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” complain endlessly about private corporations and that evil profit thing”

Really? Because you know, NASA accomplishes nothing without tons of private companies right? You are aware of this? You do realize NASA hired this private company to build this system and fill this role right???

NASA is not free from politics, but NASA’s failings are not anti-capitalism or private companies, its failings have been at least from my limited view into what the public gets to see about it is management that simply does not remotely understand technology or engineering. This is not a problem unique to NASA in the least.. I see this daily in my job. I deal with Managers at all levels who go to some management school or another, and make decisions based on “managerial criteria” and are promoted, judged etc on these same criteria, that boil down to bottom line numbers that have little to nothing to do with engineering correctness or excellence.

This conflict, is what lead directly to nearly all the issues with the Shuttle program, and it far predated the explosion of 1986 and the break up during reentry in 2003. Managing to budgets and timelines and being judge by this and this alone as the major criteria for success when dealing with this sort of thing, inevitably leads to failure, and systemic failure. Risks and short cuts are taken that never should be. Any project can hit a date or a budget, but it will not be correct if that date and budget are incorrect.

NASA should always manage to CORRECTNESS, period, and I know engineers by their very personalities want nothing less, and when things fail, its because of only 2 reasons, 1) Something occurred that was never expected, or not planned for or 2) they were ordered to ignore their concerns and do it anyway, or were unable to quantify their concerns appopriately to decision makers.

The 2 shuttle disasters in a way exemplify both of these.

The first, engineers reported issues with the rocket boosters in 76,77 and 78...but they were ignored by management. Even on launch day 1986 engineers were still warning management, but because they could not prove their case the decision to launch was made. The evidence and data was there, but they did not extrapolate it appropriately to prove failure would be almost assured if they launched that day.

The second, even engineers didn’t want to believe the numbers, math doesn’t lie, but because they had had strikes before, they just assumed all would be well. These engineers weren’t fools, they were some of the brightest minds on the planet, but human intuition can cause folks to deny cold hard facts. The strike was noticed, and end of the day dismissed. And even after failure some engineers were still not willing to believe that rediculously light foam could puncture the wing. Yet, that’s exactly what happened. The shuttle really wasn’t ever designed to deal with foam strikes, but they had happened routinely and never had a significant issue occured from them, so when this one happened, even though it was larger than any they had seen, and that it had struck the leading edge of the wing, the engineers that voiced concern were not unanimous, and management wasn not convinced to worry.

Now do not get me wrong, I have had great managers that were not technically savvy, but they were competent enough to “know what they didn’t know” and listen to their people. I’ve also had managers with tech background who were arrogant idiots, who did not listen to or trust those under them. On the large however, I would much rather deal with management that TRUSTS ITS PEOPLE AND HAS A TECHNICAL BACKGROUND... but if I have to choose just 1 quality, it would be managers who trust their people.

I’ve been on both sides of this fence, had to convince management of my stand, and the manager who’s needing convincing. I don’t like to override an engineer, ever, I know they are competent people, but at times I have been the one to not be convinced of their concern. Its never a decision I take lightly, but it does happen and will always happen.

NASA management however seems to have shown at times to be almost flippant, and that’s where you get into major trouble.

However to label NASA anti private business is just silly.