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NASA's $349 Million Empty Tower
An anonymous reader writes: In a scathing indictment of NASA's bureaucracy, the Washington Post documents a $349 million project to construct a laboratory tower that was closed as soon as it was finished. From the article: "[The tower was] designed to test a new rocket engine in a chamber that mimicked the vacuum of space. ... As soon as the work was done, it shut the tower down. The project was officially 'mothballed' — closed up and left empty — without ever being used. ... The reason for the shutdown: The new tower — called the A-3 test stand — was useless. Just as expected. The rocket program it was designed for had been canceled in 2010. ... The result was that NASA spent four more years building something it didn't need. Now, the agency will spend about $700,000 a year to maintain it in disuse. ... Jerked from one mission to another, NASA lost its sense that any mission was truly urgent. It began to absorb the vices of less-glamorous bureaucracies: Officials tended to let projects run over time and budget. Its congressional overseers tended to view NASA first as a means to deliver pork back home, and second as a means to deliver Americans into space. In Mississippi, NASA built a monument to its own institutional drift."
It's simply not realistically possible to always perfectly plan multiple complex multi-year projects, when every your budget gets cut a little further, and you never know -- it's a roll of the dice -- if or how much it's going to get cut by -- then there is the secondary knock-on effect that of the small budget that remains*, the managers need to very carefully decide where to constantly try shift things around to try keep remaining projects going. The rocket program canceled in 2010 was probably canceled due to budget cuts. NASA's budget has consistently been cut, what, every year for the past 15 years? You can't entirely blame NASA - nobody can plan properly under those circumstances. Nobody, not you, or me, could end up not wasting any of it as a result of the constant shunting around.
Also, *all* large organizations have at least some expenditure that in hindsight was wasted. Hindsight is always 20/20. Look at the R&D allocations for any large organization, public or private, and you'll always find plenty of projects that went nowhere - whether it's an IT company or a mining operation or a shipyard or energy utility etc.
* NASA budget is less than 0.5% of the total federal budget. We're really going to nitpick over this while literally trillions get regularly poured into completely wasteful military destruction? We're being played and manipulated by articles like this - look carefully who *benefits* from articles like this that attempt to portray the real bad guys (spending-wise) as those who take less than 0.5% of the budget.
My other UID is three digits.
senator bob: I want to fund a NASA mission to mars. heres a budget rider for whatever they need, in my state.
NASA: ok, thanks. we'll start on this 25 year plan. we need to test some rockets first.
senator ted: NASA wastes tax dollars and the mars mission is a terrorist anchor baby that I dont understand. STOP working on this now and start working on a public/private partnership in my state. heres a congressional mandate. you're studying asteroid mining now because i saw a movie about it and it had my favourite actor in it.
NASA: uh....okay. mission aborted. **shuffles papers** looks like we're going to mine...uh...something.
Private company: thanks for giving us all the free rocket designs and code. uh, mission accomplished and because asteroid mining isnt profitable we're just going to do a defense project with it. defense sells real good.
NASA: wait...what?
Senator ted: good job but i cut your budget because I had a bad dream about Terrorists and now i think all government research is secretly communism.
Senator Bob: What the hell are you guys doing with that old communist rocket monument you made in my state? i havent seen the lights on in a month. can you do a mission to the moon again? I miss stuff from the 60's that im familiar with
NASA: uh...wat?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Another red state represented by fiscal conservatives!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Since when was Ayn Rand a rocket scientist?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Dysfunctional congress forces NASA to build something it doesn't need. Journalist blames NASA for dysfunction. Media is full of idiots.
This was forced on NASA as a pork barrel money grant by the Republican senators,
This passed through both houses of congress and the presidents branch. I read the story and saw what was attempted here in terms of blame, but the reality is that the Constellation shutdown was passed by congress, and the A-3 pork project was passed by Congress. Attempting to pin this on a single senator from Mississippi is disingenuous at best.
You want some accountability, look up which senators voted for this and have a history of voting on pork.
After Challenger, the House Ways and Means Committee basically forced the ASRM onto NASA even though they didn't need it. Billions were spent on the Yellow Creek facility because of one congressman, Jamie Whitten, and it's now abandoned. Pork-barrel politics has been around since well, politics but that doesn't mean we have to like it or put up with the system that enables it.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
It was probably part of some massive omnibus spending bill. They can't line item veto bits and pieces of it without shutting down the entire government. It was probably added by one or a small group of legislators as pork for their district. Oink.
