NASA Knows How To Party

doug141 writes "NASA spends between $400,000 and $1.3 million on a party at every shuttle launch, according to CBS. Select personnel are treated to 5 days at a 4 star hotel. This year alone, they've spent $4 million on parties. NASA asked for, and was given, $1 billion more from the Senate this year. NASA proponents argue it makes more sense to give money to talented, productive people in exchange for scientific knowledge, than spend in on unproductive people in the form of straight welfare."

Nothing to see here...

[Kjella (173770)]

Nothing to see here, please move along

Great. Another party to which I'm not invited...

Automatic disqualification

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

Great. Another party to which I'm not invited..

Well, they did say that they were spending it on "...talented, productive people...", and you're posting on slashdot.

Morale booster?

[thatskinnyguy (1129515)]

While expensive, keeping the morale high at NASA means keeping the even more expensive astronauts alive.

Re:Morale booster? No, contractor pleaser.

[Vellmont (569020)]

While expensive, keeping the morale high at NASA means keeping the even more expensive astronauts alive.

Yah, except if the article is correct, most of the people at this party are NASA contractors. Why NASA is spending money on wining and dining contractors instead of the other way around, I don't really understand.

On the other hand I'm not sure I just immediately accept the truth of this article. It's written in a rather sensationalist tone, and presents NASA's side of the argument as a one sentence reply, no doubt taken out of context. That doesn't mean this isn't accurate of course, it's just a bit suspicious.

Re:Morale booster? No, contractor pleaser.

[teridon (139550)]

Why NASA is spending money on wining and dining contractors instead of the other way around, I don't really understand.

Contractors wining and dining federal employees is illegal.

Re:

[Viper Daimao (911947)]

tell that to congress...

Re:Morale booster? No, contractor pleaser.

[rokkaku (127052)]

NASA has very few actual employees -- most everybody is a contractor. When I worked at Ames, we had a small handful of NASA employees in the building, with several hundred contractors. I'm not sure why NASA works this way (it seems less efficient to me), but I suppose it is easier to hire and fire and this way they don't have to deal with complicated government employment rules.

money for "scientific knowledge"

[conspirator57 (1123519)]

this is certainly a contestable claim. esp. since i'm sure most of the party attendees are upper management and thus haven't contributed scientific knowledge in years.

Re:Morale booster? No, contractor pleaser.

[Vellmont (569020)]

It's fairly routine for key consultants to be treated exactly like the true employees when it comes to celebrations.

Maybe. That doesn't mean they should be spending a million bucks on a celebration, airfare, etc.

If the real issue was fiscal responsibility, the reporters would be sorting the budget by largest to smallest amounts, and then examining each line.

I agree completely. This article isn't about fiscal responsibility, it's about "look at those guys that have a great big party and you don't! They used "your" money for it!" That's what all that "coconut fried shrimp, spring rolls, shrimp wrapped with bacon, 5-6 desserts" was all about, even though those big "luxuries" likely only cost a few thousand dollars, if that.

That's kind of a sad attitude, and I'm a bit sick of it. Do I think this is a waste? Sure. Do I think this is something to be really concerned about and start rolling heads and instituting dumb reforms? Hell no. In any organization there's always a certain amount of "waste", i.e. money spent on something that's not easy to justify, and might have been better spent elsewhere. Just keep those percentages low, and I'm happy.

Re:

[427_ci_505 (1009677)]

Yeah, the people at NASA could easily be outdone at their own job by a crowd of slashdot reading armchair-rocket-scientists, right?

Re:Morale booster?

[maxwell demon (590494)]

Yeah, the people at NASA could easily be outdone at their own job by a crowd of slashdot reading armchair-rocket-scientists, right?

This armchair-rocket you speak of seems like an interesting concept. Could you tell me more about it?

Well, yes

[SmallFurryCreature (593017)]

ME as manager at NASA: What do you engineers say about the launch of this mission.

Engineers who know what they are doing because that is what they been trained for AND are required to stand behind if they want those letters after their name: We say X.

ME as manager at NASA: Okay, we do X.

Doesn't sound too hard, can I have my fat salary and golden parachute and parties now?

The two disasters were warned against by NASA owns personel, had the managers listened to their rocket-scientists then those 'accident

Re:

[Eponymous Bastard (1143615)]

The two disasters were warned against by NASA owns personnel, had the managers listened to their rocket-scientists then those 'accidents' would not have happened.

Excuse me? The rocket boosters were warned against, but the piece of foam was studied by NASA's engineers, ran two simulations on it, and the engineers studying it decided it was safe to reenter.

