NASA's $349 Million Empty Tower 200
An anonymous reader writes: In a scathing indictment of NASA's bureaucracy, the Washington Post documents a $349 million project to construct a laboratory tower that was closed as soon as it was finished. From the article: "[The tower was] designed to test a new rocket engine in a chamber that mimicked the vacuum of space. ... As soon as the work was done, it shut the tower down. The project was officially 'mothballed' — closed up and left empty — without ever being used. ... The reason for the shutdown: The new tower — called the A-3 test stand — was useless. Just as expected. The rocket program it was designed for had been canceled in 2010. ... The result was that NASA spent four more years building something it didn't need. Now, the agency will spend about $700,000 a year to maintain it in disuse. ... Jerked from one mission to another, NASA lost its sense that any mission was truly urgent. It began to absorb the vices of less-glamorous bureaucracies: Officials tended to let projects run over time and budget. Its congressional overseers tended to view NASA first as a means to deliver pork back home, and second as a means to deliver Americans into space. In Mississippi, NASA built a monument to its own institutional drift."
Quoted from TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
It's because it's by David Fahrenthold (Score:5, Interesting)
I guessed that before even opening the article. He has a habit of writing misleading Washington Post pieces about government waste. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of government waste, but blame does not fall squarely on NASA. I complained about a piece he wrote last year:
David Fahrenthold's April 24, 2013 article "Feds spend at least $890,000 on fees for empty accounts" incorrectly states that the Pentagon spent $435 on a hammer. That claim has been repeatedly debunked for a number of years. The hammer was $15, and the the $420 represented R&D costs for a project spread evenly across all items. See, e.g.: http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the-600-hammer/5271/ [govexec.com]
To which he responded:
Hello, Dave Fahrenthold here from the Washington Post. I wrote the story that dealt with the cost of “zero balance” accounts, and so I was forwarded the correction request you sent earlier. First, thank you for reading, and reading the story so closely. At this point, I don’t see the need for a correction to the story. Here’s why: the story says that the Pentagon “paid” $435 for a hammer. I had written it that way consciously, since I’d seen the findings you referenced in that govexec story: the hammer’s cost to the Pentagon included $420 worth of overhead (which had been distributed evenly among all the items for which the Pentagon was charged in that same order). The cost of the hammer, at least on the Pentagon’s books, was $435. To me, it’s still correct to say that’s what the Pentagon “paid,” no matter how that cost had been calculated. I’d welcome your thoughts, however. I’m grateful again for the feedback. DF
Nice enough, but to me this shows that he very well knew the full story but chose to present it in a purposefully misleading way. Given that there is so much real waste, I don't understand the need to latch on to myths like this.
Re: (Score:2)
but blame does not fall squarely on NASA ... Given that there is so much real waste, I don't understand the need to latch on to myths like this.
Your criticisms about precision are valid. There are multiple levels of meaning, though, and for some audiences "is NASA a good mechanism for humans to explore space?" is well answered by less-precise stories like this one.
This story illustrates one example - one Mississippi Senator uses NASA as his personal coke-n-whores vehicle. "Should we be funding public agen
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
And yet they so often are. I believe Einstein (apocryphally) had something to say about that.
Re: (Score:2)
That's interesting. I didn't know a senator was in charge of NASA.
Re: (Score:2)
Senators are in charge of a lot of things the general public is only vaguely aware of.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not that money is more important than reason, it's that there's no reasoning at all. Reason is out, and has been for years. The people with the least sense of reason on earth are in congress.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the blame goes to the congressman, yes. But if NASA had promptly shut the thing down when it was evident it had no use, the congressman wouldn't have had an opening to insist that construction continue.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's hard to see why the article frames this as an indictment of NASA's bureaucracy, given the article explicitly says a senator from Mississippi explicitly forbid them from stopping construction. This is just another reflection of how money is more important than reason in Congress these days.
Don't worry. I'm sure congress will do the right thing and point to this wasteful spending as a reason to cut funding to NASA.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:5, Informative)
And said Senator's ass-hattery was covered here in February [slashdot.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly! The blame goes directly to Congress as they were the ones making the bad decisions.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly NASA is caught between a rock and a hard space.
They keep having projects started then stopped. The X-33 is a great example.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it's hard to see why the article frames this as an indictment of NASA's bureaucracy, given the article explicitly says a senator from Mississippi explicitly forbid them from stopping construction.
