Pretty much sums up my issues with NASA. Don’t get me wrong, I love outer space, I love what NASA does, or is supposed to do. But every time I hear that they’ve gone way over budget, or that they’ve spent twice as long on a project as they intended, or that they’ve abandoned some building or site or project, etc. I have to wonder if it’s due to politics. A lot of “You scratch my back, I give you a fat gov’t contract” backroom deals.

NASA has, or had, some really really smart engineers and a really admirable goal. But between all the red tape, all the bureaucracy (another thing I think is strangling NASA), and all of the politics, it’s like they’re running in mud. Sure they’re making progress, but they’re spending twice as much energy to make the same distance and it’s slow going.

I’m afraid of the commercialization of space, I fear by taking it out of “The People’s” hands, I mean in the end NASA is a gov’t organization and the gov’t is run by it’s people, in theory, so having a commercial for-profit company working on space travel kind of sucks. BUT, when they run, they actually make progress. I envision a lot more “accidents” and “trial and error” on their part, but I also envision them innovating twice as fast as NASA.

Filed under: Personal - @ 2023-01-18 9:37 pm

Tags: beurocracy, nasa, politics, space