There were some comments by other people at NASA about "what about the foam" a couple days before landing, and a "why are you bringing this up now and not last week" somewhere in there, but the study was done.

Granted, the study was flawed, but it was not a management decision. It was sad watching the press conferen

Re:Morale booster?

[s4m7 (519684)]

If I had NASAs track record, I wouldn't be talking about rewarding smart people, because they've proven pretty well that they're not.

Quite the contrary. Getting that bucket of bolts off the pad without a fireball is enough of a miracle to warrant a million-dollar party.

There's no funding for a new shuttle design. A billion goes missing in Iraq and that announcement barely lasts a single news cycle. Spend it on NASA and you'll hear people bitching about it for years and years.

Re:

[hedwards (940851)]

There's no funding for a new shuttle design. A billion goes missing in Iraq and that announcement barely lasts a single news cycle. Spend it on NASA and you'll hear people bitching about it for years and years.

I'd have modded you insightful, if I had points.

This is largely the issue with NASA, and that is when things are going well, frequently programs like the climate monitoring one are axed or cut back because it would threaten the world view of a few fundamentalists that don't want to acknowledge the climate change happens. And so to protect that world view the studies that would answer the question are axed so that they don't have to worry about being contradicted by scientific evidence.

It amazes me how much

Re:Morale booster?

[sarahbau (692647)]

Two accidents out of 120 flights is half of the time? I also don't see how either accident proves that the NASA engineers aren't smart. Neither accident was really a design failure.

Re:

[zero_offset (200586)]

$explanation

So you see, it actually isn't all that $emotion.

And this is news why?

[Sosetta (702368)]

They spend less than one tenth of 1% of their budget celebrating their continued technological successes. That's probably less than ANY private company anywhere. It's not like they're not getting stuff done. Sosetta

Re:And this is news why?

[GoofyBoy (44399)]

They are not a private company with private money, its tax payer's money. If you had a box that said "NASA 4-star hotel celebration party" box on your tax form, how much would you put in? What if it was a "United States Postal Service celebration party"?

As had been mentioned here many times, NASA has an important and worthwhile job yet lacks funding for many things. Is this how they spend their funds instead of spending it to do what they are mandated for? As you said, they are getting things done, so why should their budget increase (or in fact decrease) when they can just easily cut back the big budget parties?

Re:And this is news why?

[batkiwi (137781)]

That's like saying the average household could save money by cutting down on postage stamp usage.

While technically true it would have no bearing.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

That's probably less than ANY private company anywhere.

Careful with the absolutes -- I work at a 3-employee startup that's been around for a couple years and so far we've spent $0 of the company money on parties.

But that's beside the point. NASA isn't a private company. They're paid from my tax dollars, so we're supposed to hold them to a higher standard. We're talking federal tax money, so this is cash that could have otherwise gone towards, say, paying down the crippling debt our country has sunk into.

making sense

[philmack (796529)]

NASA proponents argue it makes more sense to give money to talented, productive people in exchange for scientific knowledge, than spend in on unproductive people in the form of straight welfare

It Makes sense to me, too.
~Phil

Contractors?

[stoolpigeon (454276)]

I don't see the value in doing this for employees of companies like Boeing - and after every launch? And I'd love to see if it is worker bees. Probably what it is, is managers. I don't know that, but it would surprise me if it's not the case.

But in the big picture, it's not that big a deal.

Otoh

[Arthur B. (806360)]

There are probably no girls at the party

Re:Otoh

[The Living Fractal (162153)]

Yea, we at the more mature stage in our lives call them "Women". I know the term scares you in a deep and profound way, but some day you will come to actually appreciate them, until you marry one, and then you will move from "Women" to "Bloodsucking Demons". It's all part of the natural order of thing.

Vaild for NASA, not so for TSA

[bxwatso (1059160)]

It's a valid business tactic to give valuable employees a party or vacation. It forces them to relax and savor their accomplishments, which money does not. I have known a couple of NASA engineers, and they were smart and dedicated.

On the other hand, the TSA hosted a $500K party for its top employees a few years ago. I interact with TSA employees about 100 times per year, and they are generally lazy, sloth like goons. They are a disaster that does nothing to improve air safety.

In the real world, a company run like the TSA wouldn't have a spare $500K to throw a party because they would be out of business, replaced by a more efficient contractor that does a better job. There is no mechanism for rewarding achievement and punishing failure in the government. Nearly all programs (yes, even under Bush) live on and expand despite proven failure.

The problem with NASA throwing parties for its deserving employees is that it justifies throwing parties for the far more typical ineffective government hack that should really be let go.