They could have always called his bluff, if they cared. The reality is that they were probably buying the senator's vote for other similarly useless spending by NASA.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. If a bill comes up that says "NASA, you must stop spending on this project" one senator can put a hold on the bill, preventing any further action until the senator removes said hold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
But the converse of that is not saying that they must continue. I would assume that means they may stop, but are not obligated to. I can't imagine that NASA doesn't have enough self-governance to not spend money.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:5, Informative)
But the converse of that is not saying that they must continue. I would assume that means they may stop, but are not obligated to. I can't imagine that NASA doesn't have enough self-governance to not spend money.
You may not be able to imagine that, but this merely represents a failure in your imagination.
When Congress passes a bill stating that NASA "shall" spend money on project X,this is not optional. They must spend that money.
That was the language in the bill:
“Wicker Three” was an amendment sponsored by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). His amendment said NASA “shall complete construction and activation of the A-3 test stand with a completion goal of September 30, 2013.” That language was included in the bill that passed the committee, then the Senate, then the House. In October 2010, Obama signed it into law.
Re: (Score:2)
The person I was responding to said that a hold was placed on the cancellation. I merely trusted them to be telling the story correctly.
Re: (Score:2)
No, he was merely giving that as an example of the power one senator has. In this case, it wasn't that a cancellation bill was placed on hold, it was that the amendment sponsored by Wicker was passed, directing NASA to finish it.
Re: (Score:2)
Which makes my response related to the hypothetical example just like his, not the actual story. Whether it lines up with what actually happened is sort of off-topic.
Then How'd We Get Obamacare (Score:3)
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Informative)
preventing any further action until the senator removes said hold.
Not quite
Holds, like filibusters, can be defeated through a successful cloture [wikipedia.org] motion.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Since then, it’s spent an additional $57 million to keep building it, according to a February 2013 report by the agency’s inspector general, Paul Martin. Testifying before the House space subcommittee in September, Martin highlighted the A-3 as an example of how lawmakers, looking to keep federal dollars flowing to their states, can block efforts to cut unnecessary spending. “The political context in which NASA operates often impedes its efforts to reduce infrastructure,” he said."
This was reported by BusinessWeek almost a year ago.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Informative)
Because Congressmen retaliate. (Score:3)
NASA has no power compared to a powerful Congresdroid scorned.
The consequences to NASA for publicly embarrassing Congressdroids over embarrassing pork insisted upon by such droids would be so much worse. The retaliation droids would in return destroy the primary science goals and missions of NASA.
Stennis was mentioned, back many years ago, as a prime geographical centroid of pork though hardly the only one.
Re: (Score:2)
You're not too bright, are you? Congress has ultimate authority over NASA, and over everything in the entire government. They control funding for everything, and write laws to that effect.
If your boss at your company tells you to do something wasteful and unethical, then you either do it or find a new job.
Re: (Score:2)
Another thing that causes inefficiency is a near-zero tolerance for waste. Because the government has to get the best deal, it needs elaborate and detailed bidding procedures that slow acquisition and make sure only companies with the expensive ability to navigate the bidding system can bid. To avoid wasting money on welfare, there are controls more expensive than the waste they find.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Interesting)
The U.S. Senator in question is Sen. Wicker, one of the biggest dolts in the Senate. You can hear him wax on and on and on about wasteful government spending unless.....errr...it happens to occur in his state whereupon it is magically transformed into a vital piece of American infrastructure.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe the tower could be converted to office space for the Senator. But only if it still is capable of holding a vacuum.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
...And then Congress — at the urging of a senator from Mississippi — swooped in and ordered the agency to finish the tower, no matter what....
Got to deliver that pork to the voters, especially when other taxpayers are paying for it.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, see dupe for other info
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:5, Informative)
After the rocket program had been canceled, it was expected that the tower would be useless when it was completed four years later. Lo and behold, now that it's completed it is indeed useless.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:5, Funny)
Lo and behold, now that it's completed it is indeed useless.
Correct, but it was mere speculation before. Now they've PROVEN it.
Science!
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
In the 1980s when I was in the rocket business, we once un-mothballed a lab complex that had stood idle since the 1960s. Its most interesting feature was a pair of gigantic waldoes, which could pick up huge, heavy objects while an operator manipulated controls from an elevated glass observation room. Incredibly cool, precisely machined hydraulic art.
After we removed the owl-shit covered tarps, unwrapped the many layers, removed the final thick coat of grease, and flushed the old fluid with new, everything worked perfectly.
That building had never been used before. It was half built when the government project that required it was canceled, but my employers wisely continued on the project and mothballed it as soon as it was completed.
