Eminent officials say NASA facilities some of the “worst” they’ve ever seen

Buildings at Johnson Space Center in Houston are among the worst at any NASA facility.

See full article...

 

[panton41]

How can NASA ”compete with the best” when they implement DEI Hiring Policies?

Because that doesn't matter in any way, shape or form.

Oh, my NASA is hiring the most competent employee, not the whitest, straightest, male one...

Seriously, fuck off you racist, sexist, homophobic piece of living human shit.

 

[czx234]

Should NASA (THE government ) really be building anything anymore ? Should they transition back to being a Research agency ? Take care of the facilties , Charge for the use of such ? Support commercial space, The government does not build 777s, 737s or even piper cubs , They dont design fighter planes, (they do set the specs. and that does not go well sometimes) Space X is going to Mars I believe that, IF the STINKING EPA lets them. Nasa will get everyone Killed. Government never gets better or more efficient, THE BEST ENGINEERS need to go to space x and blue origin and whoever else will pay them, Send the government scientists to NASA to Research, I THINK they are still good at that

 

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

To be fair in the US it's more like "a 40% minority of voters who happen to live in states over-weighted in the Senate and Electoral College."

I live in California. My vote is worth less than 1/3 as much as someone in Wyoming's.

That weighting is necessary. Without it, California, New York, and Texas, would be the only states that matter at the federal level. The rest of the country would effectively not exist. Don't complain too much, you still have the most seats in the House.

 

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Should NASA (THE government ) really be building anything anymore ? Should they transition back to being a Research agency ? Take care of the facilties , Charge for the use of such ? Support commercial space, The government does not build 777s, 737s or even piper cubs , They dont design fighter planes, (they do set the specs. and that does not go well sometimes) Space X is going to Mars I believe that, IF the STINKING EPA lets them. Nasa will get everyone Killed. Government never gets better or more efficient, THE BEST ENGINEERS need to go to space x and blue origin and whoever else will pay them, Send the government scientists to NASA to Research, I THINK they are still good at that

NASA is very good at research, and their Jet Propulsion Laboratory is second to none at designing and building spacecraft. Most of their problems are because they aren't getting the support they need from Congress but are instead saddled with monstrosities like SLS. So yes, they should be building things, so long as they are the right things.

NASA has always worked with private industry. That's part of their job. That the stale old guard companies are in process of slowly being replaced with new blood doesn't reduce NASA's value. If anything it increases it, because NASA is who these new companies go to for advice and to be mentored. That's what NASA was created for.

SpaceX has benefited enormously from working closely with NASA, and their Mars ambitions will be best served by continuing that relationship.

 

[Markkf]

To be fair in the US it's more like "a 40% minority of voters who happen to live in states over-weighted in the Senate and Electoral College."

I live in California. My vote is worth less than 1/3 as much as someone in Wyoming's.

I’d be happy to cut California into three or four states.

 

[Gonzaga man]

Blue Origin seems to be better at building facilities than rockets so far at KSC. They are impressive facilities.

Blue Origin has a very nice facility in Huntsville and they have leased one of the big test stands at MSFC.

MSFC is located inside Redstone Arsenal, an Army facility. NASA is allowed a set amount of real estate. If they want/need a new building, they have to give up or demolish an old building.

NASA also spends a lot of money on environmental cleanup but I'd rather they do that than build another shiny building.
https://www.nasa.gov/emd/restoration/

This is where TCE (trichloroethylene) is being distilled from underground and collected before being sent to the incinerator.

NASA also has FRED (Facilities and Real Estate Division)
https://www.nasa.gov/fred/
If you scroll to the bottom of this link: https://www.nasa.gov/fred/documents/operations-and-maintenance/

there are final reports that are germane to this thread:

NASA Admin Buildings Final Report
NASA Comm Buildings Final Report
NASA Propulsion Buildings Final Report
NASA Space Science Buildings Final Report
NASA Warehouses Final Report
NASA Wind Tunnels Final Report
FT16 Deferred Maintenance Report

 

[OrvGull]

That weighting is necessary. Without it, California, New York, and Texas, would be the only states that matter at the federal level. The rest of the country would effectively not exist. Don't complain too much, you still have the most seats in the House.

Those states have 89 million people out of a total of 330 million, not even close to a majority. But without it Republican votes in California and Democratic votes in Texas would start mattering; as it is those people are disenfranchised. People within a state don't vote as a bloc, it's only the system we've set up that makes it appear so.

 

[Bosslard]

Because that doesn't matter in any way, shape or form.

Oh, my NASA is hiring the most competent employee, not the whitest, straightest, male one...

Seriously, fuck off you racist, sexist, homophobic piece of living human shit.

Are you really trying to pull a "I know you are but what am I"? DEI is bad precisely because it means NOT hiring the most competent employee. If it were purely about hiring whoever is most competent, then race, sexual orientation, and gender would be completely irrelevant.

Also, assuming that someone is racist, sexist, and homophobic just because they are against DEI is ridiculous. Projection I guess? And getting THAT mad about someone not liking DEI? What is wrong with you? Hopefully this is the post that earned you a ban, because I really hope Ars doesn't support behavior like this (although the Ars community apparently does, based on your upvotes/downvotes, which is really disappointing; I expected more from this community).

 

[OrvGull]

.

 

[Torbjörn Larsson OM]

Here is an outside expert opinion:

"This report is a wake-up call for NASA and political leaders," said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Planetary Society.

"It identifies critical systemic issues that are already threatening NASA's ability to pursue its ambitious program in exploration and science, issues that have been felt but not quantified until now. We have a 20th century infrastructure for a 21st century space program."

But this seems odd:

“I think it’s the committee’s consensus view that the United States would be best served for its future by continuing to have engineering prowess in NASA and not have the agency just become a funding pass-through or a contract monitor," said Kathy Sullivan, a retired space shuttle astronaut and former administrator of NOAA.

Buying launching and crew capabilities leave missions and science.

But mostly, if the US military branch can best serve its country by buying instead of producing military products, why couldn't US space branch?

 

[Torbjörn Larsson OM]

Ars mods officially anti-diversity now. Good to know.

You are perhaps reading too much into moderating activity, remember the web rule of assuming the nicest interpretation. Moderators are famously anti-inflammatory. [Disclaimer: I enjoy Ars.]

 

[rbryanh]

Among all rich nations, as a culture and an economy, America is astoundingly bad at maintaining infrastructure. We're like babies in a cradle waving our chubby little hands and feet at any whatever chiming, sparkly new thing floats by, all the while slowly drowning in the accumulation of our own filth.

Consider the U.S. inland water way system. It's a backbone of the economy without which the nation can't survive. Millions of tons of materials, billions of dollars, everything, and everyone depends on it. It involves a great many damns, every one of which can kill thousands of people and do billions of dollars of damage if not cared for. It was built in the early 21st century and designed to last for a few decades at most. It's falling apart. We've waited until it's quite literally in ruins, to slowly, badly, and inconsistently begin to examine some of its problems. We'll likely wait until its failure causes almost inconceivable harm before we'll rebuild it at a thousand times the cost of maintaining it. Then we'll go back to ignoring it.

There are fundamental flaws in a system that not only permits, but guarantees such a level of waste, stupidity, and destruction. We use the individual disasters to generate ad clicks, but ignore the larger machine that determines the quality of our lives.

 

[OrvGull]

You are perhaps reading too much into moderating activity, remember the web rule of assuming the nicest interpretation. Moderators are famously anti-inflammatory. [Disclaimer: I enjoy Ars.]

Anti inflammatory, but only in one direction.

But I erased the post, I don't feel like getting banned today.

 

[Markkf]

Are you really trying to pull a "I know you are but what am I"? DEI is bad precisely because it means NOT hiring the most competent employee. If it were purely about hiring whoever is most competent, then race, sexual orientation, and gender would be completely irrelevant.

Also, assuming that someone is racist, sexist, and homophobic just because they are against DEI is ridiculous. Projection I guess? And getting THAT mad about someone not liking DEI? What is wrong with you? Hopefully this is the post that earned you a ban, because I really hope Ars doesn't support behavior like this (although the Ars community apparently does, based on your upvotes/downvotes, which is really disappointing; I expected more from this community).

