Eric Berger explains why human spaceflight is such a mess.
5 thoughts on “The Pork Problem”
The obvious answer is only let people vote for representatives in states they don’t live in. That should cut everything except the absolute essentials to the bone. Somebody aught to write an alternate universe story like that.
So.. NASA is about redistribution of wealth?
Never forget that the Challenger Disaster was caused by pork. Seriously.
When picking from competing designs for the STS boosters, Nasa ranked Thiokol’s segmented design fourth out of four.
But Utah had influential senators. So it got the job.
And so, we ended up with the segmented SRB case with O-rings (as opposed to Aerojet’s one-piece design) and also segmented SRB fuel. Thiokol had to do it this way, due to the limiting factor of railroad tunnel diameters.
This is just one of the ways pork screws up a space program in ways that go far beyond the fiscal.
And let’s not forget; they kept the segmented SRBs (though redesigned to have more segments) for SLS.
And that’s why NASA cannot move to full COTS purchases for launch services – not enough opportunity for political meddling.
NASA needs a base closing commission. Probably other areas of the government do as well.
The obvious answer is only let people vote for representatives in states they don’t live in. That should cut everything except the absolute essentials to the bone. Somebody aught to write an alternate universe story like that.
So.. NASA is about redistribution of wealth?
Never forget that the Challenger Disaster was caused by pork. Seriously.
When picking from competing designs for the STS boosters, Nasa ranked Thiokol’s segmented design fourth out of four.
But Utah had influential senators. So it got the job.
And so, we ended up with the segmented SRB case with O-rings (as opposed to Aerojet’s one-piece design) and also segmented SRB fuel. Thiokol had to do it this way, due to the limiting factor of railroad tunnel diameters.
This is just one of the ways pork screws up a space program in ways that go far beyond the fiscal.
And let’s not forget; they kept the segmented SRBs (though redesigned to have more segments) for SLS.
And that’s why NASA cannot move to full COTS purchases for launch services – not enough opportunity for political meddling.
NASA needs a base closing commission. Probably other areas of the government do as well.