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NASA Knows How To Party
doug141 writes "NASA spends between $400,000 and $1.3 million on a party at every shuttle launch, according to CBS. Select personnel are treated to 5 days at a 4 star hotel. This year alone, they've spent $4 million on parties. NASA asked for, and was given, $1 billion more from the Senate this year. NASA proponents argue it makes more sense to give money to talented, productive people in exchange for scientific knowledge, than spend in on unproductive people in the form of straight welfare."
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
While expensive, keeping the morale high at NASA means keeping the even more expensive astronauts alive.
The game.
They spend less than one tenth of 1% of their budget celebrating their continued technological successes. That's probably less than ANY private company anywhere. It's not like they're not getting stuff done. Sosetta
~Phil
Yes, taking care of citizens surely is the antithesis of "forward" progress. Oh, that silly congress!
I don't see the value in doing this for employees of companies like Boeing - and after every launch? And I'd love to see if it is worker bees. Probably what it is, is managers. I don't know that, but it would surprise me if it's not the case.
But in the big picture, it's not that big a deal.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The real problem is that corrupt Republican congressmen like Ney and Cunningham received millions of dollars in bribes while kicking hundreds of millions of dollars of business to their corrupt contractor friends.
And part of the reason it went on so long is the fact that Bush's Attorney General Gonzalez sacked the Federal Prosecutors who brought prosecutions against corrupt GOP pols (some were sacked for not bringing trumped up charges against Democrats).
And that is just the illegal corruption, there is also the legal corruption of billions of dollars wasted on 'defense' projects like the Osprey that simply do not work.
That said, the whole shuttle program is a farce at this point. The space station is pointless and should be shut immediately. Put the money in robotic exploration. Hubbel is worth the money and the risk, the ISS is not.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
There are probably no girls at the party
\u262D = \u5350
Should the government spend $1 million patting the backs of those already more "valuable", or should it use that money to make those who are less "valuable" more "valuable"?
Let's see your contributions.
On the other hand, the TSA hosted a $500K party for its top employees a few years ago. I interact with TSA employees about 100 times per year, and they are generally lazy, sloth like goons. They are a disaster that does nothing to improve air safety.
In the real world, a company run like the TSA wouldn't have a spare $500K to throw a party because they would be out of business, replaced by a more efficient contractor that does a better job. There is no mechanism for rewarding achievement and punishing failure in the government. Nearly all programs (yes, even under Bush) live on and expand despite proven failure.
The problem with NASA throwing parties for its deserving employees is that it justifies throwing parties for the far more typical ineffective government hack that should really be let go.
I add this last bit because if the wisdom of the free market indicates that a little money thrown away is a good investment, how can those low life in government be so arrogant as not follow suite.
I certainly agree that it would be good if everyone would be deny themselves every available luxury. My food would be cheaper if the owner of my local restaurant would not own a hummer, not to mention my tax bill. My city could afford better education if they did not pay for downtown luxury offices and did not subsidize luxury sports arenas. School taxes would be much lower if we did not have luxury classrooms with lights and air conditioning. But everyone of us knows human nature is to do better work when on is appreciated, and when the environment is conformable. And if it takes .1% of the project budget to encourage the people to do a better a job, that might be a good investment. I would sooner see the parasites that leech off the education and military budget cut off than a single nasa party be canceled.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Four million spent on parties in one year and now they want a billion dollars? Why not just force them to not hold pre-launch parties for the next 250 years so they can have the billion they want?
The news media is just hyping this out of proportions; we're spending close to three billion a week in Iraq - most of it wasted on dishonest and inefficient contractors - and we raise eyebrows at a few million spent on rewarding people who work in a difficult and thankless job?
Okay, I just RTFA, and here's the real scoop:
There is an awards banquet for flight safety held, apparently, at each launch, which occurs about three times a year. The awards cover 750 of what is likely tens of thousands of employees working for NASA and the contractors in the shuttle program. We're talking about a 1.5M awards banquet for an $8B/yr operation, or somewhere in the 0.01% range. Now I'm not saying that it's not a waste, though I'm curious where the seating costs of $20,000 for the shuttle launch come from, but the costs are not all that outlandish. Remember that one shuttle launch can really mean 4-16 different payloads, so there are a lot of people involved.
