24-November-2008, 10:30 PM
|
 |
Order of Kilopi
|
|
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 13,461
|
|
NASA’s Black Hole Budgets
New York Times: Alan Stern opinion: NASA’s Black Hole Budgets ( print version)
Quote:
A CANCER is overtaking our space agency: the routine acquiescence to immense cost increases in projects. Unmistakable new indications of this illness surfaced last month with NASA’s decision to spend at least $100 million more on its poorly-managed, now-over-$2 billion Mars Science Laboratory. This decision to go forward with the project, a robotic rover, was made even though it has tripled in cost since its inception, it is behind schedule, there is no firm estimate of the final cost, and NASA hasn’t disclosed the collateral damage inflicted on other programs and activities that depend on NASA’s limited science budget.
[...]
America’s space program has been the envy and inspiration of the world. It has made landmark scientific discoveries that are a lasting legacy of this nation’s greatness. It has studied Earth in ways no other nation can match. And it is leading the world to develop the first outpost on the Moon and the first historic human expeditions to the planets.
To continue such accomplishments, NASA’s managers and masters must all make cost performance just as important as mission successes, scientific discoveries and good jobs. In an era of unpopular, costly government bailouts, Americans have every right to demand that NASA cease bailing out its own errant projects and make cost increases rare, rather than routine.
|
__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...
|