
NASA’s $349M monument to its drift - wallflower
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/12/15/nasas-349-million-monument-to-its-drift/
======
brudgers
$349 million is a lot of money, if it is yours. For a public works project,
it's construction of three medium size US high schools when the land has been
donated.

In terms of NASA's budget [never mind the US Federal budget] the _Washington
Post_ is ranting about rounding error only because the project is in a state
for which their audience has little sympathy. Producing four fewer F35's would
save more money, just on initial cost...never mind that the costs of operating
just one well exceed $700k a year.

For anyone with a passing interest in the integrity of journalism, the J-2x
rocket engine for which the A-3 Test Stand was built to test was let on a $1.2
billion dollar contract to Pratt & Whittney RocketDyne. The program was only
killed this year [1]...and a new $2.8 billion dollar contract to develop the
alternative was let just this July to Boeing. Purportedly this contract was a
continuation of an undefined contract with Boeing let back in 2007 -- the same
year as the A-3 Test Platform broke ground.[2]

What NASA got for the money is an additional capability that is reasonably
likely to be useful over the next several decades so long as manned missions
beyond LEO remain within the agency's potential mandate. Given the speed with
which the hot air of politicians changes directions, moving forward on
infrastructure makes sense.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-2X](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-2X)

[2] [http://spacenews.com/41139nasa-boeing-finalize-28b-sls-
core-...](http://spacenews.com/41139nasa-boeing-finalize-28b-sls-core-stage-
contract/)

~~~
rst
Nasa's annual budget is around $17 billion, so $349 million is about 2 percent
of it. A better comparison might be to the cost of significant individual
programs: commercial crew has a current annual budget of $696 million, down
from an administration request of over $800 million. That's not an _entirely_
fair comparison because the expenditure was spread out over several years, but
it's still past what I'd consider rounding error.

~~~
brudgers
Ground breaking was in 2007. Design preceded it. That means less than $50
million a year -- tenths of a percent of their budget on the project.

Throw in the "shovel ready project" aspect and there was no political will to
halt the project from the Executive or Legislative branches of the Federal
Government.

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techdragon
Hooray, I finally have a new best example of congress interference in NASA's
budget and planning. And it's simple enough for anyone to understand.

A TLDR for the entire thing, "Local congressman urges congress to force NASA's
to spend four years building something in his state for a rocket scrapped four
years ago, demanding the agency waste taxpayer money."

~~~
lettergram
Well it's federal taxes, the local congressman brought jobs, and tax revenue
to his state (rough guess would put the state tax revenue probably close to
$10 million in taxes).

Purely disgusting.

~~~
kiba
The local congressman is doing something for his voters. It's his job.

It's also why Americans think dimly of congress as a whole.

~~~
mcv
Is his job as a federal congressman to only think of his own state at a cost
to the rest of the country?

If that's the case, then maybe it's time that the US got a national parliament
(with proportional representation) unencumbered by the district system.

~~~
raldi
Unfortunately, this is literally the one thing that even a constitutional
amendment can't do. The part of the US constitution that describes the process
of amending specifically forbids any amendment from depriving any state of its
equal senate representation.

~~~
mcv
Just the Senate? I'd gladly accept just proportional representation in the
House, as long as the Senate is restricted from meddling in party politics,
and just oversees the division of power between the federal level and the
states, and the constitutionality of laws.

~~~
seanflyon
I don't think "restricted from meddling in party politics" means anything
unless you want to establish another political body with the power to overrule
the Senate if they think they are "meddling".

Also, it is the Supreme Court that has the job of determining the
constitutionality of laws.

------
Leon
How is this NASA's failing? A congressional mandate to fund and build this
regardless of the agencies needs is the failure. There's no need to display
the agency in a bad light, especially if you have the information about what
happened and show it was caused by other government involvement.

~~~
peeters
Who says it was their failing? Drift just means being pushed from one's
target. It is acceptable (and usual) for drift to be caused by external
forces.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I think drift in this case has a connotation of being aimless and
directionless (eg being adrift). However, I don't think the article is blaming
NASA. Any organization would be adrift after having the kind of success NASA
did, then getting presidential grandstanding followed by congressional
micromanagement for decades.

The real villains in this story are Congress and the President.

------
Fede_V
Unfortunately, this is a huge failing of large federally funded projects.

Contractors (and federal agencies too, to a large extent) have long since
learned that the best way to get a big contract from the US government is to
spread yourself out as much as you can, over as many districts as possible, in
order to maximize your political pull.

Look at the supply chains of companies like Boeing, or defense contractors,
and you'll see they have this down to an art.

This then leads to more and more entrenchment - there's less funding for truly
innovative research because so much gets locked into those awful projects that
are sacred cows and absolutely impossible to touch.

I don't really have a good solution. I strongly believe in federally funded
research. Maybe something like the base closing commission should oversee all
federal contracts?

