For The Record
To those who seek to destroy NASA: You will not succeed.
Keith’s note: To those who seek to destroy NASA: You will not succeed.
8 responses to “For The Record”
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No. They will not.
No one wants to destroy NASA. Reducing the bloat and inefficiencies are a good thing. Everyone wants to act like tightening things up and focusing on more impactful missions is a bad thing.
The agency has lost more deadweight than talent. Yes, some very smart people have decided to retire, which hurts. However, the agency has also lost a lot of people that were more of a drain on resources than a benefit. If leadership actually held anyone accountable then this wouldn’t have been needed. But unfortunately nearly every NASA program is behind schedule and over budget… and that’s not from a lack of initial resources.
Actually they do Kyle. It’s specified in Project 2025.
What you’ve done is substituted actual reality for a reality that makes a little more sense, then offered a defense of what’s going on based on that alternate reality. Now here’s the part where I offer facts, and then you’ll twist and turn and I have no expectation of cutting through whatever fog shrouds your brain, but for posterity’s sake let me point out a few things.
You state: “But unfortunately nearly every NASA program is behind schedule and over budget.” Even GAO, in their annual (and rightful) thrashing of NASA’s major projects, notes that more than half of them actually successfully kept under the cost growth thresholds (30 out of 53 “major projects” since 2009). Of those 30 projects, 17 had no cost growth at all (including Lucy and O-Rex, hold that thought), while the remainder were under 15% growth (the threshold for notification).
These are major projects, including Artemis related projects (which are admittedly, again, programmatically a mess) and JWST. In fact, of the cumulative 15 billion dollars in cost growth in those 53 missions since 2009, about 11.3 billion comes from just SLS Block 1, Orion, EGS, and JWST.
So even looking at the “major projects,” the missions most prone to overruns, while the expensive cat 1 flagship manned and science missions (well manned missions and JWST – MSL and the like are in there too but JWST dominates it all) are pretty bad most missions actually have kept their cost managed successfully. Again, most of the class of missions most prone to overruns. In terms of magnitude NASA absolutely has a cost growth problem, you’re right, but to express that problem as “nearly every NASA program is behind schedule and over budget” is contrary to fact.
So what would be the intelligent thing to do then? I mentioned O-Rex and Lucy earlier, two success stories. A lot of their program office staff is now working on Davinci, a mission to Venus, now slated to be cancelled (alongside many other experienced offices of many other science missions) in the president’s budget. Is that what it means to lose deadweight? Cancel the programs of keen scientific interest managed by teams with a long history of success, while shoveling more money into the incinerator that is human spaceflight?
That doesn’t really fit into your reality, does it? Hm, so let’s look at the things that do. Perhaps, and this is the good-faith possibility, the non-discretionary spending is being haphazardly slashed to pay impotent lip service to the idea of balancing the budget, while ultimately having minuscule impact on the increasing deficit due to vast differences in scale.
Or perhaps the administration is simply actively vindictive. Hostile to federal workers (as the current OMB head Russell Vought has openly stated, he wants to demonize career civil servants and make them hate their jobs. The head of OMB, who had a large hand in this budget, said this, I wish to remind you) and vindictive towards blue states.
Well whatever, I’ve typed enough, and like I said it’s probably futile. I envy your ability to convince yourself whatever is happening is actually fine and normal. A simpler, happier life, indeed.
“Kyle” you are constantly 1mm away from trolling. If you have facts post them – otherwise your arm waving will soon come to an end. No second warning. My site – my rules.
The budget as proposed is punitive. As if someone is trying to make a point. I would find out why.
It all starts here–See page 85 of this document, published in 2022:
https://americarenewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Budget-Center-for-Renewing-America-FY23.pdf
“The Budget also proposes a 50 percent reduction in NASA Science programs and spending, reducing their misguided Carbon Reduction System spending and Global Climate Change programs. The Budget allocates $3.6 billion for NASA Science. Saves $3.6 billion compared to FY21.”. From the above reference. Sound familiar?