SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the My-button-is-bigger-than-your-button dept.
International Business Times reports:
...one of the biggest challenges Nasa has faced in recent years is not in terms of technological development, but rather dealing with the orders of politicians and flat budgets. This major shift in focus of the human spaceflight programme is happening for the third time in as many government changes.
"We're always asked to change directions every time we get a new president, and that just causes you to do negative work, work that doesn't matter," Scott Kelly, the astronaut who spent nearly a year in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS), told the Post. "I just hope someday we'll have a president that will say, 'You know what, we'll just leave Nasa on the course they are on, and see what Nasa can achieve if we untie their hands,'" he added.
The space agency's change in direction has upset many in the space community, said Scott Hubbard, former director of the Nasa Ames Research Center. "Please don't push the reset button again, because you're just going to waste billions of dollars of previous investment," he said he heard people say.
Maybe NASA should plan an array of projects with less than 4 year "point of no return" dates? Then, when directed to change course, change to the closest plan matching the new course and actually get it done. If politicians want longer projects, they need to start guaranteeing the funding to complete them, and accepting realistic estimates about actual time and cost to deliver instead of demanding short schedule bargain budget promises before signing off.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday January 11 2018, @04:37PM (3 children)
OK, so let me get this straight: NASA's leaders go to the politicians and say "This is the cool stuff we've been working on. We'd like to continue doing that, please, because we'll be able to show some really great results in a few years." Politician says "Well, that's nice, but what I'd really want you to do is this other thing, so that I can go down in history as the guy who announced the grand mission you guys do in a decade." And you proceed to blame NASA for that, even though they weren't the one who made that stupid decision.
What's really to blame, of course, is short-termism: If it takes longer than 2 years to do something, congressmen don't want to hear about it, because they can't go back to their constituents and say "Look what I did!". If it takes longer than 4 years, presidents don't like it, for the same reason. And if it takes longer than 6 years, senators don't like it. This leads to a conflict between "We've been to the Moon before, so going there isn't as big a deal." and "It will take too long to get to Mars for me to be able to show ROI, so we shouldn't bother." And thus they leave the manned NASA programs floundering.
One thing that might help is acknowledging the efforts of the Johnson and Nixon administrations to make sure the Apollo program continued, rather than focusing on JFK's declaration of the goal in the first place.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 11 2018, @06:06PM
"Good morning, Mr New President! Under the current schedule, we will launch to $space_body in 3.5 years, based on your providing us with a 10% annual budget raise. We were trying to find a good codename for the first launch of that mission, something that would sound good for your intro at the next Party Convention. Any suggestions ? "
NASA has the perfect example of ego-driven politician to retrain themselves in proper selling techniques...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 11 2018, @07:56PM
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday January 12 2018, @01:04AM
Wasn't it mostly due to Kennedy getting shot that Apollo happened? Even then, by Apollo 12 the public was bored and Nixon basically killed it.