Comments on: Report: NASA’s bad management of infrastructure projects routinely leads to cost overruns and delays

By: pawn

pawn — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 11:44:09 +0000

Lee, you are so funny. How much of your income is really yours? You pay dearly for all that central control and the fact that you call it transparent seems to give it some positive quality but knowing what is going on and having some control over it are not the same. You may even have less control over your government that we do. Both governments seem to be embracing immigration from the third world even though the citizens generally oppose it.

Not to mention you get little entertainment from your own space program.

By: pawn

pawn — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 11:33:37 +0000

pzatchok,

I was hoping you have read and considered the replies you have gotten wrt. your opinion that NASA is controlled by contractors. This is very wrong. The cost plus structure is what NASA has promoted as it is very effective at redistributing pork and not promoting innovation.

There is a very good summary of the politics that got us into the SLS misadventure here:

http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2021/09/decadal-survey.html

I hope you can find some way to change your mind on who is responsible for the mess of a space program we have today.

By: pzatchok

pzatchok — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 06:18:10 +0000

We have states with larger budgets than your whole nation.

Its just easier to change a small entity,

By: Lee Stevenson

Lee Stevenson — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 20:59:17 +0000

Just a fly by posting, I’m working crazy hours right now, so my posting , and indeed unfortunatly even reading time is limited… But a couple of questions for you… Discussion points more than questions, as I will try to interact, but I’m working like a horse for the next week or 2.
Given that you all believe that you live in the land of the free, the greatest democracy on earth, etc. How come your government manages to pork out so much tax payers money?, Don’t you guys have any independent oversight on the actions of your government?
And I don’t even try to understand your system of tax Vs return, but over here in Sweden, it’s all transparent, and centralised. I pay my tax, X percent goes to health care, X to social care, X to infrastructure, X to investment in business, X to foreign relief…. And if I don’t like the distribution, I vote for change. We have a multi party system, which usually means a coalition government, and a compromise, but the government broadly represents the will of the people.
If any government was feeding so much pork to corporate pie eaters, they would be called out, and voted out, or ot the very least be much reduced in power.
Perhaps it’s your political monopoly that’s to blame… A 2 party system is better than a single party system, but is it better than a more representative multi party system?

By: markedup2

markedup2 — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 16:22:33 +0000

{quote}
And yet, Americans don’t seem to notice.
{quote}
That’s the part that baffles me. How can anyone NOT notice? Yet these people exist in the 10s, if not 100s, of millions.

The Murray Gell-Mann effect only goes so far as an explanation. At some point, one must just shrug and admit that humans are idiots and even the gods despair in the face of man’s stupidity (Schiller, iirc).

By: wayne

wayne — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 15:52:26 +0000

a repeat from me, but appropriate….

Elon Musk & Akira The Don ?
-> “If You Don’t Make Stuff, There Is No Stuff” ?
(June 2020)
https://youtu.be/nA4Ya-yKJ0A
3:23

By: wayne

wayne — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 15:48:40 +0000

ref Flint and their water supply;
(have friends in Davison, which is decidely not-Flint.) ((total tangent- Michael Moore likes to say he’s from Flint, but he grew up in Davison. His lavish vacation home in Traverse City, is defitely not-Flint.))
Flint sadly, represents a lot of towns/cities in Michigan; Concentrated industrial production + unions + decades of democrat-controlled politics. The auto-industry collapses in the late 1970’s in Flint (to be off-shored, to be sure; plenty of blame to go around), and the tax base collapsed shortly there-after. Decades of lavish spending on everything but infra-structure, leads to a collapse of the infra-structure.
–It wasn’t the free-market libertarians that chose get their water from the Flint River Vs. getting it from Detroit. They balked at paying the ever-increasing rates from Detroit but simultaneously couldn’t really supply their own water.
They weren’t doing it to ‘save money,’ they did it on the cheap. Two different things!
The whole lead-contamination thing—Flint was advised by their engineering firm to treat their old piping with a chemical that seals the inside against lead, again they chose to ‘save money’ and skip that step.

Lex Fridman Podcast 178 (April, 2021)
Michael Malice / Yaron Brook:
“Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy”
https://youtu.be/Pl3x4GINtBQ
-> 4:25:18 (a challenge!)

By: Jester Naybor

Jester Naybor — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 11:02:20 +0000

Ayn Rand was the biggest buffoon of all.

While I don’t necessarily agree with every idea attributed to her, the basic message I get from Rand is that letting “the system” call all the shots does not serve the interest of the individual, and that the individual has to act to (1) secure their own interests and (2) limit the ability of “the system” to impose its will over you.

That is not buffoonish … not at all.

And I will add that the individual has to act, even if it requires more effort – and/or the assumption of risk – than simply letting “the system” decide and (maybe) deliver. We see this particularly in public education, where the operatives have gotten so accustomed to letting “the system” – i.e. said operatives – decide that they push back against anyone who challenges their de facto monopoly.

By: pzatchok

pzatchok — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 07:29:07 +0000

Nasa is run by its cost plus contractors.
They the contractors influence Nasa to propose specific designs and they then lobby congress to fund those projects.

Get rid of cost plus contracts and Nasa will again be in control.

By: wayne

wayne — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 06:42:07 +0000

Lex Fridman Podcast (October 2020)
w/ Michael Malice
“Ayn Rand doesn’t have all the answers, but she has all the questions…”
https://youtu.be/oC2nWeEhvcw
9:23

By: James Street

James Street — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 06:13:55 +0000

I liked Tucker Carlson’s analysis but I disagree with his conclusion. I don’t think we’re led by buffoons. I think we’re led by evil.

This 1 minute video of the Afghan pullout that Richard Grenell (former Acting Director of National Intelligence) posted isn’t as well known. It shows the piles of cash the State Department left behind for the Taliban. This was intentional as were the 100 billion of dollars of equipment and weapons.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1431279926460755971

By: Jeff Wright

Jeff Wright — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 04:57:48 +0000

And cost cutting buffoons poisoned Flint and would leave NASA sites. Ayn Rand was the biggest buffoon of all.

By: Jester Naybor

Jester Naybor — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 21:44:47 +0000

To my knowledge, no breakthrough has ever resulted from a Five Year Plan / Ten Yeat Plan / Twenty Year Plan .developed by a committee of risk-averse bureaucrats who have never read Murphy’s Laws of Combat.

And the buffoons had the gall to denigrate the last guy who halfway did right by the ordinary citizen while in public office, as … a buffoon.

By: Ray Van Dune

Ray Van Dune — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 21:24:02 +0000

Tucker Carlson said recently, “We are led by buffoons.”

Maybe because a buffoon is the only one that would want the job?

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 20:29:29 +0000

The article makes me think of a comment the late Senator Edward Kennedy said about the “The Big Dig” road and tunnel project in Boston that was estimated to cost $2.8 Billion in 1982 and finished for over $8 Billion in 2007 ($21.5 Billion adjusted for inflation).

Kennedy dismissed the incredible cost overruns because all that money “created good union jobs”. You see, oversight doesn’t matter and isn’t wanted.