09-December-2008, 10:39 AM
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Order of Kilopi
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 4,787
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The Space Review: Problems are endemic throughout the industry, not just at NASA. Mastering space-flight is difficult, and we have few gifted engineers.
Alan Stern and the nature of the space industry
Quote:
NASA earned the slap that its former associate administrator for science, Alan Stern, gave it last week in Space News. He explained that delay of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission until 2011 is an example of “a pervasive problem within NASA to ‘reward’ missions that go over-budget and punish those that don’t.”...
Yet it may be that, by focusing just on NASA, the critics are missing the sad fact that delays and cost overruns are endemic to the whole space industry and to the aerospace industry in general. There have been few major programs in recent decades that have not suffered from these afflictions....
Neither Boeing nor Airbus has been able to build and deliver their new, more efficient and economical airliners on time or within budget. Neither firm suffered from political interference or lacked for capital, yet the A380 and the Boeing 787 were subject to the same problems that are hurting the MSL and other NASA programs....
However, the fundamental reason for the problems that we see just about everywhere in the industry is human, specifically a lack of brilliant engineers. While everyone who has looked at the problem acknowledges a shortage of engineers in general, what really hurts is a shortfall at the very highest level. How many Kelly Johnsons are there in today’s workforce?
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