NASA Must Change and it Must Change Now

Dear Wayne,

Well, there will have to be a cultural change at NASA, and its usual contractors and government sponsors as well. The issue of safety is one but not all. I see this as a structural, intrinsic problem of how we perform in the HSF realm. For many years after Shuttle first flew there have been several programs for its replacement and none of them succeeded for a reason or another. Today: Ares/Orion is doomed for yet another failure. Worse: The choice for Constellation was based on vehicles we were all supposed to know in and out - the SRB, Shuttle and Apollo. Odd isn't it? All the ingredients were gathered, supposedly, for a first flight in 2012, and even possibly in 2011. Where are we today? Why did NASA fail? Some argue it is the budget, some it is the technical or management incompetence. So what is it? Why should we believe that the next program will be right this time: Yes another chance please! Well it does not work that way or at least it should not. I will argue that NASA is not the sole party responsible for this fiasco. The overseers should have detected the problems early on and I mean the WH and Congress. So today someone wants to try the private sector but that is not all that is meant. It also means COTS-type contracts, not cost-plus ones. It means to try a "new" way for doing things. Some argue that "private" space is not safe and that Ares would be. Based on what? Why is Ares I so much safer than any other rocket? Where is the data to support this argument? See, NASA is slowly but surely losing its credibility, yet it is populated with exceptional engineers and scientists. So again what is it? I am sure if someone figures why this is happening then NASA will eventually be back, stronger and meaner than ever before. In the mean time we as a people have to give a chance to an alternative if we want HSF to survive or it'll be lost soon for many decades to come. Is it possible the "privates" fail? Sure it is, but what is the cost comparison? Does it not favor "new" space over "old" space? How many times can the private sector try if it were given $9 billions over 5 years?

Good luck!

Respectfully.

The responsibility, favorable or unfavorable, for the Vision for Space Exploration and the Constellation Program, belongs to former president George W. Bush.
NASA was just trying to be 110%, and "failure-is-not-an-option" about what they were tasked with. Then that seems to have turned into a more defensive effort to keep their jobs, in a very threatening financial era.
It may look like a collective NASA fiasco, but it all stems from the leadership at the top, who set those tightly focused efforts in motion (Apollo, Shuttle, ISS).

Only one thing can save NASA from its own incompetence in assigning the wrong people to manage its biggest projects, we need independent selection commissions to approve the hiring of our project managers based on their proven experience on past projects. As long as we put the fair-haired children in charge despite their complete lack of competence, we will fail. This is the one change NASA must make, and must make NOW. Every other issue in the Agency today is moot otherwise.