NY Times Op-Ed: NASA Budget Out Of Control

Today’s New York Times has an op-ed called NASA’s Black Hole Budgets.

S. Allen Stern, a former associate administrator of the agency, outlines his complaints about NASA’s spending. Mr. Stern, who is an astrophysicist, seems to hate politics. I understand his concerns, but politics is a reality which must be dealt with.

Here’s the key points:

• NASA’s missions have high cost-overruns
• Badly managed missions which cost too much aren’t cancelled due to politics (jobs in areas with high-powered gov’t officials.)
• Congress should cut budget to force NASA to make decisions and live within its means

NASA management isn’t all it could be, and it certainly doesn’t match the brilliance of NASA of the 1960s. But, I think Mr. Stern is off-base in a number of areas.

No Bucks, No Buck Rogers

First, I think the cost-overruns are not primarily due to bad management, but intentionally dishonest cost estimates. The federal government might balk at an excellent mission if they knew the true cost—and after the money’s spent, they’re reluctant to cancel a mission already begun.

Frankly, I see that as a clever approach by Griffin—who is far from perfect—which exhibits a small modicum of the political skills of Jim Webb. It’s axiomatic that to keep the money flowing, the head of NASA must be a political wizard and spread the wealth. I dislike dishonesty, but I understand it in this context.

That said, I’m sure that the financial management isn’t what it should be. I’d love for it to be improved. But space exploration is expensive and I think any idea that costs could be significantly reduced without gutting the program is simply false. We tried “faster, better, cheaper” under an earlier aministrator. Our Mars probes crashed into the planet at 300 miles per hour.

Needed: More Guts and Imagination

NASA biggest management problem isn’t reducing costs. The problem is that the culture is a closed one, where ideas don’t flow as freely as they should, and dissent is suppressed. NASA needs to tap not only the administrative skills of its people, but their ideas and imagination as well. And NASA should be gutsier, not so risk averse. The astronauts who ride the rockets are willing to take risks. The public, the government and NASA should be willing to accept the inherent risks as well.