Comments on: A Stern warning

By: NASA

NASA — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:59:57 +0000

[...] matter: BA Blog: A Stern warning: [...]

By: NASA chiefs to talk MSL | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

NASA chiefs to talk MSL | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:00:43 +0000

[...] the planet. It’s hugely ambitious, but has suffered a series of massive budget overruns (see my previous MSL post for details). The blooming budget problem has impacted other Mars missions, and is causing a lot of [...]

By: Veritas36

Veritas36 — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:51:26 +0000

I was at NASA for a long time. First it is very hard to estimate the cost of something that has never been done before! Jim Webb correctly estimated the cost of the Apollo program by doubling! von Braun’s estimate.
Also, software productivity depends very much on the caliber of the person and the industry has no standards for them. (Plus NASA seemed often to lack knowledge of talent or not.)
The most aggravating source of unnecessary expense was when Headquarters chose a solution and rammed it down the throat of the technical people in charge. It doubled the cost of that project.
Politics gets in: very often NASA is directed to use embryonic technologies. (We do wish to and it is in the business interest and in the general interest.) But this is higher risk.
Stopping costs overruns in all circumstances is a blunderbuss approach. Handle on a case-by-case basis; how bad is the overrun, and why did it happen?

By: justcorbly

justcorbly — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 23:10:52 +0000

James:

1. SpaceShipOne barely merits description as a spaceship. Flying an airplane to 2000-3000 mph and then pointing the nose up and coasting is old tech.

2. The shuttle that NASA wanted was rather different than the one NASA was directed to fly, and that had little, if anything, to do with the Pentagon’s need to launch reconnaissance satellites. NASA wanted a fully recoverable two-stage vehicle, about the size of a 747. Neither Congress nor the Nixon Administration could stomach the cost. Basically, NASA was given a dollar figure and told to come up with a shuttle to match. The design did include accommodations to the Pentagon’s needs, but Dod is not responsible for the Shutle’s compromised design.

Human spaceflight will really begin when we realize that real spaceflight begins and ends at LEO. Getting to and from LEO is an unfortunate necessity.

By: James

James — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:13:01 +0000

DGKnipfer: SpaceshipOne IS america’s greatest space achivement!

Many of the people on this board were not born when man last walked on the moon, and the space shuttle is a lumbering white elephant because of the capacity to launch spy satilites that the military demanded, then refused to use.

By: Sili

Sili — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:05:59 +0000

Ah, but oversight and regulation would mean Big Government and we can’t have that, can we now?

Don’t get me started. We’re reaching the end of the fiscal year at the school and just as they had to do at uni when I was there, everyone is scrambling to use up their budgets. Any surplus and you 1) have to pay it back, 2) will get that amount less next year.

It’s ludicrous! How can anyone think this is a good way of managing reasearch and education?!

By: ndt

ndt — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:40:05 +0000

DGKnipfer, nothing you said contradicts the idea that much of military spending is wasteful. The US Defense Department has a long history of tolerating cost overruns from contractors, and then going back and using those very same contractors again, with no increase in accountability. Yes, we still get good technology out of it, but at a far greater cost than is necessary. And we also get turkeys like the original Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Osprey, partly because of the sunk-cost fallacy but also because of good old-fashioned corruption.