Honestly

[fermion (181285)]

The cost to launch a shuttle is somewhere between 0.5 billion and 1 billion. That is one launch. The cost of a week at war is between 2-3 billion. The additional burden placed on local taxpayers for standardized testing, testing that was based on fabricated data during Bush's first education secretary's tenure at HISD, is immeasurable. And the head of heads of major private firms receive hundred of millions of dollars for borking the company to nearly bankruptcy.

I add this last bit because if the wisdom of the free market indicates that a little money thrown away is a good investment, how can those low life in government be so arrogant as not follow suite.

I certainly agree that it would be good if everyone would be deny themselves every available luxury. My food would be cheaper if the owner of my local restaurant would not own a hummer, not to mention my tax bill. My city could afford better education if they did not pay for downtown luxury offices and did not subsidize luxury sports arenas. School taxes would be much lower if we did not have luxury classrooms with lights and air conditioning. But everyone of us knows human nature is to do better work when on is appreciated, and when the environment is conformable. And if it takes .1% of the project budget to encourage the people to do a better a job, that might be a good investment. I would sooner see the parasites that leech off the education and military budget cut off than a single nasa party be canceled.

Re:

[NonSequor (230139)]

Our national budget is insane. And even though each expenditure is just a drop in the bucket, it all adds up to a huge amount. If we ever want to get the budget under control we have to look at every little thing and ask, is this really worth the money we're spending on it?

Million dollar parties just strike me as a bit excessive, even if they are just a tiny fraction of the budget.

Re:

[Vellmont (569020)]

Even when its right in front of you, on the evening news of a major network?

And what am I going to do about it? Call up my representative and waste his/her time on this minor waste, when there's much larger waste going on? So what if it's on the evening news. That doesn't make it any less of a distraction to the larger problems.


If you let those things that are right in front of you go, then you teach people thats its ok to waste and then it gets bigger and bigger.

Huh? We've already wasted a trillion dol

Don't you love sensational summaries

[Overzeetop (214511)]

Okay, I just RTFA, and here's the real scoop:

There is an awards banquet for flight safety held, apparently, at each launch, which occurs about three times a year. The awards cover 750 of what is likely tens of thousands of employees working for NASA and the contractors in the shuttle program. We're talking about a 1.5M awards banquet for an $8B/yr operation, or somewhere in the 0.01% range. Now I'm not saying that it's not a waste, though I'm curious where the seating costs of $20,000 for the shuttle launch come from, but the costs are not all that outlandish. Remember that one shuttle launch can really mean 4-16 different payloads, so there are a lot of people involved.

Go figure out what a similar party costs just about anywhere. Flying someone in coach is going to run about $300-500, minimum, if you book in advance and choose non-refundable. 4 nights hotel (we assume you are travelling on day 1 and day 5, day 2 is the banquet, day 3 is the launch, day four is a cape tour and the show), $120/night is bare minimum in a metro area unless you like sleeping with roaches. You get a night banquet at a banquet hall - nice dinner, dessert, a little entertainment. Hell, my high school reunion was $80 a head, and it was pretty basic. $150 is probably more reasonable for the service. One night you get a free show. Wow. Somebody call the fun police. Cirque tickets are $200; a broadway production in an off town is $80. Transportation to/from/between - you aren't going to walk to the cape from Orlando - would you have preferred we rented them a car for $300?

Where am I?...$300 plane + $480 hotel + $150 banquet and awards + nice show $120 + $300/2 for the car (we'll make them share) = $1200. Now, they came up with 400k-500k per banquet with 750 people...that's only $675 a person. I'd say they got a pretty good deal. $675 for 5 days and 4 nights plus a shuttle launch, dinner, and show? That's a freakin' bargain if you ask me.

Anyway...you go find out what the budget is for the awards banquet of any 10,000 person company. Go find out what just the CEO and his/her spouse spend. This really will look like chump change.

Re:Don't you love sensational summaries

[cyclone96 (129449)]

Well stated.

Full disclosure. I'm a low level NASA manager. I also have been a recipient of the award in question (it's called the Space Flight Awareness, or SFA). I won it years ago when I was a line engineer for a contractor (managers usually cannot get these awards).

The article is unfairly one sided. NASA overall has very little "morale money", which is used to reward outstanding employees or significant contributions - things that are commonplace in the private sector. When we have an office party, or I bring in dinner for my guys that have to work on Christmas, it's out of my pocket. All my colleagues do the same. I can assure you that the sum total of this across the agency is a lot more than what the SFAs cost.

