New York Times: Alan Stern opinion: NASA’s Black Hole Budgets (print version)

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I disagree completely. In a year where Tom, Dick and Harry Inc. are getting billion dollar bailouts as a reward for being stupid, this just makes me

Yep, the fact you're spending money like water and in danger of going broke is a good reason to ignore wasteful expenditure.

Same matter: BA Blog: A Stern warning:

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Lol But you know what I mean, I hope.

Interesting though. I had a read of 01101001's link there. Both you guys (I'm assuming you too 01101001!), Phil, and all readers' comments, seem to be supportive of the article. Encouraging I suppose. And here I am, Mr Private Sector if there ever was one, dissing 'Tom, Dick and Harry Inc'!

I'm in a parallel universe. ()

Not that this subforum is really the place for it, but I'm pretty sure the economies of nation-states aren't really analagous to personal finances...

Stert seems to have it in for MSL, to the point that he strecvthes the facts to try and damn the project. His claim that MSL has tripled in cost is based on the flimsest of evidence. It certainly is over budget, but this is hardly surprisingly given the level of ambition showed by this mission:

The largest Mars lander to date
The largest Mars rover to date
The first RTG powered rover anywhere
The most complex and sophisticated science payload ever landed on another planet
The first flight of nearly all the sampling devices and instruments
The first flight of the Skycrane system

I wonder if Stern has an anti Mars agenda here, given his professional focus on the outer solar system and his attempts while in office to cut extensions to the MERs and Mars Odyssey?

I suppose I land in the middle-ground on this issue. but it bothers me sometimes when people complain about NASA's spending when their budget is so tiny to begin with. I know its a lot more complicated than this but if I had a budget to build, say, a rocket for 10,000 dollars and every rocket every made cost 50,000 to make... would it really be that odd if I went over the 10k mark?

I'm not saying NASA is saintly with their money. I'm sure there are unreasonable cost overruns all across the board. Is it really worse than any other government (or even private) agency in those regards?

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Not that this subforum is really the place for it, but I'm pretty sure the economies of nation-states aren't really analagous to personal finances...

I'm beginning to think that this mindset is the root of so many of our problems.

As for NASA, they've never been cost conscious. In the Apollo years when their budget (adjusted for inflation) was roughly twice what it is today, their operating motto was "waste anything but time." After that, the idea that you can't just spend money hand over fist is hard to come by.

It isn't just NASA that's having trouble with space development overruns. The Department of Defense has had this problem for many years. Programs like SBIRS, TSAT, and AEHF* have had a lot of budget issues.

*In fairness, some of AEHF's overrun came when Congress mandated they buy another satellite after production had finished on the earlier vehicles.

There you go... 800 billion in bailout... screw it, let them collapse... we will have a few bad years... imagine what 800 billion could do for space exploration!

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Funny you should mention $800 billion.

I'm assuming most of you don't follow the 'Black Monday' thread, so I'll recap:

NASA, total allocation, since inception: ~$800 billion
NASA, current, annual allocation: ~$20 billion
.
.
.
Private and quasi-government companies, this year: $8,000 billion.

Yep. That's 10 times more money than everything spent on NASA in 50 years, and 400 times NASA's budget this year.

If you're going to look at past budget years, you need to account for inflation. For example, NASA's peak budgets during the 1960s when adjusted for inflation are roughly twice the current budget.

Those are inflation-adjusted figures Larry. Peak real annual expenditure on NASA occurred in the early 60's at ~$30 bn. Lowest was in the late 70's at ~10bn.

...and its not like we're stuffing a cylinder with $100 bills and throwing it into space.
That money gets spent HIRING people and BUILDING hardware.
Thats without even mentioning the new technologies it develops....

I'd call that a plus to the economy.

God, $8000 billion for commercial interests? We could have a friggin' Star Destroyer fleet.

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We could have a friggin' Death Star... just use Iapetus as a hull

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http://www.pleasegodhelpme.org

That's no moon! That's a...oh wait...

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You can't really tell the difference between drunken rambling and sober blogging.

...space station...

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Related: BA Blog: Followup on MSL: Griffin’s spin

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While this is a problem, let's put this all in perspective:

http://www.voltagecreative.com/blog/...ailout-pie.png

Actually, I've got perspective overload from the last quarter's dynamic fiscal events. One pie wedge looks the same as another now.

If lack of candor is a problem it's a problem. NASA can't sidestep it just because other parts of government have bigger problems, and larger wedges. NASA management culture really appears to need some overhauling.

I think it's cool that we can help our space agency by changing their traditions instead of just giving them a boatload of freshly printed dollars.

I agree with the Bad Astronomer:

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This post by Phil angers me. While it is true that the public may perceive the discrepancy in numbers as a horrible mismanagement issue, the truth is that one can not compare an initial estimate to the actual budget of a project, without taking into account changes to a project before it's actually approved, after everyone has had their say about it. And later changes to the project for which budget increase was approved. By doing so anyway Phil isn't helping either. It's bad enough that efficiency needs to be improved at NASA and contractors, but comparing apples and oranges just to get that message across doesn't help.

You can NOT say that a project is over budget by comparing it to an initial estimate. All you might say is that the estimate must have been wrong, which of course is also a claim that must be supported. Phil might be an excellent astronomer, and do very well at conveying science issues to the public, but I get the impression that he does not have a whole lot of experience with projects and budgets.

All this with the caveat that I don't know the details of the MSL or JWST projects, funding, budgetting and estimates. Perhaps I'm completely off base but if so I would welcome some information to help me understand my wrongness. And the caveat of my own grouchyness because of having to deal with lots of issues with budgetting for one of my own projects :/

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It is easy to budget a project that is something you have done before. It is much harder to do so for something new. Since nobody has built a James Webb telescope or a MSL before it is very difficult to budget properly. The only way you can do it is to do a best estimate and then add a substantial margin for uncertainty - 40%, 50%, whatever.

But acountants, especially government accountants, don't like large margins. They don't like large amounts of cash being tied in reserve. It is easier to get aditional funding as needed than get a realistic margin.

In such a system all budgets for advanced projects will tend to over. If it is anybody's fault, it is the fault of the accounting system. It is always easier to blame people and orgsnisations that an accounting system.

The only other option is to stop doing advanced projects. Each space mission will be just an incremental advance on the previous one. Over time, however, the improvement will be marked -compare Mariner IV and the Viking orbiters. But NASA has not done that sort of series missions since the 70s.

It would also be interesting to see how much earmarks inflate costs too.

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

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