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Underfunded, Aging NASA May Be On Unsustainable Path, Report Warns (msn.com) 119

Posted by EditorDavid from the rocket-trajectories dept.
More details on that report about NASA from the Washington Post: NASA is 66 years old and feeling its age. Brilliant engineers are retiring. Others have fled to higher-paying jobs in the private space industry. The buildings are old, their maintenance deferred. The Apollo era, with its huge taxpayer investment, is a distant memory. The agency now pursues complex missions on inadequate budgets. This may be an unsustainable path for NASA, one that imperils long-term success. That is the conclusion of a sweeping report, titled "NASA at a Crossroads," written by a committee of aerospace experts and published Tuesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report suggests that NASA prioritizes near-term missions and fails to think strategically. In other words, the space agency isn't sufficiently focused on the future.

NASA's intense focus on current missions is understandable, considering the unforgiving nature of space operations, but "one tends to neglect the probably less glamorous thing that will determine the success in the future," the report's lead author, Norman Augustine, a retired Lockheed Martin chief executive, said Tuesday. He said one solution for NASA's problems is more funding from Congress. But that may be hard to come by, in which case, he said, the agency needs to consider canceling or delaying costly missions to invest in more mundane but strategically important institutional needs, such as technology development and workforce training. Augustine said he is concerned that NASA could lose in-house expertise if it relies too heavily on the private industry for newly emerging technologies. "It will have trouble hiring innovative, creative engineers. Innovative, creative engineers don't want to have a job that consists of overseeing other people's work," he said...

The report is hardly a blistering screed. The tone is parental. It praises the agency — with a budget of about $25 billion — for its triumphs while urging more prudent decision-making and long-term strategizing.

NASA pursues spectacular missions. It has sent swarms of robotic probes across the solar system and even into interstellar space. Astronauts have continuously been in orbit for more than two decades. The most ambitious program, Artemis, aims to put astronauts back on the moon in a few short years. And long-term, NASA hopes to put astronauts on Mars. But a truism in the industry is that space is hard. The new report contends that NASA has a mismatch between its ambitions and its budget, and needs to pay attention to fundamentals such as fixing its aging infrastructure and retaining in-house talent. NASA's overall physical infrastructure is already well beyond its design life, and this fraction continues to grow," the report states.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the report "aligns with our current efforts to ensure we have the infrastructure, workforce, and technology that NASA needs for the decades ahead," according to the article.

Nelson added that the agency "will continue to work diligently to address the committee's recommendations."
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Underfunded, Aging NASA May Be On Unsustainable Path, Report Warns More

Underfunded, Aging NASA May Be On Unsustainable Path, Report Warns

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    • Re: (Score:1)

      by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

      NASA is corrupt and moribund. NASA should be building a real rotating space habitat instead of building an earthbound bureaucracy.

      This isn't about space, this is just a gravy train now. Boots in space, anything else is failure.

      • Re:Anything that old is way too old to run anythin (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @09:54PM (#64788149) Journal

        NASA is corrupt and moribund. NASA should be building a real rotating space habitat instead of building an earthbound bureaucracy.

        This isn't about space, this is just a gravy train now. Boots in space, anything else is failure.

        We have congresscritters (on both sides of the aisle, by the way) that barely understand how to use a computer, and heaven forbid you expect them to understand the basic workings of the Internet, and you in all seriousness expect them to understand anything at all about a massive orbital habitat?
        You must be joking.
        It's nothing short of miraculous to me that the ISS is even up there.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

          i don't expect anything but crap from corrupt and evil politicians but I have high regards for astronauts

          good people do good work, evil people wreck everything for everybody

          greed for money and power is the root of all our evils

          this is classism

      • Time to eliminate NASA and start over with a new space agency.

    • Is this just the tip of a much larger iceberg of paid 'expert opinion', 'research', 'unbiased evaluations' by a large group of people in an industry to promote, gain more government funding for, ensure no job cuts in, and grow their industry?

      The research group is hardly unbiased as it receives $200 million in contracts from the federal government. Any conclusions it comes to as how much funding it or it's specialization areas get from the federal government is suspect at best and, could be construed as a c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Right. So the DoD, which is far older than NASA, should have its budget cut and put out to pasture, right?

  • Duh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @07:10PM (#64787959) Homepage

    When your budget is specifically structured to prevent long term planning it's no shock when that isn't done.

    NASA runs like it's a government agency that's in the middle of a tug of war between political parties that want to prevent it from working, while at the same time getting money extracted from it.

  • Had to make sure this wasn't a dupe (Score:4, Informative)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @07:19PM (#64787975)

    This is the second story on NASA in the past 24 hours. At first I thought it was a rehash of the first story [slashdot.org], but it's not. However, the two are tied together as lack of funding will lead to a deterioration of facilities.

    • Underfunded, aging Slashdot may be on an unsustainable path, dupe warns!

