Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
NASA Space

Eminent Officials Say NASA Facilities Some of the 'Worst' They've Ever Seen (arstechnica.com) 118

Ars Technica's Stephen Clark reports: A panel of independent experts reported this week that NASA lacks funding to maintain most of its decades-old facilities, could lose its engineering prowess to the commercial space industry, and has a shortsighted roadmap for technology development. "NASA's problem is it always seems to have $3 billion more program than it has of funds," said Norm Augustine, chair of the National Academies panel chartered to examine the critical facilities, workforce, and technology needed to achieve NASA's long-term strategic goals and objectives. Augustine said a similar statement could sum up two previous high-level reviews of NASA's space programs that he chaired in 1990 and 2009. But the report released Tuesday put NASA's predicament in stark terms.

"In NASA's case, the not-uncommon tendency in a constrained budget environment to prioritize initiating new missions as opposed to maintaining and upgrading existing support assets has produced an infrastructure that would not be viewed as acceptable under most industrial standards," the panel wrote in its report. "In fact, during its inspection tours, the committee saw some of the worst facilities many of its members have ever seen." All of NASA's centers have facilities the agency considers marginal, but Johnson Space Center in Houston has the facilities with the worst average score. Johnson oversees astronaut training and is home to NASA's Mission Control Center for the International Space Station and future Artemis lunar missions. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which develops and operates many of NASA's robotic interplanetary probes, and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, used for rocket engine testing, are the only centers without a poor infrastructure score.

These ratings cover things like buildings and utilities, not the specific test rigs or instruments inside them. "You can have a world-class microscope and materials lab, but if the building goes down, that microscope is useless to you," [Erik Weiser, NASA's director of facilities and real estate] told the National Academies panel in a meeting last year. The panel recommended that Congress direct NASA to establish an annually replenished revolving working capital fund to pay for maintenance and infrastructure upgrades. Other government agencies use similar funds for infrastructure support. "This is something that will require federal legislation," said Jill Dahlburg, a member of the National Academies panel and former superintendent of the space science division at the Naval Research Laboratory.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Eminent Officials Say NASA Facilities Some of the 'Worst' They've Ever Seen

Comments Filter:
  • Opposite problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Going_Digital ( 1485615 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @06:28AM (#64787175)
    I work in a top university and we have the opposite problem. Instead of investing in technology and advancement in teaching, vast amounts of money are spent on vanity building projects. Shiny new buildings that cost so much to build, that 4 people have to share the same space previously occupied by 2. The buildings might look nice, but they are no better than what they replaced, in fact often they are less functional, because they are designed for looks, not functionality.
    • you're a cost center. no one actually likes learning so the university doles out as little as possible to keep the teaching welfare running to you.

      real estate otoh is worth $$$$, even more than the athletics department or business school!

    • by dbialac ( 320955 )
      The lack of photos in the article is intriguing. Go look at IBM's old HQ in Boca Raton, FL. It was built with Brutalist architecture and is ugly as can be. It looks like a WWII fortress, not an office building. And yet, years later, many businesses operate without issue within the building. "Old" doesn't mean "bad".
      • by vivian ( 156520 )

        Old can actually be good, if it's built form the right materials. I personally think that any government building that serves a function that is expected to be needed for a long time, such as a town hall, office and administration buildings and so on should be built like they were 200 years ago, with good looking stone facades and architecture which is built to last a few hundred years , rather than making it out of the cheapest materials possible that will look terrible in 20 years time.

        Whatever you build,

    • But they probably spend more on their sports coaches' salaries & sports facilities than they do on vanity building projects, don't they? Why are they spending public money on sports that only private companies (gambling) profit from?
    • " vast amounts of money are spent on vanity building projects"

      Are those funds discretionary, or are they dedicated for a specific purpose?

      There was that recent example of Charlie Munger donating money to universities toward dormitory buildings... on the condition that they use the plans he designed as he fancied himself an amateur architect. Not only was the design bad, it cost so much more per bed than other designs you were probably better off turning down the money.

      • >Are those funds discretionary, or are they dedicated for a specific purpose?

        There are issues with directed funds too. Say there was a legitimate need for a new building - those funds may have been directed, but money is the ultimate fungible token, and what that directed money really did is freed up money on the existing budget to go elsewhere.

        In other words, directed funding shouldn't be a major issue so long as the direction isn't towards something completely unnecessary. Or, as in the case you cite

  • Norm has been involved in and commenting on government bureaucracy for a long time...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • by gizmo2199 ( 458329 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @07:32AM (#64787215) Homepage

    For not using the classic "Houston, we have a problem..."! Which would have been perfectly relevant, lol!!! The authors of this story could so easily just used that.