There are lot of jobs that don’t require “the best” candidate. Just a qualified candidate. Nobody is saying a DEI hire is unqualified.

 

[DDopson]

There are lot of jobs that don’t require “the best” candidate. Just a qualified candidate. Nobody is saying a DEI hire is unqualified.

There's no such thing as a "DEI hire" at any of the large companies I've worked for, all of which had various DEI programs. All candidates went through the same interview process and had the same hiring bar, regardless of their ethnicity / gender / etc. The DEI programs mostly focused on things like making sure the office was a welcoming environment, or various outreach programs, offering trainings, computing statistics, etc. At big companies, there's an army of people working on recruiting and HR, so the idea that >0 of them would be focusing on DEI-related topics is ... why is that at all surprising?

One of the DEI-related innovations has been to strip the names and genders out of interview feedback, preferring to say "the candidate" in place of gender-reveaing pronouns, as this makes it easier for the hiring committee to weigh the candidate's feedback objectively without involuntarily taking their gender into consideration. Which is the exact polar opposite of Bosslard's partisan talking points.

In contrast, my wife, who's a laywer, worked at one of the "big law" firms where one of the partners would routinely hold Friday afternoon scotch socials that were only open to the male members of the office, presumably due to some personal views on women drinking hard spirits. Being excluded in this way made it incrementally harder for the women in that office to advance their careers by building relationships with the senior parters in an intimate setting, hearing the latest informal gossip about what the partners ar thinking, etc. It was an unfair disadvantage that did nothing to help the firm at its core mission. My wife is an excellent lawyer and that sort of attitude was one factor in her decision to leave that firm. Their loss. That's the sort of thing that DEI efforts aspire to fix.

 

[Lithios]

I’d be happy to cut California into three or four states.

Lemme guess, 3 red and a blue?

 

[The Wonderful Wizard]

There is a real disdain for "technocrats" or "good-government" candidates in politics.

I suspect that’s largely because whenever anyone comes into government as a non-political technocrat it almost always seems to end up with austerity, reduced wages and conditions, and life getting worse in general.

Kier Starmer’s promise to let people forget about politics was a different way to try to sell the idea of being a party of good governance, but since he’s also promised to make everything work better without spending any more money and several of his ministers are deeply in bed with PFI lobbyists I wouldn’t put any money on the state of UK public services being better in 10 years even if they get re-elected.

 

[The Wonderful Wizard]

They also don't get the pension costs, the health costs and the risks sit on SpaceX rather than the tax payers.

While Elon had moments of idiocy even before the drugs really got too bad, the people actually doing the bids for him would have priced in all those risks, with a sufficient risk margin and so on. That means the government is still paying for it, it’s just bundled into the contract.

The us government has a much lower cost of money, a much larger risk pool, and so on so for equal expected benefit to the workers the government is inherently cheaper (which is why the right likes to force government entities like the USPS to pay extra for their pension obligations, fragment the different agencies into individual risk pools, force them to borrow on the private market as if they were standalone businesses, and so on).

 

[Markkf]

Lemme guess, 3 red and a blue?

I think it would be more like 1 red, 2 blue or 2 each.

 

[MichiCanuck]

This reminds me of how NSF equipment research grants are handled. You can get money for a nice new piece of equipment, usually imported, but you can't get any money to pay for people to use it. After 5 or 6 years, you have effectively a piece of junk with nobody around who knows how to use it. Next new faculty arrives, they throw the equipment out and the cycle begins again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

[Albino_Boo]

While Elon had moments of idiocy even before the drugs really got too bad, the people actually doing the bids for him would have priced in all those risks, with a sufficient risk margin and so on. That means the government is still paying for it, it’s just bundled into the contract.

The us government has a much lower cost of money, a much larger risk pool, and so on so for equal expected benefit to the workers the government is inherently cheaper (which is why the right likes to force government entities like the USPS to pay extra for their pension obligations, fragment the different agencies into individual risk pools, force them to borrow on the private market as if they were standalone businesses, and so on).