Go figure out what a similar party costs just about anywhere. Flying someone in coach is going to run about $300-500, minimum, if you book in advance and choose non-refundable. 4 nights hotel (we assume you are travelling on day 1 and day 5, day 2 is the banquet, day 3 is the launch, day four is a cape tour and the show), $120/night is bare minimum in a metro area unless you like sleeping with roaches. You get a night banquet at a banquet hall - nice dinner, dessert, a little entertainment. Hell, my high school reunion was $80 a head, and it was pretty basic. $150 is probably more reasonable for the service. One night you get a free show. Wow. Somebody call the fun police. Cirque tickets are $200; a broadway production in an off town is $80. Transportation to/from/between - you aren't going to walk to the cape from Orlando - would you have preferred we rented them a car for $300?
Where am I?...$300 plane + $480 hotel + $150 banquet and awards + nice show $120 + $300/2 for the car (we'll make them share) = $1200. Now, they came up with 400k-500k per banquet with 750 people...that's only $675 a person. I'd say they got a pretty good deal. $675 for 5 days and 4 nights plus a shuttle launch, dinner, and show? That's a freakin' bargain if you ask me.
Anyway...you go find out what the budget is for the awards banquet of any 10,000 person company. Go find out what just the CEO and his/her spouse spend. This really will look like chump change.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Query: How does paying welfare to someone who has no intention of ever being productive make make them more valuable? By keeping them alive to leech more money?
I'd rather my tax money go towards throwing parties for NASA employees than towards food stamps for joe-blow white trash McFatty who uses them to buy cigarettes and alcohol on the way to the unemployment line to pick up his (or her) check for being worthless.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
ME as manager at NASA: What do you engineers say about the launch of this mission.
Engineers who know what they are doing because that is what they been trained for AND are required to stand behind if they want those letters after their name: We say X.
ME as manager at NASA: Okay, we do X.
Doesn't sound too hard, can I have my fat salary and golden parachute and parties now?
The two disasters were warned against by NASA owns personel, had the managers listened to their rocket-scientists then those 'accidents' would not have happened.
Do you want to know what I think about especially the first 'accident'? Do the math, cancel the mission and you get some bad press from an audience that doesn't care. If it goes wrong, you get massive public sympathy and can hopefully call it an accident with a straight face.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
While expensive, keeping the morale high at NASA means keeping the even more expensive astronauts alive.
Yah, except if the article is correct, most of the people at this party are NASA contractors. Why NASA is spending money on wining and dining contractors instead of the other way around, I don't really understand.
On the other hand I'm not sure I just immediately accept the truth of this article. It's written in a rather sensationalist tone, and presents NASA's side of the argument as a one sentence reply, no doubt taken out of context. That doesn't mean this isn't accurate of course, it's just a bit suspicious.
AccountKiller
Sad that Slashdot chooses to be relentlessly negative about NASA, while touting the lilliputian efforts of Russia and China. The STS-120 repair mission on the ISS I saw last week was about the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Russia or China won't be able to build something like that for 50 years! NASA deserves a party.
an ill wind that blows no good
My father has worked on the booster rockets for 30 years as an engineer. This summer he was flown to Florida to watch a launch. They put him up in a hotel, had a receptions (where there were a hundred or so other folks), and in a small way showed their appreciation for the work he and the others had done. As I mentioned, he has worked there 30 years, and this was the first time he has been invited. There are hundreds of thousands of people who work on the shuttle program. I think it's a nice gesture.
How does participating in work activities for at least 30 hours a week constitute "no intention of ever being productive?" How does one use non-transferable food stamps to purchase items which the stamps don't cover, since stores won't accept them and they're much harder, if not impossible, to trade to someone else? How does losing your job in the past 26 weeks - the cutoff for unemployment benefits in most states - mean that you will always be worthless?
Oh, right, you're just another Slashdot libertarian fucktard. Carry on.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
It's the usual nonsense. Propaganda masquerading as journalism. It's a rather transparent ploy, usually the work of rank amateurs. Say, for example, Department X is doing scientific research on a vaccine for [disease] that involves testing on rabbits. In order to make them look as bad as possible you say the following:
"Dept X kills baby bunnies!"
Then, in order to give the appearance of fairness, you find (or just fabricate) some kooks who generally support the works of Dept X who will assert something fun, like the following:
"Supporters of Dept X argue that killing baby bunnies is often quite pleasurable, especially if it is done slowly."
See? Both sides have been presented, and it's obvious that Dept X is the spawn of Satan. Surely you're not on THEIR side, right?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Yes, taking care of citizens surely is the antithesis of "forward" progress. Oh, that silly congress!