  • You have a budget. That's all you have. Live within your means.

    I know, that's a crazy fucking idea.

    No, that does mean you don't get to do everything you want, that's true. Of course that's true for everyone, government agencies just somehow seem to believe it doesn't apply to them.

    • by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @08:39AM (#64787271)

      It's a very common management problem. Maintenance is not sexy. You don't have a press conference to show off the maintenance department. Even worse Management can defer maintenance for awhile without problems, then the operators get clever about working around the deficiencies, then Normalization of Deviation occurs, then eventually there is an incident.

      In my former job an incident could bring in The Chemical Safety Board. Boeing finally got a call from the FAA. And Boars Head just had a plant shut down for listeria contamination.

    • by evanh ( 627108 )

      To be fair, the budget keeps getting cut from above. Then they have to start choosing between the many long term projects that were all funded previously.

      On the other hand, NASA hasn't been an engineering outfit for a long time now. It's primarily a science outfit. So the whole article is a tad out of touch.

  • "This is something that will require federal legislation"

    Right. Adding more paperwork and oversight is going to fix dilapidated buildings? Let's see how well that works out . . .

    NASA is old, grey and useless.

    Dissolve NASA as an Engineering organization. Period.

    Let it exist as an agency to provide direction and issue grants/contracts for private companies to achieve NASA goals.

    They need to give up trying to use old clock punching DEI engineers to do what a private company can do with 10% of the budget.

    • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @08:40AM (#64787277)

      That's the right wing viewpoint. It ignores the fact that right wing politicians using NASA for pork barrelling while continuously undercutting NASA's ability to perform are why it has such high expenditures.

      The people at NASA are incredibly dedicated and talented individuals who do amazing things despite this, but there are limits.

    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @09:43AM (#64787339)

      The government doesn’t exist to turn a profit. The government exists to serve people.

      • The government doesnâ(TM)t exist to turn a profit. The government exists to serve "people".

        Sorry, you misspelled "itself" at the end there. I really think a lot of people in government think it is the be-all and end-all for all things, according to itself. "People" are just the ones to be ordered around, and pay for things. It shouldn't make a profit but it should at least plan to break even at some point -- but inflation (cheaper money in the future to pay for "real" money NOW) is just SO appealing. And look at all of the "good" things we can do NOW, while when the bill comes due in the futu

  • Consolidate operations, sell the unused space. However, thinking of obvious solutions to common industrial problems is not the forte of a place like NASA.
    • Consolidate operations, sell the unused space. However, thinking of obvious solutions to common industrial problems is not the forte of a place like NASA.

      This is an idiotic suggestion because at some point they will need these facilities. They aren't abandoned, they just aren't currently in use. It's FAAAR cheaper to clean up an unmaintained facility than to sell it and then buy it again. They aren't housing tools that drop in price every few years.

      Your suggestion would be the end of NASA.

  • Eminem should stick to what he's good at - rap music - and stay out of rocket science.

  • ... into a jobs program for career bureaucrats and a political mess, where jobs are spread across every congressional district
    The SLS is a terrible design, totally motivated and mandated by politics
    We need a space agency that cares about space

  • Never ascribe to malice that which adequately explained by stupidity. Lack of maintenance of facilities seems to me (75 m) endemic. I would have said that itâ(TM)s worse in the US but I saw a video of a bridge across the Elbe in Dresden collapse this morning. Follow up on DW with an engineer from TUD said there are probably 6,500 similarly deficient bridges along the autobahns. So much to do and so little urgency, oh and budget.
    • That shit is just bots. They spam it. You're seeing some server churning electrons, nothing else behind it.
  • sounds like the assessment of a bunch of normies who don't have any idea what's important
  • I love how "independent" panels (independent only of NASA, never of politics) always recommend to Congress that they further punish the agency they already bully with even more unfunded mandates to correct problems Congress itself causes. Just punch someone in the face, tell them to "quit hitting yourself," and threaten to punch them again if they don't quit hitting themselves.
  • NASA has just spent the past three years high-fiving itself over the JWST. The JWST was fifteen years late and 10 billion over budget. This became evident early on, as did the root cause: an overly ambitious concept, which begat an overly ambitious design that ran headlong into the technological limitations of the day.

    The thing that got papered over is that those limitations still exist in this day. JWST did not come up with a faster way of maying crypgenic berylium mirrors; they spent a shit load of money

  • Total entertainment spending, primarily in professional sports and related areas, for 2023: USD 557Bn

    Total funding fed to NASA in the same period: USD 73Bn

    We really don't appear to care as much as we're claiming.

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

Working...