NASA's Finances in Disarray

mwolff writes "Yahoo News has an article about the 'financial disarray' NASA seems to be in after a recent audit showed horrible documentation of funding. 'As NASA sets course for the moon and Mars, the space agency's finances are in disarray, with significant errors in its last financial statements and inadequate documentation for $565 billion posted to its accounts, its former auditor reported.'"

Comments

How do we get $565 billion with a small budget?

[Anonymous Coward]

So their annual budget this year is $14 billion or so.

Where does the $565 billion come from?

$565 billion an overestimate?

[beeplet]

From the article:

Under the new system, Ciganer said in a telephone interview, errors that were discovered in the transition could show up multiple times in the accounting process: once as an erroneous credit in one column, then as a debit to delete the error, then as a credit in the correct column. By this reckoning, a $40 billion contract that stretched over nine years and several separate NASA centers generated $120 billion worth of entries, and these were turned over to the auditors.

If I understand it correctly, that paragraph would make it seem that the number $565 billion actually double- or triple-counts the amount of money that is poorly accounted for. Of course, $200+ billion is still not pocket change...

I'm wondering though - they don't actually say what part of that process was the problem. Making appropriate debits and credits to correct errors seems reasonable to me, but all I have to balance is my checkbook. Is there some other way to correct errors in the books? Or should NASA presumably have not been making errors to begin with?

Maybe they should have been using some of that $565 billion to hire better accountants?

umm

[HBI]

NASA's whole budget request for 2004 was 15.5 billion.

At that rate, it'd take them oh, say 40 years to save up 500+ billion.

Something does not compute.

Check it here.

I was going to say something about the editing, but what's the point? Like it's going to change at this late date.

4 of 5 orbital mechanics disagree...

[code_rage]

"Why not make space, or at least the space around the earth, the same as the air: the space above a particular country belongs to that country, space above the international oceans is open to all. Thus it would be necessary to have other countries' permissions before orbiting anything over them..."

This is completely impractical for everything except Geosynchronous satellites. Most satellites' orbits are designed to accomplish specific mission objectives, and if they happen to fly directly over (say) Burma, North Korea, or Zimbabwe that's just how it works. If you are interested in general orbit mechanics, you could consult Bate, Mueller and White's Fundamentals of Astrodynamics. More specifics about orbit mission design are in Wertz and Larsen's Space Mission Analysis and Design. Each is a classic.

Political problems: This would give every 2-penny tinpot dictator in the world license to put up a tollbooth in space. Should a scientific satellite that measures worldwide ocean wave heights have to get permission from said dictators to fly over their countries? How about search and rescue satellites? Telecommunications? GPS?

As to the issue of Moon resources... well I'm not too sure what sorts of treaties have been ratified, but I think it's a little early to worry about it. Even if there are tons of He-3 on the Moon we have no way to make use of it. Just about every other material resource on the moon (Al, O, Mg, etc) is in abundance on Earth. These resources will be useful for in-situ manufacturing, but economically not worth the candle here.

Re:compared to?

[ctr2sprt]

Just to give you an idea, the total amount allocated to the entire US military in 2001 was $299 billion. That same year, $219 billion was spent on Medicare. NASA's budget was $14 billion. (Source: White House OMB.) That's roughly comparable to Microsoft's revenues in a single year. (Source: The Wall Street Journal.) If the figure quoted in this article is right, it would be the equivalent of Microsoft's books being off by more than the federal government spends on Defense and Medicare put together - and more than it's spent on NASA total since it was first created.

An error of this magnitude is inconceivable. It really makes me think the figure must be $565 million, in which case this is pretty small potatoes for a big organization that's been around for a long time. (Lose track of $28 million a year - 0.2% of your budget - for 20 years and there's your number.) It certainly reflects inefficiency at NASA, but is there anyone, anywhere, who would be surprised by inefficiency at NASA?

