I stand corrected on the Nasa/Apollo history. Thank you and I do appreciate the detail.
Your argument about the Apollo follow-on seems to prove my point. Nasa invented ways to keep spending money on projects that should have been moth-balled over a couple years, not decades.
I know how government contracts work. That is why I want Nasa eliminated because imo, they are the worse of the worse when it comes contract management. Whatever military projects Nasa has that are reviewed to be feasible should be rolled into the Defense Department. The remaining projects should be scrapped, or passed to other Departments to bid out and control.
How about we return to the real issue at hand. Can you tell me what the heck we got over the past dozen years/$150 billion we've poured into Nasa? None of the defenders have thus far.
The R&D project bidding for all departments stink because I always felt like they should do the initial R&D bids as 2 or 3 seperate victor award, not just the best bid. Yea it would be more cost up front, but I believe that any products which come out of the R&D projects would have a cheaper cost to produce/maintain because you have 2 or 3 legitimate entities who have the technical expertise to continue working on it. Plus with each R&D winner knowing there are 1 or 2 others competing for all follow-ons, I surmise that this would lead to better/faster technological break-throughs and lower production bids/cost. Because they can rebid the real production contracts to a sole provider knowing that multiple entities may each have the technical capability to perform. If that contractor fails, rebid it or move it.
When they (Nasa, pentagon (DD), etc.) sole source the initial R&D, it's hard for the follow-ons to go elsewhere (ignoring politics and congressional graft for the moment here) without there first being huge overruns on the initial production deliveries.
With regard to nano-technology projects which Nasa may or may not be doing, why have those in the space agency at all? I'd prefer more direct congressional insight and control so these projects are clearly defined and scoped over a limited time period. This is so we do not continue to create giant new bureaucracies which soon become outrageously expense and provide little or negative value.
For example, I opposed the formation of a new federalized TSA after 911 because I believe there is just no way that having the feds hire and oversee another bunch of high-school dropouts is going to do anything to increase flight safety. And ultimately it will be another giant worthless waste of money.
I agree.
OK, no problemo.
Your argument about the Apollo follow-on seems to prove my point. Nasa invented ways to keep spending money on projects that should have been moth-balled over a couple years, not decades.
There has been ongoing debate about the effectiveness and usefulness of many of the post-Apollo efforts. For the record, I have not been terribly pleased with many of them. The ISS for example, seems to be evolving into a pretty bad money pit. I just don't see a coherent plan for fitting it into any long-term objectives. Apollo would have better been followed up by manned presence of the lunar surface, for both military and economic exploitation. The shuttle? Others have noted the military-driven aspects of that. Less-expensive access to orbit probably is a good thing in the long run, but, in hindsight (of course), the Shuttle didn't meet that expectation.
I know how government contracts work. That is why I want Nasa eliminated because imo, they are the worse of the worse when it comes contract management. Whatever military projects Nasa has that are reviewed to be feasible should be rolled into the Defense Department. The remaining projects should be scrapped, or passed to other Departments to bid out and control.
In creating NASA, the government followed a more or less standard business organization model. Just like a corporation forms smaller units, like divisions or groups within the overall corporate structure, to address specific business areas and needs, so does the government organize along the task-oriented lines that businesses often follow. It allows for tighter control, accountability, and the focusing of resources and expertise. It was the judgment of Congress that a separate, independent agency should head government efforts to develop space technology, so that it would not become the exclusive domain of the military, for example. The idea was to enhance dissemination of knowledge and foster cooperative relationships between different government agencies, and in industry-government partnerships.
How about we return to the real issue at hand. Can you tell me what the heck we got over the past dozen years/$150 billion we've poured into Nasa? None of the defenders have thus far.
Others have touched on some of these. Communications satellites, weather observations, Earth resources mapping, intelligence gathering, basic sciences, materials development, instrumentation, electronics, computers, geopositioning applications, military functions, all of this have had some impact from the development of space technology. But my guess from the tone of this and your previous posts is that these things won't satisfy you. So all I can say is that the Congress, as the elected representatives of the people, made a decision that it would be in our national interest to pursue development of this technology. True, it was born of a geopolitical imperative, the notion that we had to "beat the Russians". That is still a dynamic in play today, substituting "Chinese" in place of "Russians". Heck, I don't know if it was the right decision in a geopolitical sense or not. But the fact is, our government made the commitment, and created NASA to implement the national policy that they decided upon.
The R&D project bidding for all departments stink because I always felt like they should do the initial R&D bids as 2 or 3 seperate victor award, not just the best bid. Yea it would be more cost up front, but I believe that any products which come out of the R&D projects would have a cheaper cost to produce/maintain because you have 2 or 3 legitimate entities who have the technical expertise to continue working on it. Plus with each R&D winner knowing there are 1 or 2 others competing for all follow-ons, I surmise that this would lead to better/faster technological break-throughs and lower production bids/cost. Because they can rebid the real production contracts to a sole provider knowing that multiple entities may each have the technical capability to perform. If that contractor fails, rebid it or move it.
I see what you're getting at but, I don't know, it might pose some problems in management and control. Having several contractors working independently on the same systems or products may have you ending up with a bunch of redundant, incompatible things. If you remember Apollo 13, they had to work pretty hard to get the square CO2 scrubber cannister apertures in the LM to accept the cylindrical CO2 cannisters from the CM. Same basic system, did the same thing, but two separate contractors (Grumman and North American) produced incompatible systems. They got them to work, but kind of on a jury-rigged basis.
With regard to nano-technology projects which Nasa may or may not be doing, why have those in the space agency at all? I'd prefer more direct congressional insight and control so these projects are clearly defined and scoped over a limited time period. This is so we do not continue to create giant new bureaucracies which soon become outrageously expense and provide little or negative value.
I don't think you're going to have Congress micromanaging (so to speak) individual projects. Congress passes the laws and the bureaucracy responds by creating whatever mechanisms are needed to implement those laws. That means either a federal department, agency, or group, funded by appropriation, and directed to carry out the mission specified by Congress. You're always going to need a conduit between the lawmakers and the funding, to get the job done, either with government employees, contractors, or a combination of those. Those agencies or departments or groups then go about implementing the will of Congress. Often they will put an RFP out on the street for bid, and they will establish selection criteria for awarding the contract. They may choose to do some of the work in-house. That is certainly true of NASA. The Saturn V used in Apollo was a Von Braun design, NASA employees are Marshall did the design and development work. But a huge army of contractors did the nuts-and-bolts hardware fabrication. Rocketdyne built the F-1 engines, for example. IBM and Applied Dynamics had major responsibilities for the instrument unit and analog computers. Sperry Rand had a hand in the guidance gyros. This is an accepted business model, and is the paradigm followed in almost any large, complex project, be it in government or private industry.