Senate Hearing On NASA's Budget
Hearing to conduct oversight of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s budget and activities
2:00 p.m. EDT, Room 325, Russell Senate Office Building
Witness: James Bridenstine
Watch live
I’m watching this hearing live.
Our Administrator has the enthusiasm of a 10 year old melded to the abilities of an experienced manager. He’s a superior public servant, to be sure, with no private agenda, no apparent interest in self-enrichment. .
I am pointing this out because so often I read acidly-laden posts demeaning our citizen employees; they are characterized as lazy, or disinterested; second-rate, frequently, in ability and performance.
These posts reflect a sensibility by some, chiefly on the right, that government has little to offer the private sector, and indeed is more like a troublesome gadfly than a useful instrument of public will.
This attitude just piss me off.
I’ll not claim that every government employee has the Administrator’s abilities; but I will say that each is far closer to his model than not.
When his name was circulated as a candidate to lead NASA, my initial sense about Mr. B. was negative because I viewed some of his views as anti-scientific, and because my view was largely informed by party prejudice. I was wrong, as we have all seen, and I hope we can retain him in some capacity through Administration changes.
Yes, he is really the right one for the job.
So the Green Run for SLS is now in November and the first flight a year later?
If no issues pops up during the various tests for the SLS.
Agreed. IMHO, since there is no backup hardware for this core, if a serious problem arises, it will set back the program many months to years.
Yes, the contrast between NASA with Spacex in this regard is amazing. SpaceX has a regular production line of test items. When one fails they just determine what happened, haul the wreckage away, fix the problem and move on to testing the next in line in a matter of 2-3 weeks. NASA would take that long just to put the investigating committee together to figure what happened.
Unfair – and for all the reasons we’ve discussed before.
Most importantly, each institution has different bosses. Imagine the press coverage had some of the ‘learning curve’ items over nat SX occurred for SLS. We’d be back to the $500 hammer for sure.
In my view, this single fact is responsible for many of the performance issues present in governmental contracts.
Throw in the now-popular anti-scientific sensibilities running wild in the country, and Mr. B. would need a clone.,
Yes, and those are the classic problems with government run science and research going back through history. Look at what Christopher Columbus put up with to get funding for his expeditions or Captain Cook for his expeditions.
It’s not the folks working there, but the conditions they have to work under that causes the under performance. Really, I feel sorry seeing all the creative engineers and scientists that are trapped by the system.
Easy to work when you don’t have to satisfy your Congressional masters. Elon only has to answer to himself.
If I remember, Boeing begged NASA to make test articles and Gerst refused insisting that the first production item be both the test article and actual product. That was a NASA decision to “save money” not a Congressional decision.
No bucks = no Buck Rogers. No amount of rhetoric, finger-wagging, exhortations, blame-casting, wishes, magical thinking or ‘work smarter’ will change it.