>>11941272the problem with NASA is congress and the GAO.
instead of having a serious strategy with a serious budget for NASA, congress is constantly looking for ways to fuck NASA and NASA is constantly looking for ways to lie to congress. if NASA comes out with a serious plan based on what they can do with their current budget, congress will go "great, now do it with half of that"
hell, the space shuttle was a bastard compromise that basically preserved manned spaceflight at the cost of a vehicle that was of highly limited use in every other respect. Congress wouldn't pay for the rockets, so why not try and rope them into having to pop up 7 astronauts with every TV Satellite? Congress won't pay for a proper new rocket program, so why not rope them into paying for a shuttle with some fanciful figures about how much cheaper it'll be in the long-run? and of course, then, congress won't even pay for a proper shuttle development, so however fanciful the original operating figures were, they're now completely worthless because congress wants to trade lower development costs now for higher operating costs later...
i'm not even fully on the side of NASA here - they don't need apollo levels of funding and for their every fantasy to be indulged. All they need is long-term guarantees on their funding so that they know what they're working with, rather than having to spend all their time playing politics with a congress that sees them as nothing more than fodder for easy budget cuts, something that can be bullied into pork-barrelling their districts, etc.
