Just Send Money

This FL Today piece supports the ongoing mythology that there’s nothing wrong with NASA that adequate budgets won’t fix, and that the current debacle is all the fault of the Bush administration because they wouldn’t fund their own vision:

NASA last went through an overhaul shortly after former President George W. Bush outlined his “Vision for Space Exploration” in a January 2004 speech.

His plan to send Americans back to the moon and ultimately to Mars has since been widely criticized because he consistently failed to finance it.

There is no discussion of the impact of decisions and choices made by NASA management that contributed to the fiasco. I agree that the Bush administration was at fault, but not because it didn’t fund the program properly. It was at fault because it essentially ignored NASA after hiring Mike Griffin, and refused to rein him in when he completely ignored the Aldridge recommendations and set off on the disastrous Constellation path. Marburger apparently saw what was happening, but didn’t have the clout within the White House to do anything about it.

But you never see anything about that in the papers, even the ones that are supposed to cover this stuff closely, like FL Today. The narrative is always about the money.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’ve added the link, which comes via Clark Lindsey.

[Afternoon update]

Will McLean points out in comments an interview by Eric Berger of Mark Sirengelo of Sierra Nevada and Larry Williams of SpaceX on prospects for commercial support of exploration.

8 thoughts on “Just Send Money”

  1. I’m reminded of a comment I read somewhere about warfare. To the untrained it looks like it should be simple math: who’s got more troops, who’s got more planes, who’s got more ships.

    As if strategy and tactics didn’t matter at all. Not to mention training and preparation.

    Same thing with money, whether it’s NASA or education. Sure the money is important. But how it’s used is just as important if not more so.

  2. Indeed, Rand. After reading various message boards’ comments about NASA’s “lack of funding”, I was a tad thunderstruck when I went back and read the White House’s 2010 budget request and saw that it was 18.7 BILLION. That’s a little more than 1/3 the budget for the entire British Armed Forces. Not exactly pocket change.

  3. This FL Today piece supports the ongoing mythology

    Please stop, before it is too late!

    The word you want is not “mythology,” it’s “myth.” A mythology is not a myth, it’s a study of myths.

    This is like using “methodology” instead of “method” or “functionality” instead of “function.” Those have probably gone too far to stop, but let’s nip this one in the bud while there’s still time!

  4. And while lot of people cry about NASA’s piece of budget being small slice of federal spending, its always useful to contrast it to NIH, NSF or DARPA budgets.

  5. > == I agree that the Bush administration was at fault, but not because it
    > didn’t fund the program properly. It was at fault because it essentially
    > ignored NASA after hiring Mike Griffin, and refused to rein him in when
    > he completely ignored the Aldridge recommendations and set off on
    > the disastrous Constellation path. ==

    Agreed, Griffen completely ignored the parameters Bush sketched out, and went off on the “Apollo on Steroids” empire building trip – confident Congress would just increase the budget accordingly.

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