Comment by pjscott | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjscott | Hacker News Reader

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Apparently NASA's inflation-adjusted budget has been about half of its Apollo-era levels ever since the 1970s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_budget_linegraph_BH....

That's not as much, of course, but it's hardly chump change -- and yet I can't help but think that they're a lot less than half as impressive as they were back then. Look at the Constallation program, meant to develop a crewed launch system as a replacement for the Space Shuttle. Five years after it started it was over budget and behind schedule, and after it was estimated to eventually cost more than the entire Apollo program it got canceled. Or look at the Space Launch System program, another rocket-making attempt: it started in 2011, has spent over $20 billion so far, was supposed to start launches in 2016, and might launch something next year.

NASA's general level of competence seems to have dwindled over time. They can still do impressive things, but not nearly as impressive as you'd expect if the same budget had been given to 1960s NASA with 2021 technology.

Their competence certainly has dwindled. A growing proportion of their budget is pork. Entire programs are just jobs programs. Those are very undesirable jobs for good engineers.

Constellation was an earnest attempt that strangled itself with process and procedure. SLS is just a battleground for politicians and contractors trying to keep the money flowing in their own directions.

The NASA that people usually think about is found in the smaller projects, where they can go relatively unnoticed by those who would ruin them. But even then, there's probably too much risk aversion. The very idea of that kind of defeats the purpose of NASA, in my opinion.

It is still pathetic, but:

- If American industrial declines overall, outside the bloodsucking defense contacting sector that is naturally NASA-adjacent, won't those dollars travel less far?

- Nothing about NASA is a productive investment on short enough timescales to make it somewhat self-funding, boosting the economy as a whole very efficiently, (same with defense spending) so it's the exactly wrong foundation for industrial policy. First boost "productive" capacity, then funnel some extra riches into NASA. It has to be icing on the cake, not the cake!

Many engineers would be very hesitant to devote their career to an organization that was shrinking/stagnating at all. In the 1960s, NASA was growing and at the center of the national consciousness. That had to be good for recruiting.

Since then, so much else has grown immensely while NASA hasn't.

I'm not sold on the lack of competence though. They were just flying around a helicopter on Mars. It mildly amused the public for a couple days, but you could certainly argue it's among the most impressive feats ever accomplished.

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