Lori Garver said last week that it’s time for the agency to shed it.
To be fair, it’s not all their fault. There are too few opportunities for graft on the Hill if it were take take a more competitive approach. Too hard to predict which zip codes the money will go to.
The results from NASA in recent years, irregardless of where the prime fault lies, serve to highlight the fact that socialism works just as well for space as it does on Earth.
It does not work.
I see from the comments on the article that people are absolutely fixated on the word “socialist”. And it’s totally irrelevant to the point being made; “graft” would do just as well.
But the roads are socialism argument never gets old.
With its absurdly decentralized structure, NASA is ready made for more devolution and internal markets. Never happen, of course.
Actually, NASA hasn’t been very smart about getting congressional support for their projects at all. They have divided their mission directorate fiefdoms stupidly between states. Human spaceflight, aeronautics, SMD all are in different states.
If they had a clue, they would do what DoD contractors do, and spread all big ticket programs across as many districts as possible. Opportunities for graft would increase and support would go up, too.
Imagine if MSFC, JPL and KSC all had equal stakes in JWST, Mars 2020 rover and Orion/SLS 🙂
While the NASA centers are in several states, the contractors and subcontractors are spread across the country just as you suggest. This goes all the way back to Apollo where some 300,000 Americans – only about 1/10th of them NASA employees – worked on the program. Apollo proved that our big, centrally-managed, Soviet-style space program was better than the Soviet’s big, centrally-managed, Soviet-style space program.
Isn’t NASA on a dual track system though? Sure, SLS is government controlled. The product can’t be sold. But commercial crew, cargo, and propulsion allow the companies to retain control of their products and sell them to other customers, if they exist.
“But it’s really stark. You can either control where the jobs are and make sure they’re in your district, which many politicians with control of the purse strings of NASA do, or you can let go of control. There’s going to be the same amount of jobs, but there’s going to be a lot more dynamic innovation. ”
Hopefully more jobs but you think the launching states would be a little more open to more commercial activity. Does the resistance come from other states like Alabama? Are they worried their states can’t attract these companies or are the congress critters counting on kickbacks of some kind? Maybe they just need to shift the focus of their graft from launchers to payloads.
What’s the matter here? We have DMV’s spread across all 50 states! Assuming NASA is managed and operated on the same basis as our DMV’s, with contracts in all 50 states why shouldn’t we all be happy?
The model has done so well for public education!
Can’t wait till we get to that same state with our health care system.
/sarc-off