Nasa's bloated with irrelevancies

An op-ed in the New York Times by Alan Stern points to an interesting trend in NASA. In fact, one can point out that this trend has prevailed in other government agencies, which was perfected by the Pentagon.

Stern notes that NASA's budget has bloated out of control with its spectrum of space projects. The Space Shuttle program would be the cover girl for such issues, the International Space Station, another alternative, despite it being a joint space program with the European Space Agency (ESA), Canada, Russia and Japan.

Various theories were proposed for this phenomenon - the most critical being NASA's work culture, ethics if you will. Managers were constantly deflating the cost of projects, supporting the scientists and engineers who inflates the project's capabilities beyond its functional requirement. They do so with the knowledge that their Congressmen would not tolerate any cuts in NASA's budget, fearing any job losses in their constituencies which in turn, would translate into vote loss during an election year.

This similar tactic in which a government agency deflates the original cost of a contract is not new. The Pentagon was the first to perfect this, having created the military industrial complex which President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his last address to the nation prior to leaving the office.

The fact that NASA's resorting to such bullying tactic shows the lack of creativity in its workforce to manage its future, which at this point looks bleak in the face of stiff competition from ESA, Japan, the rising giants of Asia, India and China, and a resurgent Russia.