Back in college, my senior seminar covered NASA and its bumpy history. By the time the class was over, I was so disenchanted with the idea of traveling into outer space that I haven’t followed any of the news for some time (many moons). In fact, I was really not surprised with all the finger-pointing and poor communication that occurred throughout the Columbia incident (or tragedy or expected accident or calculated risk…) this past winter.
My term paper covered the history of the Hubble telescope and after studying just how much miscommunication there was in terms of financing, planning, developing, building, executing and maintaining it, the Shuttle disaster came as no surprise (and it’s really not morbid either, you come to expect it after seeing just how many important memo’s get thrown into wastebaskets and are never seen by the necessary engineers or directors).
After the Challenger disaster, Richard Feynman (I should blog about him more often) of the Rogers Commission, pointed out that reliability of the Shuttle (in terms of a complete disaster) was not 1 out of 100,000 but 1 out of 25 – the amount of launches it took to ultimately destroy a fully equipped and manned craft. Columbia showed 1 out of 100 (it was the 2nd complete loss in 125 launches) – through means by which are still being discussed and investigated.
Imagine if the airline industry had a track record of losing 2 out of every 125 flights. Or even 1 out of 100, they would probably go out of business faster than you can say Amtrak. Of course, NASA has a benevolent philanthropic friend in high places (the State) and that is topic for another time.
Today I decided to visit my good friend SpaceDaily.com, it treated me good in the past and I expected no less. And just as I suspected a nice little gem awaited me (hello gem): Explaining 30 Years of Fudge. This article (or more of a blockquote + commentary piece) shows one inkling of the obfuscation, deceit and tomfoolery that abound within NASA and various other agencies.
You get what you pay for and in the case of the Manned Space Program (all of it including the ISS), you got the inefficient State reallocating money through a realpolitik manner which ultimately ends in a resounding lose-lose situation (spare me the “If we can get to the Moon we can do anything” rhetoric please). X-Prize anyone?