They also made it out like some extravagant party - it really isn't. They pay for the flight (you have to cover your spouse, though), get you a hotel at the Day's Inn Cocoa Beach (or similar) for a few days, they drive you around on a tour, and feed you a few nice meals and let you meet some astronauts and agency officials.

The reason why most of the recipients are contractors is that most of NASA employees are contractors. The way most contracts are billed with NASA is cost plus, and employee expenses (including the small awards that are given out) are billed back to the government. The contractors also do spend on some other awards out of their profits (which are relatively small on NASA contracts, in all fairness).

While you may have some negative opinions about how well NASA is doing as an agency, we've got a lot of really outstanding line employees who do great work, and in any enterprise you need to reward that. When I got my SFA, I was 28 years old and had spent a year of 60+ hour weeks getting an avionics package on the Space Station working. I didn't get paid overtime for that...the SFA was a nice token from my management. Another guy on the trip won his for finding a problem that saved the government $12 million dollars. As a percentage of the overall workforce, very few people ever win this award (where I work, maybe 1 out of 50 has gotten this in the last 10 years, you have to do something exceptional). It's definitely worth the tax dollars that are spent on it - and I hope other federal agencies are using my tax dollars in similar ways.

They deserve a party

[amightywind (691887)]

Sad that Slashdot chooses to be relentlessly negative about NASA, while touting the lilliputian efforts of Russia and China. The STS-120 repair mission on the ISS I saw last week was about the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Russia or China won't be able to build something like that for 50 years! NASA deserves a party.

No they deserve a war

[Overzeetop (214511)]

I'd love to see NASA actually hire (not contract) the best and brightest to create the next generation flight vehicle. Build it all in house, and contract out nothing. If we could just declare a war on moon terrorists and get hold of $100-$150B in funding over the next 6 years, I'm pretty certain we could do a pretty damned good job.

My father attended one of these 'parties'

[Firemeboy44 (1187205)]

My father has worked on the booster rockets for 30 years as an engineer. This summer he was flown to Florida to watch a launch. They put him up in a hotel, had a receptions (where there were a hundred or so other folks), and in a small way showed their appreciation for the work he and the others had done. As I mentioned, he has worked there 30 years, and this was the first time he has been invited. There are hundreds of thousands of people who work on the shuttle program. I think it's a nice gesture.

NASA's business is stars

[SEWilco (27983)]

Because NASA's business is stars, with billions of stars you'd think NASA could manage more than 4 stars in the hotels.

Strawman

[shaitand (626655)]

'NASA proponents argue it makes more sense to give money to talented, productive people in exchange for scientific knowledge, than spend in on unproductive people in the form of straight welfare.'

Yes, of course it makes more sense to reward productive people than unproductive ones but that isn't the issue. Those productive people are being given a million dollar party in exchange for nothing, they got their salaries and great benefits in exchange for their knowledge. There are numerous places that money could go that have nothing to do with welfare. It could be left in the hands of the productive people who earned it. It could be used to raise the ridiculous federal poverty level a few dollars so that those who are BOTH productive AND poor in this country can breath a little easier and maybe scrounge together enough to start to make something of themselves and easily repay that debt in taxes later. It could be used to partially fund a federal medical/prescription/vision/dental insurance program that is a fundemental public service, not welfare.

So what? Where does the money go?

[DirkDaring (91233)]

I was raised in a military family, I've been to more parties than I could count. The miltary probably spends a hundred times more per year. And where does the money go?

Caterers bringing the food get paid. They got their food from somewhere, so whoever that is gets paid. That food was trucked in by someone, who gets paid. Farmers supplying the food get paid. And thats just the food.

People seem to think its a total waste of taxpayer money.

This is just cover for the stargate program

[Joe The Dragon (967727)]

This is just cover for the stargate program

Money versus Value

[foxalopex (522681)]

Company parties often make stressed and overwhelmed employees feel appreciated and improves the overall attitudes at an organization. I would say chances are your organization has low morale if you don't at least all celebrate now and then in some form or another. That said, what's missing in this article is how many people attend. If it's one of the tiny parties we're normally use to then sure a million seems like too much but if it's for a large organization like NASA then I wouldn't be surprised if that works out to be a resonable amount. Parties arn't cheap if a large number of folks attend.

Re:The truth hurts.

[apparently (756613)]

The real problem is, Congress can get more votes by paying Welfare than paying for celebrations for people taking our country forward

Yes, taking care of citizens surely is the antithesis of "forward" progress. Oh, that silly congress!

