Eric Chomko wrote:

Ool ) wrote:
: "Eric Chomko" wrote in message ...
: Hansel ) wrote:


snip
: Come on, twenty-five years of using the same old jalopies until the
: oldest of them all eventually breaks apart means there must be *some*
: roadblock to progress somewhere...!

Agreed, NASA needs more money to run efficiently.



I'll have to disagree on that point. The last thing that NASA
needs is more money. It has not used what it has efficiently.
More money just means more money.

NASA has *never* operated a large program within it's budget
and it has never even met it's own internal estimates on cost.
It does a lot better with smaller, focussed, programs, but it
still tends to use more money to add more complexity. Case in
point.. OSP was a straight forward program with a specific technical
goal. Yet, three separate NASA centers had separate offices specifically
for that program - and as far as I can tell, none were subservient to
any of the others. Hardly efficient.

To get a feel for an organization, you have to look at how it has
operated in the past. What sections are the most efficient? What
happened to areas when they recieved a budget increase? What happened
when budgets decreased? NASA does not fare well in that sort of
analysis. NASA deliberately lied to congress about the costs of
developing Shuttle rather than build a Shuttle that they could
afford to build. NASA completely botched NASP and Space Station
Freedom on technical issues.