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Its not as simple. The political transitions are part of it. However the politics of NASA are complicated. One of the major issues is simply that NASA for huma
by nickik 6y ago
Its not as simple. The political transitions are part of it. However the politics of NASA are complicated.
One of the major issues is simply that NASA for human-space flight could in the past not build on top of commercial rockets and NASA has been terrible at developing launch vehicles.
Simply put, Marshall Space flight center, Boeing and Alabama is where the money is going. There simply is no accountability. The money just keeps flowing there year after year no matter what is achieved or not achieved. No matter if the president changes or not, no matter if you are going to Moon, Mars or an Asteroid.
Before that the Shuttle was all consuming program that limited you to LEO, partly because you have very little budget left over as long as you had Shuttle operating.
This is likely not gone change unless there are some real power shifts in congress.
- bumby 6y ago>There simply is no accountability I agree, but also think this is part of the design. Both government orgs like NASA and the contractors who support them spread their jobs/money across enough Congressional districts to reduce the risk of reduction in funding. Haven’t you ever wondered why NASA designed a naturally inefficient system by spreading the country? Programs in Marshall also stretch their tentacles into Johnson, Glenn, etc. I wonder if part of the blowback is that it makes it less palatable to prioritize big, bold projects (also factoring in how bad estimating these projects is and the fact they will have inevitable overruns). It’s not actually an inability to hold people accountable, it’s that they don’t want that accountability because it puts their districts at risk. Listening to a few talks by the NASA administrator led me to believe political risk is at the forefront of their mind