Paying out welfare does not contribute to the forward progress of our country. The judgments of many people are hindered when they have a fall back plan that they are entitled to for simply being United States citizens. For example, my sister had a job as a dental assistant and decided to quit because she would be eligible for food stamps, subsidized housing, and she could live off of the child support given to her by her ex-boyfriend. Contrary to popular wisdom, a lack of welfare contributes to the progress of a society by encouraging work and discouraging poor decisions.
... The IRS spend $6 million on cocaine and hookers alone.
God Be Gone
There is some room for debate on the meaning of "taking care of citizens" in terms of acute and chronic problems.
We can all agree (even some serious libertarians, I think) that in the acute case of a natural disaster, we like a government that is equipped to take care of pressing needs.
It's those chronic concerns, where the concept of "victim" occasionally becomes ambiguous, that a bring about the bulk of the debate.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Because NASA's business is stars, with billions of stars you'd think NASA could manage more than 4 stars in the hotels.
'NASA proponents argue it makes more sense to give money to talented, productive people in exchange for scientific knowledge, than spend in on unproductive people in the form of straight welfare.'
Yes, of course it makes more sense to reward productive people than unproductive ones but that isn't the issue. Those productive people are being given a million dollar party in exchange for nothing, they got their salaries and great benefits in exchange for their knowledge. There are numerous places that money could go that have nothing to do with welfare. It could be left in the hands of the productive people who earned it. It could be used to raise the ridiculous federal poverty level a few dollars so that those who are BOTH productive AND poor in this country can breath a little easier and maybe scrounge together enough to start to make something of themselves and easily repay that debt in taxes later. It could be used to partially fund a federal medical/prescription/vision/dental insurance program that is a fundemental public service, not welfare.
Why NASA is spending money on wining and dining contractors instead of the other way around, I don't really understand.
Contractors wining and dining federal employees is illegal.
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
What's worse is that if they didn't spend that money, they would have had their budget reduced the next year. If they happened to have been otherwise efficient, they would be penalized the next year for that efficiency. You can't win, really.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'd love to see NASA actually hire (not contract) the best and brightest to create the next generation flight vehicle. Build it all in house, and contract out nothing. If we could just declare a war on moon terrorists and get hold of $100-$150B in funding over the next 6 years, I'm pretty certain we could do a pretty damned good job.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
tell that to congress...
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
What we are seeing in the comments above is an emotional response. The gut for many says "NASA good!" and so parties must be good, or harmless, or justified. The thing is, that's the way it works with every constituency in government. Is Social Security good? Maybe they should have a party! Is the Center for Disease Control good? Maybe they should have a million dollar party too! If you want to be rational you've got to rise above this stuff. You have to decide what exactly is good about NASA and praise them for doing that ... and not praise them for falling victim to the classic hubris of a 30 year old governmental institution. NASA is not good when it is being bad.
When the contractors run your systems, build your parts, and provide vital support, well, how's that different from keeping the employees happy?
It's fairly routine for key consultants to be treated exactly like the true employees when it comes to celebrations.
Maybe. That doesn't mean they should be spending a million bucks on a celebration, airfare, etc.
If the real issue was fiscal responsibility, the reporters would be sorting the budget by largest to smallest amounts, and then examining each line.
I agree completely. This article isn't about fiscal responsibility, it's about "look at those guys that have a great big party and you don't! They used "your" money for it!" That's what all that "coconut fried shrimp, spring rolls, shrimp wrapped with bacon, 5-6 desserts" was all about, even though those big "luxuries" likely only cost a few thousand dollars, if that.
That's kind of a sad attitude, and I'm a bit sick of it. Do I think this is a waste? Sure. Do I think this is something to be really concerned about and start rolling heads and instituting dumb reforms? Hell no. In any organization there's always a certain amount of "waste", i.e. money spent on something that's not easy to justify, and might have been better spent elsewhere. Just keep those percentages low, and I'm happy.
AccountKiller
That was your first error. Unemployment insurance is based on continuing job searches while welfare isn't to the same extent. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 (commonly called the Welfare Reform Act although to my knowledge no such act is in existence) made sweeping changes. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_reform
"One of the bill's provisions was a time limit. Under the law, no person could receive welfare payments for more than five years, consecutive or nonconsecutive. Another controversial change was transferring welfare to a block grant system, i.e. one in which the federal government gives states "blocks" of money, which the states then distribute under their own legislation and criteria. Some states simply kept the federal rules, but others used the money for non-welfare programs, such as subsidized childcare (to allow parents to work) or subsidized public transportation (to allow people to travel to work without owning cars).[Haskins 2006; Blank 2002]."