Re:

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

There is some room for debate on the meaning of "taking care of citizens" in terms of acute and chronic problems.
We can all agree (even some serious libertarians, I think) that in the acute case of a natural disaster, we like a government that is equipped to take care of pressing needs.
It's those chronic concerns, where the concept of "victim" occasionally becomes ambiguous, that a bring about the bulk of the debate.

Re:The truth hurts.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Let's see your contributions.

Re:The truth hurts.

[sssssss27 (1117705)]

My thoughts exactly. Giving people something for nothing rarely ever makes them want to move forward. You could probably solve a significant amount of problems with welfare if you just required a minimum amount of community service hours in order to get it.

Re:The truth hurts.

[Zeinfeld (263942)]

The real problem is, Congress can get more votes by paying Welfare than paying for celebrations for people taking our country forward.

The real problem is that corrupt Republican congressmen like Ney and Cunningham received millions of dollars in bribes while kicking hundreds of millions of dollars of business to their corrupt contractor friends.

And part of the reason it went on so long is the fact that Bush's Attorney General Gonzalez sacked the Federal Prosecutors who brought prosecutions against corrupt GOP pols (some were sacked for not bringing trumped up charges against Democrats).

And that is just the illegal corruption, there is also the legal corruption of billions of dollars wasted on 'defense' projects like the Osprey that simply do not work.

That said, the whole shuttle program is a farce at this point. The space station is pointless and should be shut immediately. Put the money in robotic exploration. Hubbel is worth the money and the risk, the ISS is not.

Re:The truth hurts.

[nharmon (97591)]

Should the government spend $1 million patting the backs of those already more "valuable", or should it use that money to make those who are less "valuable" more "valuable"?

Re:

[KiahZero (610862)]

How does participating in work activities for at least 30 hours a week constitute "no intention of ever being productive?" How does one use non-transferable food stamps to purchase items which the stamps don't cover, since stores won't accept them and they're much harder, if not impossible, to trade to someone else? How does losing your job in the past 26 weeks - the cutoff for unemployment benefits in most states - mean that you will always be worthless?

Oh, right, you're just another Slashdot libertarian f

Re:

[penix1 (722987)]

I'm of course assuming that, like in my country, welfare is contingent on proving that you've actually tried to get a job.

That was your first error. Unemployment insurance is based on continuing job searches while welfare isn't to the same extent. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 (commonly called the Welfare Reform Act although to my knowledge no such act is in existence) made sweeping changes. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_reform [wikipedia.org]

"One of the bill's provisions was a time l

Re:The truth hurts.

[ChromeAeonium (1026952)]

There is a genetic cap on how valuable an individual can become

The complete and proper reply to such a comment is as follows: Bullshit. I'm sure your genetic cap is thought the roof; genetic determinists always have the best genes, funny how that works.. Seriously, read a sociology book or something. Maybe a black history book, too; people said that every black person who accomplished something great was 'genetically inferior' too. And the Mismeasure of Man, read that one. That genetic cap stuff makes no more sense than divine right of monarchs. Its elitist, classist (and usually racist/sexist), harmful to society, and scientifically unfounded. Besides, there are exceptions on every level; are you really trying to tell me we shouldn't even give people the chance to make something of themselves because some genetic deterministic asshole deemed them inferior; are you seriously saying we should just form a caste system to replace trying to give everyone a fair chance? Because that is one fucked up ideology you've got, and as an intelligent 'genetically challenged' person myself, shit like that is the stuff of nightmares.

Re:The editiorial!

[Dun Malg (230075)]

What is this nonsense?

NASA proponents argue it makes more sense to give money to talented, productive people in exchange for scientific knowledge, than spend in on unproductive people in the form of straight welfare

It's the usual nonsense. Propaganda masquerading as journalism. It's a rather transparent ploy, usually the work of rank amateurs. Say, for example, Department X is doing scientific research on a vaccine for [disease] that involves testing on rabbits. In order to make them look as bad as possible you say the following:

"Dept X kills baby bunnies!"

Then, in order to give the appearance of fairness, you find (or just fabricate) some kooks who generally support the works of Dept X who will assert something fun, like the following:

"Supporters of Dept X argue that killing baby bunnies is often quite pleasurable, especially if it is done slowly."

See? Both sides have been presented, and it's obvious that Dept X is the spawn of Satan. Surely you're not on THEIR side, right?

Re:Somethings Never Change

[Overzeetop (214511)]

What's worse is that if they didn't spend that money, they would have had their budget reduced the next year. If they happened to have been otherwise efficient, they would be penalized the next year for that efficiency. You can't win, really.