Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!edat!root From: root@edat.UUCP (Superuser) Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Subject: Re: NASA: A Can-Do Agency Becomes A Can't Do Bureaucracy Message-ID: <21@edat.UUCP> Date: 23 Jul 90 22:46:58 GMT Reply-To: root@edat.UUCP (Superuser) Distribution: na Organization: Electronic Data Technologies, Inc. Lines: 80 In article <8824@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> you write: > >"NASA: What Goes Up -- A Can-Do Agency Becomes A Can't Do Bureaucracy" > >(from the Los Angeles Times Opinion Section - Sunday July 22, 1990) >(by Gregg Easterbrook - contributing editor to Newsweek and the Atlantic) With all the back and forth about NASA, I guess it's time for my two cents. 1) Bureaucracies by their nature are interested in propagating their existance, rather than necessarily achieving their charter. This in particularly true in the social agencies, but even in the military bureaurcracies there is constant pressure to justify your existence. Academians call it publish or perish? It is no different in the military, NASA, or American Business. Management (Congress, maybe even your own boss ) do not usually evaluate the merits of something based on its pure technical aspects. Hence, the common management approach is to 1) shelve it and see if they scream about it. If they do it means it is important. 2) Assume they asked for too much money and cut at least 10% off the top. If they accept that it means they over budgeted in the first place so cut another 10% off the top. This behaviour always results in a game of under estimates to get the project started, so when it needs more money, management is stuck with giving it more funding to get a return. Management then retaliates by giving less money then you really need, hence you are forced to implement a grade C answer instead of the grade A. I've seen this in the Government, big business, small business, mom & pop shops. It is myopic indeed to assume these are NASA only problems. 2) Somewhere, long ago I read an anonomous (?) quote that I feel summs up the necessity of space. We are explorers, Forever moving outwards, Or we die inwards. It's a haikue, cinquain, something like that. Regardless, I think clearly shows the necessity of space, both robot and manned. That space by its nature is deadly and cannot be predicted with the certainty of the Big Mac Constant (that each and every one is prepared identical in each and every McDonalds around the world), requires that only grade A solutions provide the extra leeway sometimes needed in space. Therefore A solutions should be the only only solutions effected, regardless of the cost. If there isn't enough money, then maybe we should wait until there is. Afterall space isn't going anywhere. No matter what technology has been derived from space, potential technologies, materials research, ecology satellites that go up (maybe this should be in philosophy), politicians, scientists, engineers, and the public all alike need to understand that exploration is one of the most basic qualities of mankind. It is why insects are studied, oceans delved, animals brought back from extinction, stars looked at in telescopes, diseases conquered. The quest, the exploration of all that there is, for the sake of knowledge, is fundamental to who and what we are. Only we ask why (or so we know). That men and women have died in the quest is an inseparable aspect of the quest, but it can never stop it. Others will die (Panama Canal, >20,000), and so we cannot squander their investment. We must go forward with dumb boosters, robots, shuttles, space stations, moon bases, Mars landings, Challengers and Voyagers, no matter what the cost is in dollars, or in lives. Because sometimes you've done all that you can, and all that is left is to say yours prayers and light the candle. (geez this soap box has suddenly gotten high, time to rappel off) "If you ain't fallen, you ain't pushin'"-- Randall Grandstaff Brian Douglass Electronic Data Technologies 1085 Palms Airport Drive Las Vegas, NV 89119-3715 Voice: 702-361-1510 X311 FAX #: 702-361-2545 uunet!edat!brian