It is a longstanding NASA policy (with total complicity of certain members of congress) to sell a program based on minimal estimates, and then to get incremental approvals as the program becomes “too big” to kill. The 45% growth cited for the programs above does not begin to tell the story.
The jealousy of the space programs’ unmanned elements and arrogance of the manned elements(with the resulting back-biting and outright opposition to funding for the other element by both NASA and congressional supporters) has done more to kill the space program than even the massive erosion of management and technical skills due to focus on multi-culturism.
Absolutely disgusting.
“The US no longer knows how to build anything of substance on time or anywhere near its budget.”
Industry and government collude to turn $1 billion into $10 billion. The contracts are written so this is possible. Companies under bid and then make it up when the customer constantly changes the contract’s scope. A fighter that starts as a fighter must suddenly be a bomber, a fuel hauler, an electronic warfare center and a 10 furrow Mach 2.5 corn plow. The cost which would really have been only 2 times the bid price is now 10 times the bid price. The officers and government officials get paid off with jobs or political support. Many times, I’ve seen maps showing that sub-contracts are in virtually every Congressional district. I’ve seen companies relocate to a new Congressman’s district just to get one more vote.
Inability to produce high quality goods on time has nothing to do companies, talent or capabilities. It has to do with the political process by which the United States buys these things.
Ping.
While I don’t disagree with what you’ve said I feel that a couple points were left out:
1) Refusal to allow for any chance of error/failure - impacts every program I’ve been a part of in business over the past 10 years as well as most govt related projects
and
2) Refusal to delegate any decisions of import which imposes central planned decision making resulting in multiple repeated second guessing events and a resulting slow down in decision making and efficiency
The fundamental paradigm has shifted. It's no longer the destination, it's the journey. If you consider NASA, Metro extention, etc, not as projects that have a use, but as ongoing pipelines that take money from the taxpayers pockets and move it to the bank accounts of the politically well connected and to overpaid government bureaucrats, then everything is working EXACTLY as intended.
There are rail heads, space heads, etc. even on this supposedly conservative forum who laud government spending as long as it is on THEIR pet project whether it be high speed rail (a solution for which there is no problem) or manned space flight (fabulously expensive boondoggle) or whatever, but then with selective clarity of vision see welfare as the destructive force that it is. Kill it all and go back to what the constitution says we should spend and nothing else.
The only possible exception that I can understand is SS because millions have paid trillions into it with the expectation that they'd get back their contributions (of course the lying politicians and their corrupt bureaucrats spent the money as soon as. sooner than it hit their greedy sh!thooks, but that is another matter)
Remember that if the US(or any) Government were in charge of the Sahara Desert w/in a year there would be a shortage of sand.
If you drill down in that PJM article and read the Aviation Leak article, they are talking about parking this telescope at LaGrange Point #2 (a million miles or so from Earth) and operating it there for only five years.
We have absolutely no way to retrieve it from L2, (even if the shuttles were still flying, they cannot go beyond low earth orbit) or send a repair/service crew out that far to fix it when it breaks.
Using government funds to name a government funded project after an ex employee paid for with government funds.
Spirit and Opportunity.
The ouster of Barack Obama from the presidency in 2012 !!!
It wouldn't be the first time we came from behind to take the lead (i.e. Sputnik)... Let's find the resources and the people, people.
Wow. No Webb/Hubble jokes? What has become of FreeRepublic?
“Stealing cash from other worthy scientific projects.”
Like what, “climate change?”
Just think, if there was a way to link the Webb telescope with the Hubble telescope, they could rename the new conglomerate the Webb Hubbel telescope, or “Chelsea Clinton’s father” for short.