20 years later we used it extensively and AFAIK it is still in use. If not, they will have mothballed it again for the future.
If NASA makes a minimal effort to keep the tower useable, it will be used in the future, and this will have been a wise investment.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe they didn't put enough outs in the contract with the builders for termination. It's possible they were contractually obligated to finish building it because they never thought anything might be cancelled.
Re: (Score:3)
For all we know, they'll figure out a repurpose for the facility.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:5, Informative)
No doubt it was completed due to the sunken cost fallacy [wikipedia.org].
No, it was completed because (quoted from TFA) "Congress — at the urging of a senator from Mississippi — swooped in and ordered the agency to finish the tower, no matter what."
What's worse is that NASA already had a test stand for testing engines in vacuum, built during the Apollo program in Sandusky Ohio. The question had been whether to upgrade that one to test the new engine, or build a new one, and the original cost estimate for building a new one in MIssisippi was, uh, somewhat lower than the actual cost turned out to be. So now NASA has two unused large engine-test vacuum chambers.
Re:Quoted from TFA (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't sunken cost as much as pork barrel. Someone promised a Senator from Mississippi that hey would get 300+ million dollars from NASA and by god he was going to get it regardless of how much of a waste of money it is.
Also not surprising that this was from the South where they are against big government, but pro pork barrel.
Re: (Score:2)
"Just as expected" refers to the tower being useless. They knew it would be useless because the project it had been made for was cancelled *four years earlier*.
Re: (Score:3)
After the rocket program had been cancelled, NASA wanted to cancel this test facility too, until Congress forced them to continue working on it for no good reason.
To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
It's simply not realistically possible to always perfectly plan multiple complex multi-year projects, when every your budget gets cut a little further, and you never know -- it's a roll of the dice -- if or how much it's going to get cut by -- then there is the secondary knock-on effect that of the small budget that remains*, the managers need to very carefully decide where to constantly try shift things around to try keep remaining projects going. The rocket program canceled in 2010 was probably canceled due to budget cuts. NASA's budget has consistently been cut, what, every year for the past 15 years? You can't entirely blame NASA - nobody can plan properly under those circumstances. Nobody, not you, or me, could end up not wasting any of it as a result of the constant shunting around.
Also, *all* large organizations have at least some expenditure that in hindsight was wasted. Hindsight is always 20/20. Look at the R&D allocations for any large organization, public or private, and you'll always find plenty of projects that went nowhere - whether it's an IT company or a mining operation or a shipyard or energy utility etc.
* NASA budget is less than 0.5% of the total federal budget. We're really going to nitpick over this while literally trillions get regularly poured into completely wasteful military destruction? We're being played and manipulated by articles like this - look carefully who *benefits* from articles like this that attempt to portray the real bad guys (spending-wise) as those who take less than 0.5% of the budget.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Initially, I was going beat you down!
But in reading your fair points, I'm actually agreeing with you to an extent.
I do agree that hindsight is 20/20, but I also believe that experience is the best teacher.
The way we run things "with budgets" leads entirely to wasteful behaviour, as your budget is like a revenue stream, and worse, it has a feedback flow!! What I mean is, if you don't spend your budget, then you don't need it - and thus, next years' budget is allocated to someone else who does.... This lead
Not all Government has "spend it or lose it" (Score:4, Interesting)
I work in the Government, in a research environment, and if we can't use all our budget effectively we release the money back to our management to reallocate.
It gets reallocated where it'll do the most good.
Next year, if we can make the case that we are where the money will do the most good, WE get reallocated funds.
All that's required is management whose heads are not up their rear ends, a workforce who trusts management to find good use for the funds, and that you be able to justify your requirement for funding to meet the mission goals.
Management also has to realize that programs rarely execute as expected and be mentally and fiscally flexible. We are fortunate to have such management.
Re: (Score:2)
It's simply not realistically possible to always perfectly plan multiple complex multi-year projects, when every your budget gets cut a little further, and you never know -- it's a roll of the dice -- if or how much it's going to get cut by -- then there is the secondary knock-on effect that of the small budget that remains*, the managers need to very carefully decide where to constantly try shift things around to try keep remaining projects going. The rocket program canceled in 2010 was probably canceled due to budget cuts. NASA's budget has consistently been cut, what, every year for the past 15 years? You can't entirely blame NASA - nobody can plan properly under those circumstances. Nobody, not you, or me, could end up not wasting any of it as a result of the constant shunting around.
If NASA had that same attitude in the 60's, the U.S. would still be trying to put its first man in space.
