Treaty was in 1967, sputnik launched in 1957. And no one was trying for it before 1957 at all.. so please stop the silliness.
Here’s the simple facts, do you know what the industry average is for software development? What it is for being on time and budget??? DO you?
Its +/- 25%, 50% of the time. That means, only 1/2 the time does a software project come in at +/- 25% of its original plan! That not NASA, that’s not government beauracracy, that’s INDUSTRY WIDE!!!!
Now, given most software development is nowhere near the complexity of doing the things NASA is asked to do daily, you really think NASA is just padding folks pockets? Is there waste, any large organization has waste! I worked for a company that was still spending $5000 a month to provide dial up service to its network for 3 customers! Back in the day that services provided the bulk of its clients interactions, but as the clients slowly shifted to their own internet connections they slowly stopped using it, to a point where only 3 were left, but the company was still paying that $5k a month for YEARS. And nope, that wasn’t government.. private industry.
I worked for a company that was paying maintenance contracts on hardware they hard retired 5 years ago! Again, Private Industry.
Any large organization has inefficiencies and communcation breakdowns, private or public, if you think otherwise you are a fool.
Lets just visit your private industry argument for a second shall we... the Ansari XPRIZE that said ship to 100 Miles from earth surface 2 times in 2 weeks, 10 Million bucks to the winner... Well, guess what, it was announced in 1996, it was claimed in 2007, and to date, not one commercial flight has flown. The XPRIZE basically said, replicate the performance perameters that didn’t even match what was done in 1964 by the Russians.
I don’t take anything away from the winners, but it took private industry 11 years to replicate something that was done by governments 41 years earlier, other than reusability of the capsule, and only had to reach 1/2 as high.
Why did it take them 11 years? Hmm? All the hard work had been done, and they weren’t even required to use a launch from earth rocket, they could piggy back on a plane first. They had 41 years of newer technology, much of it initially funded and developed via NASA or its spin offs... etc etc etc.
Oh and BTW, that $10 Million Dollar prize that was paid out for the XPRIZE.. it took over $100 Million dollars to accomplish.
To give you some comparsion there, the cost to send the 2 rovers to Mars and operate their original design spec was 820 Million. So, private industry spent a full 1/8 of nasa’s budget to design, build, send, land and operate 2 rovers to another planet, just to accomplish something Government space agencies did 41 years prior... Yep, you are right, NASA’s just a hugely inefficient organization wasting money hand over fist.
Your arguments don’t hold up to scrutiny, you have ideological blinders on that you will never allow yourself to see through.
And all of the best rocket scientists were being hired by the GOVERNMENT on the missiles to use against the Soviets. Most of which were spirited out of Germany after WWII.
Why bother mining asteroids when most of the iron and steel you needed came from the Iron Range in Minnesota? It didn't make economic sense.
It does today.
$820 million to send two remote controlled golf carts to Mars. Yep... There's a heck of an ROI...
You aren't very good at the whole economics thing are you?