The only motivator is the fact that one can only get it for a cumulative 5 years. After that, tough luck for you!
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
How does one use non-transferable food stamps to purchase items which the stamps don't cover
You buy tangible goods with the stamps and trade those goods (for about 1/4 of their retail value) for black market items.
This is a regular thing you could see for yourself if drove in from the burbs. You'll want to practice hiding your obvious unsuitability from the locals though, because they just traded most of their half-month's food supply for an 8 ball and you don't want to look like a second income to them.
I was raised in a military family, I've been to more parties than I could count. The miltary probably spends a hundred times more per year. And where does the money go?
Caterers bringing the food get paid. They got their food from somewhere, so whoever that is gets paid. That food was trucked in by someone, who gets paid. Farmers supplying the food get paid. And thats just the food.
People seem to think its a total waste of taxpayer money.
NASA has very few actual employees -- most everybody is a contractor. When I worked at Ames, we had a small handful of NASA employees in the building, with several hundred contractors. I'm not sure why NASA works this way (it seems less efficient to me), but I suppose it is easier to hire and fire and this way they don't have to deal with complicated government employment rules.
then why aren't the many parties that the rest of our government throwing that, more or less, belittle this NASA spending by tenfold under question and the same type of scrutiny?
It has always bugged me about the way the news media loves to point out just how much NASA is spending when ever some thing is launched, repaired, or once in a while, happens to fail. The text usually goes some thing along the lines of "new NASA satellite launched today. total cost $3.5 million taxpayer dollars". Now if every time one of our fine, upstanding, morally proper leaders threw a shin-dig and it was publicized in the same manner, I think we'd have a better understanding that NASA's spending is just a drop in the bucket.
Lay off. It's a dead horse topic. NASA doesn't get nearly as much as what it should for space exploration, long term research growth, and room for stability, yet the Kazillions of dollars we've dropped on this dumb-ass war in Iraq seem to go un-noticed by and large.
hrmph.
This is just cover for the stargate program
this is certainly a contestable claim. esp. since i'm sure most of the party attendees are upper management and thus haven't contributed scientific knowledge in years.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
I'd hope that there are investigations if there are many parties going on. I mean, the average family pays $7,300 in federal taxes (business week, April 2007). You need 1M/7.3K = 137 families working all year to pay for this. Is this party worth the sweat of 137 families? How many more parties are there?
My thoughts exactly. Giving people something for nothing rarely ever makes them want to move forward. You could probably solve a significant amount of problems with welfare if you just required a minimum amount of community service hours in order to get it.
Company parties often make stressed and overwhelmed employees feel appreciated and improves the overall attitudes at an organization. I would say chances are your organization has low morale if you don't at least all celebrate now and then in some form or another. That said, what's missing in this article is how many people attend. If it's one of the tiny parties we're normally use to then sure a million seems like too much but if it's for a large organization like NASA then I wouldn't be surprised if that works out to be a resonable amount. Parties arn't cheap if a large number of folks attend.
I personally believe that we should throw a massive party for some of the most intelligent, hard working, well planning individuals on the planet who can successfully deliver delicate instruments into orbit on what amounts to a large bomb, and still get them home safely.
Sounds better than throwing a huge party for a bunch of crappy musicians to give awards to each other for recycled music.
meh
If your total budget is in the billions, and you spend just one percent on entertainment, your entertainment budget is in the tens-of-millions.
People are people, for cryin' out loud. At companies I've been that don't have an entertainment budget, executives understand that and pay out of their own pockets for parties. It boosts morale. It also switches people into a different mode of thought where little nuggets of ideas come from. You might spend 95% of your time there just BS'ing, but then somebody comes up with an idea that they wouldn't have come up with if they had just been sitting in a cube or a regular meeting.
Nevermind that though. Even if you never discuss a single aspect of the business at a party, you are a human being. As such, you have certain needs, like eating and seeing other human beings. It has to be paid for, one way or another.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
And why does your sister get to act as Exhibit A in your argument for what a typical welfare recipient's life situation is. The fact is, you want to deny help for everyone because a few people take advantage of the system. Hell, why isn't your issue that the system just needs to be fixed? Do we just halt all programs that aren't working to optimal level instead of fixing them? Society and social progress isn't binary.