Re: (Score:2)
It's simply not realistically possible to always perfectly plan multiple complex multi-year projects, when every your budget gets cut a little further, and you never know -- it's a roll of the dice -- if or how much it's going to get cut by -- then there is the secondary knock-on effect that of the small budget that remains*, the managers need to very carefully decide where to constantly try shift things around to try keep remaining projects going. The rocket program canceled in 2010 was probably canceled due to budget cuts. NASA's budget has consistently been cut, what, every year for the past 15 years? You can't entirely blame NASA - nobody can plan properly under those circumstances. Nobody, not you, or me, could end up not wasting any of it as a result of the constant shunting around.
If NASA had that same attitude in the 60's, the U.S. would still be trying to put its first man in space.
I think the point is that it isn't NASA's attitude which makes these things happen, it's the attitude of Congress.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What attitude would you suggest when your budget gets jacked around every year. What attitude can fix having more expenditures towards various multi-year projects than you have money to spend? In the '60s they had full support from Congress and a growing budget.
Pork, Republican pork, previously documented. (Score:5, Informative)
This was forced on NASA as a pork barrel money grant by the Republican senators, and this isn't news.
Senator Makes NASA Complete $350 Million Testing Tower ... ..... The other senators will likely decide that it's easier to fund his pork ...
yro.slashdot.org/.../senator-makes-nasa-complete-350-million-testing-to...
Feb 1, 2014 - Roger F. Wicker (R-MS), who says the testing tower will help maintain the
Re:Pork, Republican pork, previously documented. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This was forced on NASA as a pork barrel money grant by the Republican senators,
This passed through both houses of congress and the presidents branch. I read the story and saw what was attempted here in terms of blame, but the reality is that the Constellation shutdown was passed by congress, and the A-3 pork project was passed by Congress. Attempting to pin this on a single senator from Mississippi is disingenuous at best.
You want some accountability, look up which senators voted for this and have a history of voting on pork.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
+5 Sad but so.
Not useless (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate it when people qualify infrastructure as useless. Especially infrastructure destine for research and development. Even if the foreseen use is deprecated, it doesn't mean it's useless. A test stand can always become of use, even if it's not for the originally planed engine. If they are wise about it, they could even rent the infrastructure to third parties such as Space-X.
Stopping the construction in the middle after 100% of the costs were already incurred, and then destroying the structure for even additional costs would have been a real idiot move.
Re:Not useless (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know why you sigh me, but I doubt you have any idea how it is to turn your back on a already started multi-hundred million dollar contact. It's not as walking back in to the car dealer and saying "sorry, I changed my mind on the sports car... I need a mini van instead". Penalties are often so high it is cheaper to do exactly what they did (build and save for future needs) than cancel the project. And before you sigh at the concept of penalties and go all "omg tax payer money", the companies involved must invest a lot of time, money and energy to build something like this. More importantly, a company has to reject other project to bring such a major work to end. A project cancellation of this order without warranty and protection would most likely ruin even a stable and established company.
Re: (Score:2)
[citation needed]
I'm pretty sure, although I have no scientific facts to show for this assertion, that throwing zombies in vacuum and then starting a rocket engine over their head will solve the problem.
Go MS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Another red state represented by fiscal conservatives!
Contralual capture? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if "contractual capture" had something to do with it. What I mean is, much like the F-35, there was some sort of "poison pill" in the contract that made it impossible to cancel the contract without paying a hefty penalty. Much like firing a CEO these days, where they make more money by getting fired.
Re: (Score:2)
Part of it might have been that. Part of it might have been that it could have been more expensive to tear down and scrap what was built than to complete it and hope you could put it to some use. A big part, however, was the Republican senators from Mississippi who insisted that it be completed [bloomberg.com] because it's such an important rocket testing center. (Read: This pork flows to our area and so it is important. The pork that flows elsewhere is the evil stuff that needs to be cut.)
In other words, Congress/the P
Re:Contralual capture? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mission accomplished (Score:2)
$700k a year? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Makes sense if you understand NASA's real mission (Score:2)
This only doesn't make sense if you don't understand that NASA's *REAL* job is to funnel money to politically-connected contractors and produce a lot of PR bullshit. Anything science-related or any actual accomplishments in space are just a byproduct.
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
After Challenger, the House Ways and Means Committee basically forced the ASRM onto NASA even though they didn't need it. [latimes.com] Billions were spent on the Yellow Creek facility because of one congressman, Jamie Whitten, [google.com] and it's now abandoned. Pork-barrel politics has been around since well, politics but that doesn't mean we have to like it or put up with the system that enables it.