Last the US paid $658 billion in debt interest last year. This year its projected to be $892 billion. Thee current debt pile is 36 trillion, 123 % of GDP. The debt dynamics is unsustainable.

 

[DDopson]

Last the US paid $658 billion in debt interest last year. This year its projected to be $892 billion. Thee current debt pile is 36 trillion, 123 % of GDP. The debt dynamics is unsustainable.

Great, so if we're going to focus on the <0.3% of the federal budget that's spent on space-related activities, I suggest that we cancel the SLS program that is burning through several billion dollars a year. That would free up the funds to take care of NASA's aging facilities and to deliver that fully assembled lunar rover to the moon in place of the mass simulator that replaced it.

 

[OrvGull]

One of the DEI-related innovations has been to strip the names and genders out of interview feedback, preferring to say "the candidate" in place of gender-reveaing pronouns, as this makes it easier for the hiring committee to weigh the candidate's feedback objectively without involuntarily taking their gender into consideration. Which is the exact polar opposite of Bosslard's partisan talking points.

For similar reasons, we don't allow photos on resumes and, once candidates are selected for an interview, they all have to be asked the same questions.

In contrast, my wife, who's a laywer, worked at one of the "big law" firms where one of the partners would routinely hold Friday afternoon scotch socials that were only open to the male members of the office, presumably due to some personal views on women drinking hard spirits. Being excluded in this way made it incrementally harder for the women in that office to advance their careers by building relationships with the senior parters in an intimate setting, hearing the latest informal gossip about what the partners ar thinking, etc.

There are similar issues in academia. Male faculty members tend to form cliques that exclude women, so the women eventually get fed up and leave. Then, since there aren't any women on the hiring committee, the men end up only hiring other men. It's not that there aren't qualified women, it's that they're never even considered.

 

[mmilenko]

Sorry folks, all the russophobia money is going to Ukraine these days.

 

[Albino_Boo]

Great, so if we're going to focus on the <0.3% of the federal budget that's spent on space-related activities, I suggest that we cancel the SLS program that is burning through several billion dollars a year. That would free up the funds to take care of NASA's aging facilities and to deliver that fully assembled lunar rover to the moon in place of the mass simulator that replaced it.

Once again nobody other than a tiny minority care about space. If the SLS gets cancelled the money won't go to NASA.

 

[DDopson]

Once again nobody other than a tiny minority care about space. If the SLS gets cancelled the money won't go to NASA.

If cancelling the SLS meant that the money would be packed into barrels and set on fire, I don't think I could differentiate that from the current outcome. At least I'd enjoy watching someone try to burn $40-billion worth of currency notes.

I just don't take seriously anyone who wants to cull NASA's science or maintenance budgets "because the deficit" when they aren't even bringing up the porktastic billions spent building a rocket that has no obvious purpose and is unlikely to influence the long term exploration of space in any material ways other than as an overpriced crew transport to a pointless gateway that enables the Artemis astronauts to board a spacecraft that could have done all of that work solo. In the Artemis plan, the SLS isn't even delivering any equipment to the moon, merely the human meatbags who have to get on the real spacecraft to actually go all the way to the moon, a spacecraft that flew to the moon mostly empty with a hundred tons of surplus cargo budget.

The only caveat to this story is that the HLS isn't specc'd to have the propellant or heat shields to return from the Moon back to Earth, but really, we have to spend 95% of the program budget solving THAT problem? Not the lunar landing, which is treated as an afterthought?

 

[Albino_Boo]

If cancelling the SLS meant that the money would be packed into barrels and set on fire, I don't think I could differentiate that from the current outcome. At least I'd enjoy watching someone try to burn $40-billion worth of currency notes.

I just don't take seriously anyone who wants to cull NASA's science or maintenance budgets "because the deficit" when they aren't even bringing up the porktastic billions spent building a rocket that has no obvious purpose and is unlikely to influence the long term exploration of space in any material ways other than as an overpriced crew transport to a pointless gateway that enables the Artemis astronauts to board a spacecraft that could have done all of that work solo. In the Artemis plan, the SLS isn't even delivering any equipment to the moon, merely the human meatbags who have to get on the real spacecraft to actually go all the way to the moon, a spacecraft that flew to the moon mostly empty with a hundred tons of surplus cargo budget.

