NASA's Space Plans Take Another Hit

coondoggie writes "The folks at the Government Accountability Office have not been all that kind to NASA in recent years, and today they issued another damning report on the future of the manned space flight program. NASA is still struggling to develop a solid business case — including firm requirements, mature technologies, a knowledge-based acquisition strategy, a realistic cost estimate, and sufficient funding and time — needed to justify moving the Constellation program, which includes the two main spaceflight components, the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle and the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, forward into the implementation phase, the GAO stated."

Ugh. More Pencil Pushers.

[dgatwood]

Did anybody read that as the Onion Crew Exploration Vehicle? Did anybody think this article reads like something the Onion would post? Except with a better headline, e.g. "Bean Counters Say Putting People in Space Is Hard"....

This reads like the sort of thing I see from mid to upper level corporate managers who often can't tell the difference between minor, trivially solvable problems and major, fundamental problems, and have no idea how to describe things to their managers except to portray everything generically as a "risk".

Ooh. They fixed posting for this story.

Just doing my job, Ma'am.

[JLF65]

- at this point NASA does not know how much Ares I and Orion will ultimately cost, and will not know until technical and design challenges have been addressed, the GAO concluded.

Isn't that NASA's function? To figure out how to overcome those "technical and design challenges"? How are they supposed to do the job when they'd denied the money needed on the basis that what they're MANDATED to do can't easily be estimated? That's why NASA is doing this instead of a company - because the government can more easily shoulder the unknown cost than any one company.