Welfare, as we implement it, is morally wrong. It hurts the very people it pretends to help. In truth this is intentional. The people who call for welfare know that it is a poison pill that will lock those who receive it into their wretched existence, thereby guaranteeing a perpetual underclass that the left can use for propaganda purposes.
You can't fix broken people. Some people are losers and always will be no matter what you say or do. These people are a very small minority. Then you have other people who have the potential to be something other than losers, but only when environmental and cultural factors are sufficiently good. There are a fair number of people like this. Welfare, and the culture of dependency that it creates, locks these people into being losers. People who might otherwise live modest but productive and happy lives are stuck in a syndrome of idleness and dependency from which no good can come. As I said before, this is entirely intentional. Creating losers whose existence can then be blamed on the larger society gives the left a powerful propaganda tool that they then use to attack capitalism and the liberal democracy upon which it is founded.
Of all the things that this nation lacks, opportunity is not one of them. Poverty is a temporary condition for those who are willing to work hard and make wise decisions. Wealth is not assured, but economic security in a safe and sane community is all but guaranteed.
That being said, what NASA is doing needs to be looked at. There are times when it is necessary to schmooze various people. NASA pays private companies for a lot of the things that it needs to function. Being able to schmooze some of the heads of those companies can make a difference when it comes to the terms of contracts. If spending a million entertaining some people saves 30 million on contracts, then that is money well spent.
However, if this money is being wasted, then that needs to stop. Wasting tax money hurts the country twice over. First when the money is taken out of the economy, and second when it is not put to good use.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I don't know about you, but I've done the maths. My "tax burden" in Norway was about the same as it is for me now in the UK, and both of them are pretty much the same as what it would cost me to live in areas in the US I'd be willing to consider when adding in private medical insurance and private pensions. In fact, many areas in the US would end up being more expensive for me. Why? Because what you consider "pickpocketing" is nothing more than insurance paying out. Insurance that you'd be paying for regardless if living in a country like the US unless you're too poor to afford it.
The difference is that really rich people are worse of in Norway (as in, you need to make well over a million kroner before it makes much of a difference) and really poor people are pretty much screwed in the US. For average earners and up to upper middle class, the differences aren't all that great.
Sometimes, it's appropriate to spend significantly; for example, care for the seriously mentally-ill or severely disabled. (And yes, many mentally ill and disabled people can work, though may require some degree of assistance).
However, unlimited welfare, especially when spread over several generations, seems to have some very negative social consequences. I'm thinking (as an example) about third-generation unemployment in Belfast slums -- "housing estates" if you prefer. These are people who've never known a parent or even grandparent who's been employed, and who've lived off welfare for generations. This is a pretty monstrous thing to do to human beings, in my view: to turn them from free human beings into life-long wards of the State.
Sadly, this is something that some of a liberal (I'm not American, so don't view it as a dirty word) persuasion don't seem to grasp. They genuinely seem to believe that those who oppose unlimited welfare are either greedy, stupid, or evil. Or perhaps all three. To them, it's either a full-blown welfare state or Dickensian workhouses. The idea that life isn't binary, and that there might be alternatives between extremes seems unfathomable.
(I don't accuse the parent of this perspective; he notes "I do think we need some welfare reform, though, to keep it from habitualizing the system". Indeed.)
As for the actual topic, tax-payer funded parties at NASA are definitely bad optics, but the arguments in favor seem not unreasonable.
Holmwood.
Yah, except if the article is correct, most of the people at this party are NASA contractors. Why NASA is spending money on wining and dining contractors instead of the other way around, I don't really understand.
Well mainly it's because contractors wining and dining government agencies is illegal. It's called kickbacks and bribery.
I used to plan conferences and although $400,000 to $600,000 sounds like a lot, isn't really for meetings of a few hundred people (although it's definately first-class). These meetings are called "parties" in the article, but I'm sure there is a lot of technical information being spread around and contractor interaction that would not otherwise take place. That is very valuable for NASA and I don't see any other way to effectively do it than meetings.
What really bothers me though, is the last paragraph of the OP! There was nothing in the article along those lines (a jab comparing useful, productive people to useless, unproductive people who receive government assistance.) That was pure editorial propaganda by the OP.