Re: (Score:2)
What you "like" is entirely up to you; but, in practice, we *do* have to put up with it, for the foreseeable future at least.
Who cares (Score:3)
Ascension? (Score:2)
.
Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd not be complaining about the pork of merely finishing the tower: if it was designed in a non-wasteful manner it ought to not matter that the program it was designed for was shut down--it ought to be usable for testing any rocket needing to operate in roughly the same environment. Thus, if it isn't, it was pork regardless, while if is properly designed then we have something to use later which will also hopefully cut down on time (and opportunities for budget cuts to strike) for future programs.
Therefore, either its entire existence is pork, or we simply have a stage (and some expense) removed from future engine design projects...and it's only wasteful if we don't plan to ever need to test such ever again.
So, really, it is either end-to-end pork or infrastructure we hopefully want regardless.
Re: (Score:2)
You'd have a cogent argument if NASA didn't already have more than one vacuum rocket test stand. They built this one because it was too hard/expensive to modify the others for the new engine. What are the chances that won't happen again? Nope, it's pure pork. Note that the entire Stennis facility was built to test saturn rocket engines far from anything that might break due to the sonic shock. If NASA was in this to preserve infrastructure, *that* is the feature they would have kept. Instead, Stennis now ho
Re: (Score:2)
Only small engines can be tested currently at stennis (luckily? that's all we have in the inventory). Firing off an F-1 would break a lot of things.
As far is always having been pork, NASA OIG criticized the decision made to build a new stand rather than modifying either of *two* underutilized facilities: http://oig.nasa.gov/audits/rep... [nasa.gov] The bottom line is that the decision was made without public discussion with all of the stakeholders and was always at high risk of being late and over budget due to the l
Sounds like Scientology's Super Power Building. (Score:2)
When NASA is as accountable as a mind control cult, you know shit's really hit the fan.
It's the same problem no matter who you blame. (Score:2)
What they left out (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA didn't decide to build that; a Republican senator from Mississippi forced through the budget amendment even though it was pointless. Apparently stimulating the economy down there with some completely useless waste of resources is more important than actual space research.
Blaming NASA for it is just adding insult to injury - what an asshole reporter.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop bitching .... (Score:2)
Old News... (Score:3)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/02/01/215218/senator-makes-nasa-complete-350-million-testing-tower-that-it-will-never-use [slashdot.org]
There's only one answer... (Score:3)
big deal (Score:2)
Blame where it's due (Score:4, Insightful)
... and the makers of the rules under which NASA operates? Congress. ... and the ones that set which projects NASA may or may not pursue? Congress.
Seems pretty obvious to me, it's not an engineering problem.
Not useless (Score:2)
Looks like the Congress and the Senate were able figure out a good use for a giant vacuum tower - http://imgur.com/9Sbd5By [imgur.com]
Accounting formalities (Score:2)
Serious question: how much of that alleged $700k/year-to-mothball is real, hard cash NASA has to spend, vs accounting formalities like "how much would the site be worth if put to its highest and best use" (and taken as a paper loss because the site isn't being used)? Or one-time costs that were incurred for mothballing, but aren't likely to be repeated annually (like shuttering the building, building a fence around it, etc)?
Don't discount the accounting formalities. I once worked for a company where upper m
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when was Ayn Rand a rocket scientist?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't poke the Shruggalos, they never learn.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Thanks middle class! (Score:5, Insightful)
Little in return?? Why just look at all the generous aerospace contractor donations this project generated for Thad Cochran [opensecrets.org] and Roger Wicker [opensecrets.org]. You call THAT a FAILURE??
Re: $349 million can get us ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: $349 million can get us ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The US army bought 10 Nimitz aircraft carriers at $4.5 billion each, how many wars have they won lately?
Re:Thanks middle class! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Work harder! Millionaires are dependent on YOU!"
FTFY.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:This is why (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA isn't the only agency to be forced to spend their money on horrible projects. The military has many instances of getting things they don't want because Senator X wants pork for his district or trying to close down an unneeded facility only to be informed that Representative Y is forcing it to stay open because that facility means jobs which means votes for Representative Y.
Re:This is why (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
How can NASA spend their budget effeciently when congressional representatives decide what they are allowed and required to work on?
What's the point of the question? If we, say, double the budget for NASA, congressional representatives will still decide what the money gets spent on. Congressional behavior can be changed just as NASA behavior can.