My views on NASA

In my last post (which I finished about 1 minute before beginning this one) I spoke of the lack of innovation in the U.S. That leads me to a rant about NASA. Once, NASA was an organization full of innovators that put men on the moon. Now NASA is an organization lacking in leadership and innovation.

The space shuttle, while technically reusable, failed to meet any of its other design criteria. It wasn't supposed to need two huge booster rockets to get it off the ground, it was supposed to lift itself off the ground. It was supposed to be able to quickly get into space again, but even under the best of conditions the shuttles take months to get a shuttle back into space again. They also weren't supposed to blow up because they launched on a cold morning or a piece of foam fell off.

NASA's satellite launch record is so bad U.S. companies and military depend on other countries to put our satellites into orbit. When your own military goes to another country to get its secret spy satellites into orbit instead of using the government agency designed to do just that you know you have a problem. That alone is an indication on how unreliable NASA's technology and decision making process has gotten.

So what has gone wrong? Have rocket scientists gotten so stupid they can't even duplicate technology we had 40 years ago? Or has NASA management gotten so stupid they can't make the right decisions? I seriously doubt the scientists have suddenly gotten stupid, and internal audits point to NASA management being the problem.

In my opinion the only hope the U.S. has to regain our space technology edge is to fire every NASA employee over the level of supervisor, pick one of the supervisors to lead and start entirely over. We need a space agency that is led by competent people, people who are technically competent and not just professional managers or political appointees.