats, each president has a different perspective on the overall NASA mission (plus each one wants to leave a big mark), so they keep changing. I think what the people actually working there try to do (as it can be seen here) is find a way to fit what they have already done, with what the new mission statement is, so that they won't have to scrap everything they have done, only the limited amount. That's good is some senses (less wasted work), but the result is then usually not the most fitting solution.
  - lukeschlather 7y ago
    I don't think it's accurate to say there are any partisan components to the NASA mission. I guess the exception is the Republican party is trying to cut Earth observation satellites because the data coming back is politically inconvenient. However that's a pretty small part of NASA's budget.
- magduf 7y ago
  From what I've heard, a lot of people have left NASA as a result of the month-long government shutdown this year. NASA is a political football, and it's not going to get any better: it just takes too long to see a big mission (i.e., manned ones) through, so they're never going to get done with the way our government is running these days. The probes are usually OK because those can get done a lot quicker.
  - justin66 7y ago
    > From what I've heard, a lot of people have left NASA as a result of the month-long government shutdown this year. I've got two friends there, a civil servant and a contractor, and I've heard no such thing. That doesn't mean it isn't true, but I'm curious whether there's any data to back this up. You'd have to be careful looking at that data, too: a lot of people are retiring from NASA simply because they're old. Nothing that's happened to NASA lately is a new phenomenon.
    - magashna 7y ago
      Total conjecture, but seeing as how the private space industry has ramped up, it would make sense to leave during such a hostile administration
      - WillPostForFood 7y ago
        Is the current administration hostile to NASA? Today, the President signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017, which funds the U.S. government for the remainder of the fiscal year. NASA received $19.65 billion—its best budget since 2010—and the Planetary Science Division saw its budget increase to $1.846 billion—its best budget in more than ten years. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2017/fy2017-planetary-science-just-got-its-best-budget-in-years.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2017/fy2017-plan...
        magduf 7y ago
        They also are pushing NASA to send men to the Moon before Trump leaves office, without also giving them the budget necessary to do such a task (which honestly, with any budget, is still a ridiculously short schedule). They already had one main guy at NASA just quit because he knew this plan was unrealistic.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  I am working in a different industry (which calls itself an industry but is a joke and a god sent heaven for marketing consulting gig) but with the same kind of political minefield. Public servants get demotivated and set to mediocrity. Hired cattle gets demotivated and try to get out. Only managers and middle managers are driven by the ego boost coming from "changing things".
chasingthewind 7y ago
I was talking with my daughter about this yesterday and it really occurred to me that it's probably important to look at NASA through a realist lens. Here's their Vision and Mission statement: [0] Vision: We reach for new heights and reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind Mission: Drive advances in science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality and stewardship of Earth Given the history of using the space program as a tool of political/nationalist/defense goals it's probably more realistic to simply act as if the stated purpose of the agency is really a kind of "marketing" that is significantly independent of the "lived experience" so to speak. At minimum I would expect that a mental model of NASA that ignored the vision and mission statements would result in much better predictions about what NASA was likely to do. I should add that I consider all of this deeply unfortunate and I'm not defending it in the least. [0] https://www.nasa.gov/careers/our-mission-and-values https://www.nasa.gov/careers/our-mission-and-values
- mcguire 7y ago
  Don't forget the employment project for aerospace engineers.
clarkmoody 7y ago
As a governmental entity, NASA will never be removed from politics. A million different things could completely derail any sort of 5-10 year plan, not to mention that as soon as NASA got a "guaranteed" fund-for-5-years-and-leave-us-alone budget, every other federal agency will clamor for that too. Long-term planning requires alignment of incentives. In government, the incentives of top officials are short-term in the extreme: get re-elected at all costs; grow next year's budget at all costs (e.g. waste all the ammo at the end of the year). Of course, more authoritarian states often tout their 5 Year Plans, but you're making quite a few tradeoffs of civil and economic liberties to get there. Until there is market-driven demand for humans to be on or around the Moon, politics will dominate the story.
- nerdkid93 7y ago
  > Until there is market-driven demand for humans to be on or around the Moon, politics will dominate the story I don't know if I've ever thought this before, but wow. That's a great argument
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Weirdly, you'd think that politicians would want to look smart by successfully administrating public projects.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  Of course people (including many at NASA) have been speculating about how to generate market-driven demand for a very long time (at least for as long as NASA has existed in the case of reports coming from there). The more I learn about the (lack of) history in commercialization of space, the more I doubt I will actually see significant exo-terrestrial colonies within my lifetime.
hackeraccount 7y ago
Oddly I agree with your description but not the solution. NASA doesn't need longer term goals - it needs shorter term goals. I'd say don't fund anything that takes longer then a single presidential term. That would limit what's possible but increase the likelihood that something will get finished. If the president says my goal is to land humans on Venus (with asbestos booties naturally) in 20 years then odd are in 4 years the new non-crazy president will scrap that goal and change it to land on Jupiter in 20 years. And then it will be to put a flag on the Sun. And so on. With 4 year goals the goals may be idotic but they will probably be finished because it'll be a single lunatic from start to end. It's also possible that from one crazy administration to the next there could a chance to build on what was accomplished so at the very least something will be accomplished.
- dear 7y ago
  Or set up a large enough endowment fund that can only be used for that particular mission.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  This would be nice if it was possible, but 4 years is simply too short of a timeline to do things like the moon-return project. We might as well shut down the manned space program at that point.
yellowapple 7y ago
> Shouldn’t we listen to the experts here? When have politicians ever actually listened to experts?
- mcguire 7y ago
  The brilliant thing about experts is that you can pretty easily find one to say anything you want said.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    The market is thriving right now for thinktanks that specialise in delivering policy based evidence. Of course I could have shortened this by just writing, 'The market is thriving right now for thinktanks'.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

