OMB Deputy Director Will Head NASA

Baldrson writes: "UPI reports "President George W. Bush has selected Sean O'Keefe, Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to head NASA." In his prior position, Dr. O'Keefe reviewed and gave testimony before Congress, critical of the budgetary overruns of NASA's International Space Station." (Of course, the ISS isn't all NASA's.)

Comments

Well, not ALL of it...

[xyzzy]

Only the 45% that we paid for and built, and the 45% that we paid Russia for and they built... I guess the other 10% belongs to someone else!

Re:Well, not ALL of it...

[JabberWokky]

I guess the other 10% belongs to someone else!

I've always been critical of "percentage of work" figures - is that percentage of mass of final product? Percentage of budget (in that case, do you count the R&D by countries that haven't had an active space program)? Percentage by number of modules?

Especially in a figure that uses number of modules, something like the above makes sense. Even Canada has ISS units installed (IIRC, a very slick docking and manipulation arm). Sure, the bulk is done by NASA and Russia (note I didn't say America and Russia... I'd love to see everyone from Boeing and large pharmacuticals to TLC and McDonalds kicking in modules), but there are other countries participating, even several who have yet to add a module. And if *I* know that (who isn't really interested in the ISS), someone quoting figures like you could have spent five minutes doing the research.

--
Evan

Re:Well, not ALL of it...

[xyzzy]

Ok, wiseass :-)

Check out the following PDF:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/assembly/com po nent_view.pdf

You will note that there are on the order of 35 modules. All but 8 of them are US or Russian (78%). The 8 remaining are among the smallest physical modules in the station -- two arms, two labs, two "logistics modules" and some miscellaney.

I would be willing to guess that my numbers are largely correct by most any measurement you care to name: percent of work, percent of modules, percent of budget (which is what the article was talking about -- remember, it's only us and the Russians actually sticking that stuff up there).

It's worth noting that the other nations taking part in the ISS are Japan, Brazil, Canada, and the EU and Italy. Since Italy is part of the EU, I'm not sure why the distinction here, but there you go. Japan is the 3rd biggest contributor, at 4 modules.

Re:Well, not ALL of it...

[JabberWokky]

I would be willing to guess that my numbers are largely correct by most any measurement

Except political measurements. Sure, it's easy for you to pick numbers that make sense, but when you're trying to make minor contributors feel important, you can be (and are probably paid to be)... creative with the numbers. That was my point: the "percentages" are vague, and are picked for political reasons. Canada might have only contributed a tiny bit of the total, but you don't come out and say that when you want them to keep contributing... you also don't want Americans to wonder "Why is it the ISS if we're building it all?". Quite frankly, look into Russian source of funding and especially completion funding - the US has shoveled more money into Russia than may be reflected in those numbers.

My whole point is that those numbers are probably influenced by politics than logic. Which doesn't mean that they are any less important - if you don't think so, put ten coders togther on a projectl two teams of five. Make one team five people who like each other and get paid decently, and make the other five people who despite each other and are paid crap. That's micropolitics, and countries like having their egos fluffed just as much as people.

--
Evan

Re:At last, someone with financial knowledge

[Fenris2001]

but as a taxpayer fed up with seeing my dollars flushed down NASAs ever increasing budget black hole

Please, I'm tired of hearing this same BS every time /. posts a NASA-related story. NASA's budget request for FY2002 is about 14.5 billion dollars (from NASA's CFO). Compare this with a total federal budget of almost 2 trillion dollars (from the Office of Management and Budget ).

NASA's "budget black hole" is less than one percent of the amount your government spends. We taxpayers spend more money on farm subsidies than space exploration.

Re:At last, someone with financial knowledge

[Man of E]

I seriously doubt someone with financial knowledge is the solution to "disasters like the Hubble distorted lens, and the Mars lander crash".

On the other hand, I think what you refer to as "NASAs ever increasing budget black hole" is a good place for him to make a difference. Every time someone posts a NASA related story on /. there are hordes of replies about the horridly expensive monkey-wrenches and toilet plungers that NASA spends its money on. I don't know how much of that is true, but there's bound to be some grain of truth to it. So it might not necessarily be this guy's financial knowledge that makes a difference, but simply a commonsense money-saving mindset. Perhaps he can learn from team that built the budget satellite that was posted here a few days ago.
Still, don't forget he is a government official.

Re:At last, someone with financial knowledge

[LMCBoy]

"Maybe now we can put disasters like the Hubble distorted lens, and the Mars lander crash behind us"

Let's not forget that your first "disaster" was eventually fixed. The loss of the Mars probes was regrettable, but I wouldn't classify them as disasters, either. The thing is, it's extremely hard to send a probe to Mars. Goldin's "Better, Faster, Cheaper" initiative was implemented in direct recognition of the probability that deep space missions will occassionally be lost, so by having many smaller missions instead of few large missions, the loss of individual missions, when (not if) they occur, will not be disasters to the overall program.