    • Existing government agencies are not perpetual jobs programs for employees, research grant sources for academics, and government contractor revenue sources.

      NASA should have to give up something, like closing multiple facilities, downsizing Johnson Space Center, stopping missions, etc. in order to get funding.

      In its heyday, it had a mission, beat the rest of the world into space and to the moon to show USA technical capability beats other opposing nations.

      Now, its mission is largely undefined. They've been

  • funding (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @07:20PM (#64787981)
    It's not about funding. NASA has enough money to do amazing things. We should have a Mars colony by now. But critters in Congress, mine, yours, all of them, critters in congress and presidents played political football with NASA funding allocations and used it to curry and give political favors and jobs and told NASA where it had to spend the money and changed projects and priorities like a magpie at a jewelry counter until nothing could be done.

    • Re:funding (Score:4)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @07:32PM (#64788003)

      In 2020 dollars the Apollo program cost approx $21B a year alone compared to NASA's entire budget is $25B. We have not given a Mars mission an Apollo style effort or commitment.

      https://www.planetary.org/spac... [planetary.org]

      Musk, to his credit there, is trying to jumpstart it in Texas and I think he knows this gives NASA a shortcut. My bet is once Starship really starts to prove itself out as a platform and they get success with HLS a Mar's mission can be funded as a joint effort.

      • a Mars mission can be funded as a joint effort.

        Musk seems happy to go to Mars with his own money.

        We should let him do that, and the government can spend my tax dollars on other priorities.

      • I really don't trust Musk.

        • Yeah I am too quite dissapointed in his villain arc but fact is nobody else is attempting what SpaceX is trying to do down there and I do trust the other 99% of the company.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 )
            Agreed; I wouldn't own a Tesla if you gave me one for free, but I'm (sometimes grudgingly, because it's still a Musk-owned company) impressed by SpaceX, and have been for quite some time. Musk may be the owner, but there are talented people working there, making things happen. I almost wish I could get a job there.
    • I do not believe we have the technology or the resources for a Mars colony yet. We don't know enough about Mars yet. We don't have the technology or the resources to get either the materials and supplies needed to build a base or colony to Mars yet. We don't even know if humans, at our current level of space travel, can even survive the trip to Mars without dying from radiation exposure, or just plain going nuts and killing themselves on the way, because it takes months (around 7, I believe) to get there.
      • Oh and while I'm thinking about it, a base on the Moon might make a great jumping-off point for a trip to Mars.
        Also Mars would make a great jumping-off point for mining the asteroid belt.
        In both cases there's less gravity therefore less fuel required to get on your way.
        Also in both cases we might be able to use a nuclear engine of some sort and not worry about any environmental impact because it wouldn't be leaving from Earth.

  • Shall We? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Cat ( 19816 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @07:52PM (#64788029)

    Let's take a wild guess what the problem is.

    You fired all the competent people. Hounded them out. Ignored them during planning. Shouted them down.

    And then several billion dollars later you found out they were right all along.

    You're not giving any new people a chance. They aren't good enough. Oh sure they have advanced aerospace degrees and years of experience but that's not quite Ivy league now is it? You know best. Nobody is as smart as you are.

    So they go off and invent something that gets international headlines. Just not at NASA.

    You're not unique. Same thing is happening in the civilian world. Anyone who does any real work makes the rectangle heads look bad, so they get fired.

    And then one day the lights go out and there's nobody left to fire.

    Our parents and grandparents built the greatest nation in human history. It took fucklips one generation to destroy it.

    • Our parents and grandparents built the greatest nation in human history. It took fucklips one generation to destroy it.

      Let's all bow our heads for a moment of silence before it all crumbles into dust.

  • Push to private (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reynolds_john ( 242657 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @08:00PM (#64788033)
    This smacks of another push to privatization.

    Underfund NASA year over year ,then send money to privatized organizations? Yea, that's where the engineers will go. And then presto! Suddenly NASA isn't that attractive any longer. Who could have predicted that? Anyone remember the concept of 'starve the beast'?

    Perhaps these new ventures will do well in the long term, maybe so, maybe not. But they're out of the influence of the public, even though it's our money they rely on.

    All of it could have been done with public money, had the will been the will by our leaders. Instead it looks like we'll just rely on the "goodwill" of the billionaire class. When we need new NSA or weather satellites put into orbit, I'm sure our philanthropic, science-loving friends will always be there to help.

  • A Political Cesspool (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @08:49PM (#64788079)

    I have read a number of times that had JFK not been assassinated we probably never would have had funded the Apollo project the way we did. I understand the logic of that argument even though I am not wholly on board with that.

    Regardless, it is true that the U.S. has always been reluctant to fund NASA and the reasons span the political spectrum. Conservatives hate the idea of the government being able to anything right and would rather have the money go to the wealthy class. Libertarians likewise think that private sector should do it or nobody should. Liberals think the money is better spent on chronically underfunded programs that help working people and better the environment.

    Mostly, what everyone seems to think is what do I get out of it? What good is space exploration?

    As a result the only way NASA gets funding from congress is a) the Soviets are going to beat us to the moon and I will vote for American Supremacy by getting there first, b) NASA only gets funding if my district gets spending out of it, or c) you give me some political concession in exchange for my vote, or d) you bribe me with a lobbing job or something so I'm set when I'm eventually voted out.

    None of that, of course, is exactly conducive to the kind of organization that will take bold risks to further space exploration.

    Enter Idiot Elon Musk, who for whatever else he contributes is willing to take insane risks and recruit and back engineering and administrative talent to get it done in spite of setbacks. There is simply no way for NASA to have done what SpaceX has done, even though they have contributed funding.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      even though they have contributed funding.

      The small piece of the NASA budget that ended up begrudging subsidizing SpaceX is the only piece that has had any actual value. You can't do big space (the "S" in NASA is space, not science,) without big rockets and NASA doesn't have any, doomed SLS not withstanding. It's a dysfunctional organization, and it's luxury in a nation racking up $75,000 of debt every second.

      • I'll bet you $100 that if we got into a 'space race' with, say, China, suddenly NASA would have all the funding and access to top-notch people it could possibly want.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rademir ( 168324 )

          You wrote: if we got into a 'space race' with, say, China

          If? Seems to be well underway, both for who gets people back to the moon first (in this decade...) and possibly then who has the first base doing anything interesting or useful.

          The first Chinese station bigger than Mir, the first commercial station, and the first Falcon 9 and Starlink competitors, will also have some bragging rights.

          The military space race is well underway, from surveillance to communications to weapon platforms and how to attack and

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 )
      Eventually all resources on this planet will be used up. It'll get harder and harder to get the resources necessary to keep everything working. Meanwhile, the planetary population of humans never goes down, it only goes up, and that means the demand on dwindling, increasingly difficult-to-obtain and increasingly expensive resources goes down. Now, there's human-caused climate change, which no one really seems to take seriously enough to do anything drastic about, which also puts a strain on those dwindling
      • (whoops, screwed up: I meant "Meanwhile, the planetary population of humans never goes down, it only goes up, and that means the demand on dwindling, increasingly difficult-to-obtain and increasingly expensive resources goes up.)

      • or alternatively, get off the concept of ever increasing GDP. We've reached (and passed) peak knowledge. The days of infinite growth based on infinite information is over. The sooner, as a society, we accept that stagnation is fine, that slow growth is fine, the sooner we have a chance of fixing this. Unfortunally, the current feedback mechanisms are not currently aligned to help us in that regard.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kackle ( 910159 )
          +1 More sane.
        • No. Stagnation is the road to extinction.
          By the way 'progress' doesn't always mean 'more, bigger, faster'. It can mean 'do more with less' and 'be more efficient', and in the case of humans, 'learning to limit your numbers voluntarily'.

  • All NASA has to do is put some of those big brains they have on staff and invent any / all of the following:

    Plasma Weapons
    Laser Weapons
    Particle Beams
    RailGuns
    Singularity Warheads

    Or any other crazy weapon from Science Fiction and mount it to any spacecraft.

    From that moment onward, their funding will eclipse US Defense spending by several orders of magnitude.
    ( Anything in the US that goes pew-pew-pew or BOOM is automatically granted infinite levels of funding )

  • Underfunded, yes, but also loss of focus (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Sunday September 15, 2024 @09:39AM (#64788613) Homepage

    NASA has a *ton* if missions going on. https://www.nasa.gov/a-to-z-of... [nasa.gov] Yes, I know this list includes many that are no longer in operation. But 700 or so missions is a lot to fund, even over 6 decades. It has about 42,000 employees, and that's even *after* it has outsourced most of its work to private corporations.

    NASA does excellent and important work. But efficiency is not one of its strong suits.

    • Weird how you can point out what a huge number of projects NASA administers and yet say they are "inefficient". That's the opposite of inefficient. They may be inefficient, but keeping a lot of projects going is not a reflection of that. It's a few very inefficient projects that cause the problems. The typical way this works is that congress mandates that NASA do thing A, NASA says they need x dollars, and congress provides x/2 dollars. At the same time NASA says they don't need to do B, but congress s

      • I disagree. Focus is a key component of efficiency. Trying to do too many things, sharply reduces efficiency.

        Focus is the art of knowing what work *not* to do.

  • No Funny? I sure thought this story was a rich target for humor...

  • NASA needs to focus purely on the research projects such as telescopes, deep space probes, rovers, etc and leave the launch business to private industry.
  • NASA, since landing on the moon, pretty much has not had "an objective". During the cold war, it was to beat the Russian's to the moon. Since then they've just been "spinning their wheels". Shuttle did OK, assembled the space station, which will be coming down in a few years, launched some satellites, but we should have NEVER stopped going to the moon, or exploring Mars etc. We just pretty much STOPPED.