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Can Rep. John Culberson Save NASA's Space Exploration Program?
MarkWhittington writes The Houston Chronicle's Eric Berger has published the seventh in his series of articles about the American space program and what ails it. The piece focuses on Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, who has two fascinating aspects. The first is that he is taking over the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA funding. The second is that he has a keen appreciation for the benefits of space exploration for its own sake and not just for his Houston area district.
Culberson wants to save NASA and the space program from his fellow politicians and return it to its true glory. He favors sending American astronauts back to the moon and a robotic space probe to Jupiter's moon Europa. He would like to enact budget reforms that take funding decisions away from the Office of Management and Budget and gives them solely to Congress. He favors a steady increase in NASA funding to pay for a proper program of space exploration. To say the least, he has his work cut out for him.
Culberson wants to save NASA and the space program from his fellow politicians and return it to its true glory. He favors sending American astronauts back to the moon and a robotic space probe to Jupiter's moon Europa. He would like to enact budget reforms that take funding decisions away from the Office of Management and Budget and gives them solely to Congress. He favors a steady increase in NASA funding to pay for a proper program of space exploration. To say the least, he has his work cut out for him.
As advanced SpaceX is, it doesn't compete with NASA (for now). NASA as the actual plan for their SLS while SpaceX only has ideas for now. At this point they are the best way to send cargo to the ISS and in a few year will be the best way to send astronauts in LEO, but if they want to go any further they're going to need a new rocket (stronger than the Falcon 9 heavy). This is coming from a fellow SpaceX fan by the way. Also, you could say taxe payer money is going to them bbecause NASA gave money to SpaceX for R&D of the manned capsule to ISS
Go to a modern well funded post office some time. They're incredibly efficient.
huh?
perhaps you live on a different world as I, but "efficient" businesses do not lose 1.9B USD every three months.
unfortunately, history has shown for at least 2500 hundred years that government bureaucracies always devolve into political quagmires, where empire building and ass-kissing trump sound business practices.
If you had actually bothered to read the article you linked to, you would have noticed that Congress is preventing them from taking cost savings measures the USPS wishes to implement. Congress controls the prices they can charge. Congress mandates six day deliveries. Congress prevents them instituting their own health insurance plan (which an organization the size of the USPS can easily do). Congress mandates pre-paying health and pension benefits many decades into the future (the only case of this occurring in the U.S. government, and also all but unknown in the private sector).
And then there all the Constitutionally-derived mandates for keeping unprofitable rural branch offices open, and delivering mail to every household everywhere, every mail-day. Things no private business will do.
When Congress's package of restrictions and controls essentially requires an organization to run a deficit, efficiency alone cannot turn the situation around.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj