NASA risk aversion seems directly related to their patrons' priorities. What's the cost of NASA not going to the moon yet? Zero. What's the cost of NASA failin

NASA risk aversion seems directly related to their patrons' priorities. What's the cost of NASA not going to the moon yet? Zero. What's the cost of NASA failing at going to the moon? Large. Consequently: the organization optimizes to avoid failure at all costs, even at the cost of minimizing success. On the other hand, what was the cost of 1960s NASA of not going to the moon? Large. The cost of failure? Large, but slightly less. Result: we went to the moon.