Little in return?? Why just look at all the generous aerospace contractor donations this project generated for Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker. You call THAT a FAILURE??
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
In this case the "poison pill" was Republican Senator Roger Wicker from Mississippi who attached an ammendment to NASA's funding bill requiring them to finish constructing the tower.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
NASA isn't the only agency to be forced to spend their money on horrible projects. The military has many instances of getting things they don't want because Senator X wants pork for his district or trying to close down an unneeded facility only to be informed that Representative Y is forcing it to stay open because that facility means jobs which means votes for Representative Y.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I don't know why you sigh me, but I doubt you have any idea how it is to turn your back on a already started multi-hundred million dollar contact. It's not as walking back in to the car dealer and saying "sorry, I changed my mind on the sports car... I need a mini van instead". Penalties are often so high it is cheaper to do exactly what they did (build and save for future needs) than cancel the project. And before you sigh at the concept of penalties and go all "omg tax payer money", the companies involved must invest a lot of time, money and energy to build something like this. More importantly, a company has to reject other project to bring such a major work to end. A project cancellation of this order without warranty and protection would most likely ruin even a stable and established company.
Wrong. If a bill comes up that says "NASA, you must stop spending on this project" one senator can put a hold on the bill, preventing any further action until the senator removes said hold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'd not be complaining about the pork of merely finishing the tower: if it was designed in a non-wasteful manner it ought to not matter that the program it was designed for was shut down--it ought to be usable for testing any rocket needing to operate in roughly the same environment. Thus, if it isn't, it was pork regardless, while if is properly designed then we have something to use later which will also hopefully cut down on time (and opportunities for budget cuts to strike) for future programs.
Therefore, either its entire existence is pork, or we simply have a stage (and some expense) removed from future engine design projects...and it's only wasteful if we don't plan to ever need to test such ever again.
So, really, it is either end-to-end pork or infrastructure we hopefully want regardless.
Or maybe they didn't put enough outs in the contract with the builders for termination. It's possible they were contractually obligated to finish building it because they never thought anything might be cancelled.
NASA didn't decide to build that; a Republican senator from Mississippi forced through the budget amendment even though it was pointless. Apparently stimulating the economy down there with some completely useless waste of resources is more important than actual space research.
Blaming NASA for it is just adding insult to injury - what an asshole reporter.
Yeah, it's hard to see why the article frames this as an indictment of NASA's bureaucracy, given the article explicitly says a senator from Mississippi explicitly forbid them from stopping construction. This is just another reflection of how money is more important than reason in Congress these days.
Don't worry. I'm sure congress will do the right thing and point to this wasteful spending as a reason to cut funding to NASA.
I stole this Sig
In the 1980s when I was in the rocket business, we once un-mothballed a lab complex that had stood idle since the 1960s. Its most interesting feature was a pair of gigantic waldoes, which could pick up huge, heavy objects while an operator manipulated controls from an elevated glass observation room. Incredibly cool, precisely machined hydraulic art.
After we removed the owl-shit covered tarps, unwrapped the many layers, removed the final thick coat of grease, and flushed the old fluid with new, everything worked perfectly.
That building had never been used before. It was half built when the government project that required it was canceled, but my employers wisely continued on the project and mothballed it as soon as it was completed.
20 years later we used it extensively and AFAIK it is still in use. If not, they will have mothballed it again for the future.
If NASA makes a minimal effort to keep the tower useable, it will be used in the future, and this will have been a wise investment.
"Work harder! Millionaires are dependent on YOU!"
FTFY.
Cause then it'd be like $1 and nobody would care.
Also, see dupe for other info
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
... and the makers of the rules under which NASA operates? Congress. ... and the ones that set which projects NASA may or may not pursue? Congress.
Seems pretty obvious to me, it's not an engineering problem.
But Healthcare, oh the government can run that without corruption. And education, there's no pork barrel nudge nudge wink wink shit going on. Infrastructure with the Teamsters, why it's pure as the driven snow! And tax collecting, not a smidgen of corruption there, Obama has assured us and that's all I need! Global warming/cooling/er CHANGE the Federal government is the only solution. National Energy policy, there's no possibility of any corruption, why hardly any money is involved. Nuclear plants? Only the government should do that, they are the most qualified...
Coming up next on Slashdot a story about how Big Government solutions are needed to save us all from ourselves. Passionate Progs will be ripping the small government folks, telling them how stupid and ignorant they are.
The headline should read "American public continues to believe socialist fantasies despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary"
Oh wait, that will NEVER HAPPEN.
Murphy was an optimist