The only caveat to this story is that the HLS isn't specc'd to have the propellant or heat shields to return from the Moon back to Earth, but really, we have to spend 95% of the program budget solving THAT problem? Not the lunar landing, which is treated as an afterthought?

They will make cuts to unpopular things 1st. There's no votes in space.

 

[DDopson]

They will make cuts to unpopular things 1st. There's no votes in space.

Great, so cut the SLS. I won't miss it.

 

[C64 raids Bungling Bay]

Well, yeah. 95 percent of the politicians who actually control things don't give a damn about space anything. For them, NASA is a vehicle for delivering pork and grabbing headlines. Actually making things work is boring.

Most of congress is attorneys, which means they are basically uneducated.

 

[paulfdietz]

If cancelling the SLS meant that the money would be packed into barrels and set on fire, I don't think I could differentiate that from the current outcome. At least I'd enjoy watching someone try to burn $40-billion worth of currency notes.

And burning currency wouldn't be a bad thing. After all, the government is constantly taking old currency out of circulation, destroying it, and print new notes. What's the problem is when the government spends money it doesn't have.

 

[Grayleaf]

Sorry to break the news to anyone, but outsourcing has always been a thing. Even the Apollo program was hugely supported by big contractors. Additionally, Congress has held the line on pay increases for federal employees and limited increases of fed billets over time. NASA feds are indeed oversight. This has been the case for ULA, Starliner, SpaceX, the Shuttle program, and many other NASA contracted activities.

 

[DDopson]

And burning currency wouldn't be a bad thing. After all, the government is constantly taking old currency out of circulation, destroying it, and print new notes. What's the problem is when the government spends money it doesn't have.

Yeah, I know. If it's just currency, then we can always print more. Which is why it's less wasteful! (Also, I didn't think anyone would call my on my macro-economic hand-waive : )

 

[paulfdietz]

Yeah, I know. If it's just currency, then we can always print more. Which is why it's less wasteful! (Also, I didn't think anyone would call my on my macro-economic hand-waive : )

You sometimes hear naive space fans say space spending is perfectly fine because all the money is spent on Earth, not launched into space.

To which I respond, "they should send me a billion dollars. I promise I'll spend every one of them here on Earth, not in space. I'll be a public hero; they should put up statues for me."

 

[orwelldesign]

I’d be happy to cut California into three or four states.

We should rebalance the states every fifty years, or something.

I mean, I know that's actually a complete non-starter, but our administrative units should have approximately the same number of people in them.

It's just an accident of history that California is so vast, and it really makes the "democracy" part of our Democratic Republic into something of a joke.

I know there's lots of history in the states, especially along the eastern seaboard, to the point where people identify with their state of origin -- and when the country was started the various states were all very different.

But that's no longer the case. They're not that different any longer. They're all Walmart and Chipotle and Ford and Toyota and excepting Utah, there's not huge religious blocs that were one of the primary differentiators back in 17xx.

Is this a practical solution? This might not even be a coherent idea; it's certainly not a solution as set forth. But it is an idea that needs exploration,

..

As an example: North Carolina is about the same size as San Diego County. They're the same order of magnitude, at least. North Carolina has one hundred counties, each with their own county supervisors, the administration that comes with, jails, etc. There's so much duplication as compared to San Diego that it seems a little insane to this outsider. The county in which I live? ~100k people. With twenty or so "cities," a few of which pay a mayor to be the mayor of a city... that is smaller than my high school.

Our mayor is a great dude. Hi, Evan. We're even friends! But it's fucking weird that he's got a full time job, when the principal of Poway High School is responsible for more.

 

[Albino_Boo]

We should rebalance the states every fifty years, or something.

I mean, I know that's actually a complete non-starter, but our administrative units should have approximately the same number of people in them.