Re:A government agency with financial discrepancie

[Undefined Parameter]

Let's be realistic, here; we're talking about the USA, where corporations are, by and large, getting off the hook one way or another left and right. Prominent examples of this can be found in Enron (barely a slap on the rist of those most responsible), Microsoft (a slap on the wrist, at most), Martha Stewart (convicted, but sentenced to a minimum security prison that seems to have been the inspiration for the no-security facility Sideshow Bob was sentenced to do time in), Halliburton (yet to face any sort of prosecution whatsoever, to my knowledge), and Wal*Mart (they find out in a self-audit that they were abusing labor laws... and the governments of those various states let them off after they promise to fix it).

I'm not sure which is more easily and quickly held responsible, but I'd still rather have NASA around, trying to do the job. I'd explain further, but my mind is all discombobulated from lack of sleep.

~UP

Re:faith-based accounting

[Anonymous Coward]

sending us (and the world) into a recession larger in real terms than even the Great Depression

I think it would be hard to argue that our current recession is larger (or worse) than the great depression. Perhaps if you look only at the raw number of layoffs it could look as bad, but obviously that is not an accurate representation.

I was working at Intel from 2000 - 2003, and can remember exactly when the economy started to go south. It was in the fall of 2000 (only 7 months after Bush took office)... We had just posted record earnings for the last quarter of over 8.7 Billion... and yet the same day our stock plummeted... and so did everyone else's. All of the sudden everyone realized that all this "infinite growth" crap that was flying around wasn't true. The bubble began to burst...the Do-com's began to fail... causing problems with all traditional Hi-tech companies such as Intel. It then spread into the telecom... because now nobody wanted to buy all that newly available bandwidth. Since the dot-comers were all broke now after being so overpaid... it began to have a peripheral effect on the economy in general, from food service and parking lots, to cars and housing. Then came September 11th... bringing the airline and tourism economies to their knees. Even though we have a fairly resilient economy... there were just too many sectors struggling now... and we entered a good sized recession.

Now I don't see George Bush directly involved in any of the events that caused the recession. I think it's a safe bet to make that even if Gore had been in office, the tech bubble still would have burst...simply because it was not based on sound economics. 9/11 may or may not have happened if gore were in office...I don't know if the extremists who carried out that mission would have been "appeased" in time to make a difference (I say appeased because that's the only thing that might have made a difference, If say Gore decided to pull all troops from Saudi Arabia, which is what UBL was really so pissed off about in the first place... but anyway Clinton didn't want close that Saudi base to the best of my knowledge, so I don't see why gore would want to)

( Side note: one could argue that Iraq was indirectly responsible for 9/11... UBL offered to defend the Saudis from Iraq when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and was eyeing Saudi Arabia... but his home country shunned him...especially since he had already been kicked out if the country by his own people at that time. The Saudis and Kuwaitis then ASKED for our help... so we came and kicked some Iraqi ass. Ya... the main reason why we helped was to protect our oil supply... but geewiz... its sure too bad that your country looks out for you and TRIES to keep the gas prices from getting out of control.
Anyway...UBL was now thourghly pissed at the US... not only because we were a non Arab country in a Holy Islamic land... but because he had been shunned by his own people... And the US had been the heroes rather than him and his band of gorilla fighters.
Hence... if Iraq wouldn't have invaded... UBL wouldn't have a reason to be quite so pissed off.)

All in all... I think the evidence points towards ourselves (especially the IT crowd) as the reason for the tech slump, and the following recession. How many of you knew that you were being overpaid for your work in the tech heydays... and yet you took the job anyway??? I know I sure did! Why would I turn down the extra cash?!?! After all I was a tech... Not an economist. And sure we liked to complain about our pointy haired bosses who made really dumb decisions... but hey... if they were dumb enough to pay us so much... we would be dumb enough to stick around. We were all guilty by association.

Ill I ask is that people TRY to be reasonable... I don't think GWB is the greatest prez... but it seems foolish to try to paste all blame on one man (or party).