~~~
kosmic_k
I'm not sure if its fair to blame contractors completely in this case. The
government, their customer, defined requirements for a project. Halfway
through the project with ~80% of funds committed they decided that they don't
need it anymore.

The US does this all the time.

For example, the Navy LCS program called for a fast ship that could patrol the
coastline while traveling as quickly as a speed boat. Lockheed Martin designed
the Freedom Class. They made a 378ft, 3,000 ton boat that can travel at speeds
of 47 knots, or about 54 MPH. However the Navy was not very happy because they
concluded that it wasn't survivable enough and that its armament was lacking.
These are all things that should have been well defined at the start of the
project. Especially considering that the speed requirement practically begged
designers to make certain compromises in order to limit weight.

~~~
Fede_V
Not completely in this case.

But, take Lockheed, for instance. They are notorious for running supply chains
that stretch across as many states/districts as possible so that whenever
there are any possible budget cuts, their lobbyists call up several
congressmen and talk about how many jobs in their district will be lost if a
particular program gets cut.

There are no evil people in this system. Lockheed is doing everything it can
to insure that it gets the maximum possible amount of federal funding. Each
congressman is doing whatever they can to keep well paying jobs in their
district. People vote for congressmen who can bring high status projects into
their district.

The problem is that the interplay between the narrow interests of each
individual player results in a system that's constantly stuck in shitty local
minima.

~~~
TomGullen
> There are no evil people in this system.

Plenty of corruption though, I'd count corruption as an evil.

~~~
Fede_V
Oh, absolutely. I'm just saying, even if everyone was doing everything within
the law, you'd still get suboptimal outcomes because of how the incentives
line up for all the players involved.

------
rdtsc
I see a lot of defense of NASA here and rightly so it is a "hacker news" forum
after all, what person here hasn't dream of being an astronaut at some point.
And then the article does say they were forced to build it against their
wishes...

But, NASA is guilty too. They increased estimated costs from $160M to $350.
And took 3 years too long. Said nothing when they were forced to finish this
project.

When the law that said "NASA shall complete A-3 project blah blah" passed this
article should have been written. NASA should have raised a stink and so on. I
don't remember ever hearing about it. Obama signed it. Nobody oposed. Work
continued. NASA as an agency is not innocent here vs mean ol beuarocracy from
Congress.

Think about it, if NASA wants people's support for space exploration, not
saying anything publically and continuing to follow ridiculous demands from
Congressmen, they are not helping their case. By association they are seen as
accomplices in the "waste of taxpayers' money"

~~~
brohoolio
Are you going to raise a stink about the people who are funding you?

A previous poster pointed out the N Dakota oil boom likely raised wages and
steel costs.

------
protomyth
"Jacobs Engineering Group, blamed changes in the design, plus unforeseen
increases in the cost of labor and steel."

I believe that. Given the project was supposed to be done in 2010 and all
those people who are good at this type of labor can earn some serious money in
the oil fields springing up in North Dakota and Texas, I can see some serious
increases in labor cost. We really need to start thinking about infrastructure
talents in this country.

~~~
patio11
Phrased another way: Congress elected to raise the costs on all Americans who
drive cars or use electricity in favor of reallocating industrial inputs
required to satisfy their desires to a project which doesn't support a space
exploration program we don't have.

I lose geek cred every time I say it, but NASA is not a science agency which
occasionally funnels objectionably high amounts of money to politically
favored firms. NASA is a funding mechanism for politically favored firms which
occasionally produces industrial biproducts which bear some loose relation to
research. If space exploration wasn't an applause light among geeks because of
science fiction, we'd have a strong consensus to defund the entire agency.

~~~
mcguire
Hey, it also serves to employ aerospace engineers! Keeping them off the
streets and out of trouble is worth a bit.

------
alexirobbins
This is just generally what happens when the government funds long term
science experiments. My favorite example is the $1 Billion (inflation
adjusted) MFTF-B fusion experiment at LLNL, which was completed the same day
the gov't canceled the project: 2/21/1986\. It was never turned on.

~~~
josephcooney
Any good counter-examples of private enterprise funding long term science
experiments?

~~~
alexirobbins
I do not mean to imply that pure capitalism is more efficient for scientific
progress, just that massive waste is common when the government funds
programs, and too often heart-wrenchingly so. Hopefully we can decrease it
with better policy processes for medium to long term investments, and a more
science literate population. In the meantime, there's a lot to learn from.

------
salem
I think it's pretty unfair to say that this facility does not fit within NASAs
new side-job of assisting commercial enterprise with vehicle development.

I'm sure that this facility would be useful to lease to aerospace companies
such as SpaceX and Armadillo that will want to QA and optimize their
second/third stage engines.

This facility could be a pretty huge competitive advantage to US space
industry.

~~~
kosmic_k
By the time that original program that justified the need of the facility was
canceled NASA had already made a substantial investment of time and money
building it. Only time can tell if this facility will help with future engine
development or not.

I don't have any expertise in Space & Aeronautics, but I'd love to hear from
anyone in the industry what they think about the completion of this facility.

------
cma
It seems more like a monument of a raised finger, the Congressional middle
finger to NASA monument.

------
markbnj
I'm not sure why something congress forced them to do is an example of NASA's
problems.

~~~
seanflyon
Anything that prevents NASA from putting its budget to good use is NASA's
problem.

------
VLM
In a numbers focused article, this line kinda creeped me out.

"It had to swing open to let the rocket engine in, then swing shut and hold up
under 40 pounds per square inch of pressure from the atmosphere outside."

~~~
jzwinck
In English it is all too easy to mishear "14" as "40". Given how much of the
article seemed to come from verbal sources, I imagine this is why that
happened. Still, careless.

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ssully
I thought NASA has been on a decent rise as of late? Maybe I am biased given
my love for their success with curiosity, but I feel like I have heard more
good then bad out of NASA during the last few years.

~~~
Bluestrike2
A lot of the good stuff (Curiosity, etc.) gets a ton of PR, but that doesn't
mean there aren't day-to-day problems that are massive impediments for NASA.
The mere fact that successive administrations get to come along and yank on
NASA's long-term planning like a dog on a choke chain is really damaging to
NASA's ability to actually break beyond LEO.

Until someone is able to marshal enough political power to force a change to
this constant interference (and protect them long enough to accomplish their
mission), NASA is going to continue to have trouble. Great engineers can still
do incredible things even with bureaucratic and political interference, it's
just so much more difficult than it needs to be.

------
avz
There are two perspectives when looking at any job: project objectives and
social utility.

The first sees a job as an effort focused on some project goals, e.g.
designing a car, building a house, curing a disease, finding Higgs, running a
restaurant, landing on Mars. The second sees a job as something simply done
for money: those who do it need the proceeds.

Politicians have a tendency to put the social utility above project
objectives. This explains situations where some jobs are equivalent to digging
a whole in the ground only to bury it back again.

It's sad to see NASA come to this, too.

~~~
crististm
There is no social utility in digging a hole to bury it back. Targeting social
utility would mean to run a business at break-even or even at a loss to
provide value as a side-effect to the community.

The cost of restarting tower building from a hibernate state would be
enormous. I think they did the right thing in continuing building even if the
immediate utility was lost. It's not like they will never need such a tower.
They can't use it _now_ and that's a different thing.

In perspective, the $300M do not compare to the $8B mentioned in the article.
Hey, they don't compare even to the budget of a box-office Hollywood movie
today. That should mean something.

~~~
avz
There is social utility in digging a hole to bury it back. The utility lies in
providing value as a side-effect to the community. The value is provided by
strengthening earnings of the diggers and reducing the unemployment in the
community.

What's missing is the project utility: nobody else needs the product.

It's a fair point that the test stand may be needed in future.

~~~
crististm
I've learnt a new word yesterday: sophism.

You can argue as well that breaking windows employs the glass makers and
destroying cars employs the car makers. Yes, starting wars as well because it
employs everyone.

You forget that, as a whole, the community is left without a window and the
money to replace it could have been used for something else.

No, there is no utility in breaking windows and in digging holes just to bury
them back.

~~~
avz
Your examples include destruction of property which negates their social
benefits of improved earnings and reduced unemployment.

