NY Times readers Ponder NASA's future

[PB666]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/25/science/space/nasa-next-mission.html?_r=2

This sounds very much like the discussions we had here a couple of months ago.

I can see three category of responses

1. Dreamers. many of these readers seem to fall into the category of having resorts in LEO, on the moon or Mars. A second category of dreamers are under the impression that interstellar travel will be as difficult as New Horizon space plan would have been planning 80 years ago.

2. The counter are the practical missions, such as revisitng the old targets but with advanced technology and new goals. In cluding missions to land on the moons of gas giants, etc. Of course ice fishing on Europa, well lets just say Tyson has either benn hitting the bong or doing a little space politics.

3. The there is the Science minded types. you know the kind, ones who would study a pile of excrement in preferabce to a pile of pancakes. They want to know if we could seed Venuses atmosphere with CO2 sucking biotes or study the various differences of organic molecules or protoplanetary iron cores in asteroids. Their goals are less lofty than a mars mission they don't mind the short haul low dV pickup and return as long as it is appreciably bizarre and has a noxious or chemical smell to it when heated.

[wumpus]

Sorry, I didn't read the article. Maybe later. I've just been thinking about something from a conversation with a NASA tech roughly a year ago.

I hear a lot of grips about NASA, and most especially the SLS. I think I've even made a few comments about the SLS being a "money target". NASA made it specifically for Congress to want to fund. Sure, there are problems with funding, pork, and other issues, but I figured I would stop and talk about who is "running" NASA.

By "running" NASA, I don't mean the guy/gal who is on the third picture you see when you walk in the door (next to Obama and Biden), but the GS-[really high] types who control all the funding committees that handle the money below the $100,000,000 dollar mark that Congress deals with. Here's a hint: NASA went on a hiring binge around 1962-1969, then has pretty much shrunk vs. inflation ever since. Many of the bright young lads from the 1960s are still there, and they don't plan on retiring (although they probably have the few pensions left in the USA). A friend of mine tried to pitch a proposal for single-sign-in: once the word "password" came up the deal was shot down. The committee in charge would not hear of anything involving a password (even to remove all other passwords), there were already too many [personally I think if you are relying on passwords, you are already sunk].

Surely, these folks aren't the ones grinding out the logistics for things like Curiosity? No, NASA has been paying companies to supply contractors to act as NASA employees in all but name. These folks do the same job, but the companies that "hire" them come and go. It is a weird system, but the people of the Washington DC area are pretty familiar with it. They get all the stuff done, but don't expect them to be the ones who make the decisions. If you want a job with NASA, this is probably where you will wind up (although if you somehow score a GS-type job with NASA proper, you are set!).