[So Cal Rocket]

I'm sure that the power crisis in CA had some play in moving the program from CA to TX... since the decision was made in order to save costs, it certainly had to come into the equation.

While moving a program that supports JSC to JSC sounds like a good decision - it only makes sense if you look at engineers as a "commodity" and that one engineer is equally capable as another. I personally don't think this is the case, since there is so much "tribal knowledge" that a person gets by working on a program for 20 years that can't be picked up by an engineer right out of school. The fact that over 3/4 of the staff had to be replaced as a direct result of the move suggests the experience level of the analysts who were making these "life or death" decisions.

[battlecry]

You are so right, Rocket. Federal procurements look at engineers as a commodity, not as talent. Bid by the rate and by the hour. I've seen so much talent lost over the years, I'm surprised anything gets done anymore. The warning signs were there in all the probes we bounced off Mars.

I wouldn't blame just O'Keefe or NASA, since the federal acqusition regulations put a straightjacket on them all hurt all services equally bad. I still have to wonder how Boeing got the space station contract on a noncompetitive basis. Wasn't it just taken away from N-G and awarded to Boeing just like that?

[dark_lord]

it only makes sense if you look at engineers as a "commodity" and that one engineer is equally capable as another.

But of course it is true that engineers are just commodities. Same for any other technical profession. One person is just the same as another. Every manager knows this to be true. Why, we have been practicing this belief in the IT world for at least 20 years and our project success rate now runs about 30%! Now if we can only get other professions like medicine to treat doctors like commodities, why we can sharply reduce medical costs and approach a 30% success rate for surgeries as well!