Since Bush every incoming president has set up a “vision” that scraps all previous work and which then in turn gets scrapped by the next guy. I wonder how the people working there can keep motivated knowing that most of their work is just for show. Seems unmanned missions are fine but manned missions are just a mess.

gyaniv 7y ago
The problem is that since there's always a switch between Republican and Democrats, each president has a different perspective on the overall NASA mission (plus each one wants to leave a big mark), so they keep changing. I think what the people actually working there try to do (as it can be seen here) is find a way to fit what they have already done, with what the new mission statement is, so that they won't have to scrap everything they have done, only the limited amount. That's good is some senses (less wasted work), but the result is then usually not the most fitting solution.
- lukeschlather 7y ago
  I don't think it's accurate to say there are any partisan components to the NASA mission. I guess the exception is the Republican party is trying to cut Earth observation satellites because the data coming back is politically inconvenient. However that's a pretty small part of NASA's budget.
magduf 7y ago
From what I've heard, a lot of people have left NASA as a result of the month-long government shutdown this year. NASA is a political football, and it's not going to get any better: it just takes too long to see a big mission (i.e., manned ones) through, so they're never going to get done with the way our government is running these days. The probes are usually OK because those can get done a lot quicker.
- justin66 7y ago
  > From what I've heard, a lot of people have left NASA as a result of the month-long government shutdown this year. I've got two friends there, a civil servant and a contractor, and I've heard no such thing. That doesn't mean it isn't true, but I'm curious whether there's any data to back this up. You'd have to be careful looking at that data, too: a lot of people are retiring from NASA simply because they're old. Nothing that's happened to NASA lately is a new phenomenon.
  - magashna 7y ago
    Total conjecture, but seeing as how the private space industry has ramped up, it would make sense to leave during such a hostile administration
    - WillPostForFood 7y ago
      Is the current administration hostile to NASA? Today, the President signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017, which funds the U.S. government for the remainder of the fiscal year. NASA received $19.65 billion—its best budget since 2010—and the Planetary Science Division saw its budget increase to $1.846 billion—its best budget in more than ten years. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2017/fy2017-planetary-science-just-got-its-best-budget-in-years.html http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2017/fy2017-plan...
      - magduf 7y ago
        They also are pushing NASA to send men to the Moon before Trump leaves office, without also giving them the budget necessary to do such a task (which honestly, with any budget, is still a ridiculously short schedule). They already had one main guy at NASA just quit because he knew this plan was unrealistic.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
johnchristopher 7y ago
I am working in a different industry (which calls itself an industry but is a joke and a god sent heaven for marketing consulting gig) but with the same kind of political minefield. Public servants get demotivated and set to mediocrity. Hired cattle gets demotivated and try to get out. Only managers and middle managers are driven by the ego boost coming from "changing things".