It's just an accident of history that California is so vast, and it really makes the "democracy" part of our Democratic Republic into something of a joke.

I know there's lots of history in the states, especially along the eastern seaboard, to the point where people identify with their state of origin -- and when the country was started the various states were all very different.

But that's no longer the case. They're not that different any longer. They're all Walmart and Chipotle and Ford and Toyota and excepting Utah, there's not huge religious blocs that were one of the primary differentiators back in 17xx.

Is this a practical solution? This might not even be a coherent idea; it's certainly not a solution as set forth. But it is an idea that needs exploration,

..

As an example: North Carolina is about the same size as San Diego County. They're the same order of magnitude, at least. North Carolina has one hundred counties, each with their own county supervisors, the administration that comes with, jails, etc. There's so much duplication as compared to San Diego that it seems a little insane to this outsider. The county in which I live? ~100k people. With twenty or so "cities," a few of which pay a mayor to be the mayor of a city... that is smaller than my high school.

Our mayor is a great dude. Hi, Evan. We're even friends! But it's fucking weird that he's got a full time job, when the principal of Poway High School is responsible for more.

California is running a $68 billion budget deficit and North Carolina is running a $ 1 billion budget surplus.

 

[The Dark]

Most of congress is attorneys, which means they are basically uneducated.

No longer true. Only 30% of the House and 51% of the Senate have law degrees. The House has more businesspeople (founders, owners, or C-suite executives) than lawyers (31% to 30%, although there could be overlap between the two if someone is both). They're still less common in the Senate, but overall there are 183 congresspeople with law degrees and 162 that are businesspeople, constituting 34.2% and 30.3% of Congress respectively.

 

[The Dark]

We should rebalance the states every fifty years, or something.

I mean, I know that's actually a complete non-starter, but our administrative units should have approximately the same number of people in them.

It's just an accident of history that California is so vast, and it really makes the "democracy" part of our Democratic Republic into something of a joke.

I know there's lots of history in the states, especially along the eastern seaboard, to the point where people identify with their state of origin -- and when the country was started the various states were all very different.

But that's no longer the case. They're not that different any longer. They're all Walmart and Chipotle and Ford and Toyota and excepting Utah, there's not huge religious blocs that were one of the primary differentiators back in 17xx.

Is this a practical solution? This might not even be a coherent idea; it's certainly not a solution as set forth. But it is an idea that needs exploration,

..

As an example: North Carolina is about the same size as San Diego County. They're the same order of magnitude, at least. North Carolina has one hundred counties, each with their own county supervisors, the administration that comes with, jails, etc. There's so much duplication as compared to San Diego that it seems a little insane to this outsider. The county in which I live? ~100k people. With twenty or so "cities," a few of which pay a mayor to be the mayor of a city... that is smaller than my high school.

Our mayor is a great dude. Hi, Evan. We're even friends! But it's fucking weird that he's got a full time job, when the principal of Poway High School is responsible for more.

Probably simpler would be removing the cap on the size of the House and implementing the Wyoming Rule (states get one Representative for every multiple of the population of the least-populated state). Under the 2020 Census, that would increase the House to 574 members, with only 9 states not gaining at least one seat. It doesn't change how states have significantly different sizes, but I think changing that would be a much harder sell and require a lot more reorganization than simply changing the number of districts in most states.

 

[sixstringedthing]

I understand you point perfectly well, it's just wrong. In the real world there's limted resources and you can't fund everything. That means cutting something more popular or raising taxes which is unpopular with those that pay them. Even if you did raise taxes the public think that health spending, paying down the debt or defence spending is more important. Once again just because you think something doesn't mean everyone else is going to agree with you.

You're talking complete sense. The fact that I find it unpalatable and disappointing is irrelevant. Especially since I'm not a US citizen.
I also appreciate the corrections regarding NASA's budget during Apollo. At the end of the day, my personal feels are pretty irrelevant in terms of US politics and NASA's budget allocation/funding acquisition process, if the majority of the US population doesn't give a shit.
Hoping don't make it so.

 

[mgmcd1]

Probably not as bad as that YoYoDyne facility I went to in NJ a few years back...