Digging a whole is a metaphor for unproductive, but also not destructive work
where the social benefits are not negated by other factors.

~~~
crististm
Imagine then the following (stretchy) scenario: an isolated village on an
island.

Now the villagers start digging the hole in the ground. Mind you, digging
holes is tough business: they have to eat and someone must pay for the food.
If all of them work on the hole, who makes the food? But they are smart and
the project manager arranges for some of them to cook the food while the rest
of the village digs.

After a week the hole is done and after another few days the hole is filled
back.

Now they sit at the campfire and think by themselves what great two weeks
those were: they were employed.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
>After a week the hole is done and after another few days the hole is filled
back. >Now they sit at the campfire and think by themselves what great two
weeks those were: they were employed.

And how is this - or how is the original NASA makework - different to a
startup that burns through tens or hundreds of millions and then dies?

I suppose you could argue that the startup _might_ have succeeded, and at
least some people believed it would.

Some people believed the tower would be useful. Others knew it wouldn't be,
but still thought the cash infusion would be useful - either for them
personally, or for their community.

What _is_ the difference? Because if we're going to be asking questions about
the utility of makework and the social value of Keynesian welfare, we should
perhaps be asking about the actual social and economic utility of most start-
ups, and whether the fact that they're private sector boondoggles really does
make them any more economically efficient.

~~~
crististm
The difference is that the tower was built and it exists and can be used for
another project if not for the original one.

If you ignore corruption for a second (not that you should), the problem
remaining is the original project died without a replacement in the near term.
This looks surprisingly like a waste of money, since the tower has no
immediate utility. However, it has long term value and that is important.

Doing busywork would have amounted to building the tower and destroying it to
recoup the land value.

If corruption was involved, it should be investigated separately. But the
tower should not have been scrapped for this reason alone.

------
ianso
This is such a stupid framing to the article. The sixth paragraph states
clearly why it was built and it has nothing to do with NASA drifting - it was
being pulled:

"But, at first, cautious NASA bureaucrats didn’t want to stop the construction
on their own authority. And then Congress — at the urging of a senator from
Mississippi — swooped in and ordered the agency to finish the tower, no matter
what."

Why condemn NASA for cronyism and Congressional stupidity?

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marknutter
I hate to say it, but this is why I don't see us going to Mars within our
lifetime. At least not through NASA.

~~~
brohoolio
If they could fund a Mars mission over a 15 stretch, we could do it. Funding
needs to match the goal and it has to be long term.

~~~
marknutter
If the linked article is any indication, funding needs to vastly outmatch the
goal.

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p_eter_p
A persistent failing in the U.S. system is the ability of congress to
micromanage the minutiae of larger programs, all for pork barrel spending.
Things like the gasket problems on the Shuttle SRBs, and NASA in general being
spread all over the country are all related to every single Congressperson
trying to get a little something to take home. In a perfect world, they would
have to authorize money at an agency level and with no finer granularity. Of
course, if that were the case no money would ever be allocated at all...

~~~
SoftwareMaven
And this would be bad why? Snark aside, the federal government is out of
control with no accountability. I don't even know how they could be held
accountable.

~~~
p_eter_p
The short version is, I think one of the main things that separates, say, the
U.S. from the E.U. is the ability to shift vast quantities of money around the
country in the guise of federal programs. It's spectacularly inefficient, but
it also helps to set a floor on how bad any one area can get. If that's good
or bad largely depends on your personal politics.

------
danmaz74
"And then Congress — at the urging of a senator from Mississippi — swooped in
and ordered the agency to finish the tower, no matter what."

So it's not NASA's fault.

~~~
zack-bitcoin
NASA accepted government money. This is the consequence they have to deal
with. It is NASA's fault.

------
mrfusion
Why can't they use it to test other engines? Or rent it out to space-x?

------
byerley
Stop buying bullshit narratives against state funded science.

Rocket test stands are not limited to a single rocket model. The choice in
2010 was to spend $57m finishing a project that will undoubtedly see future
use, or to abandon a $292m investment with 0 return.

Look for SpaceX to jump on this opportunity since they already lease testing
facilities from Stennis.

~~~
greglindahl
SpaceX uses slight variants of their 1st stage rocket engines in vacuum, so
they don't really need this kind of testing. And this test rig is 10x larger
than SpaceX's current vacuum Merlin 1D needs.

~~~
maaku
This testing gets you valuable information about performance and stress
characteristics which can allow you to make improvements to the rocket, either
by changing its shape for better efficiency or by making it lighter where it
turns out to be over engineered. SpaceX hasn't been doing this testing yet
because it hasn't been necessary and building a test stand too expensive. Now
they could.

------
cowardlydragon
Where was it built?

Oh yes, the south. Bastion of bemoaning government size while masters of
government pork.

I'm just shocked it wasn't Texas.

------
whybroke
>"What the hell are they doing? I mean, that’s a lot of people’s hard-earned
money"

Yes that tower did indeed waste $1 of every US citizen.

As apposed to $3400 rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in a hundred year old
building which is spiffy because it's due to market forces.