chasingthewind 7y ago

I was talking with my daughter about this yesterday and it really occurred to me that it's probably important to look at NASA through a realist lens. Here's their Vision and Mission statement: [0] Vision: We reach for new heights and reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind Mission: Drive advances in science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality and stewardship of Earth Given the history of using the space program as a tool of political/nationalist/defense goals it's probably more realistic to simply act as if the stated purpose of the agency is really a kind of "marketing" that is significantly independent of the "lived experience" so to speak. At minimum I would expect that a mental model of NASA that ignored the vision and mission statements would result in much better predictions about what NASA was likely to do. I should add that I consider all of this deeply unfortunate and I'm not defending it in the least. [0] https://www.nasa.gov/careers/our-mission-and-values https://www.nasa.gov/careers/our-mission-and-values

mcguire 7y ago
Don't forget the employment project for aerospace engineers.

clarkmoody 7y ago

As a governmental entity, NASA will never be removed from politics. A million different things could completely derail any sort of 5-10 year plan, not to mention that as soon as NASA got a "guaranteed" fund-for-5-years-and-leave-us-alone budget, every other federal agency will clamor for that too. Long-term planning requires alignment of incentives. In government, the incentives of top officials are short-term in the extreme: get re-elected at all costs; grow next year's budget at all costs (e.g. waste all the ammo at the end of the year). Of course, more authoritarian states often tout their 5 Year Plans, but you're making quite a few tradeoffs of civil and economic liberties to get there. Until there is market-driven demand for humans to be on or around the Moon, politics will dominate the story.

nerdkid93 7y ago
> Until there is market-driven demand for humans to be on or around the Moon, politics will dominate the story I don't know if I've ever thought this before, but wow. That's a great argument
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Weirdly, you'd think that politicians would want to look smart by successfully administrating public projects.
0xffff2 7y ago
Of course people (including many at NASA) have been speculating about how to generate market-driven demand for a very long time (at least for as long as NASA has existed in the case of reports coming from there). The more I learn about the (lack of) history in commercialization of space, the more I doubt I will actually see significant exo-terrestrial colonies within my lifetime.

hackeraccount 7y ago

Oddly I agree with your description but not the solution. NASA doesn't need longer term goals - it needs shorter term goals. I'd say don't fund anything that takes longer then a single presidential term. That would limit what's possible but increase the likelihood that something will get finished. If the president says my goal is to land humans on Venus (with asbestos booties naturally) in 20 years then odd are in 4 years the new non-crazy president will scrap that goal and change it to land on Jupiter in 20 years. And then it will be to put a flag on the Sun. And so on. With 4 year goals the goals may be idotic but they will probably be finished because it'll be a single lunatic from start to end. It's also possible that from one crazy administration to the next there could a chance to build on what was accomplished so at the very least something will be accomplished.

dear 7y ago
Or set up a large enough endowment fund that can only be used for that particular mission.
0xffff2 7y ago
This would be nice if it was possible, but 4 years is simply too short of a timeline to do things like the moon-return project. We might as well shut down the manned space program at that point.

yellowapple 7y ago

> Shouldn’t we listen to the experts here? When have politicians ever actually listened to experts?

mcguire 7y ago
The brilliant thing about experts is that you can pretty easily find one to say anything you want said.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  The market is thriving right now for thinktanks that specialise in delivering policy based evidence. Of course I could have shortened this by just writing, 'The market is thriving right now for thinktanks'.