The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) does amazing things. And it also does very expensive things. Furthermore, those very expensive things have commonly become even more expensive as they are being built, modified, delayed, redesigned, and finally reach the point where they can (usually) be launched. Not everything NASA makes is launched into space; they make communications antennas and airborne instruments and do tests and models and lots of things like that -- but the expensive stuff is usually the stuff that ends up in space, hopefully, and works, also hopefully. Usually it works, but not all the time, and that can make things even more expensive, too.
So, given all this expensiveness, it isn't surprising that a report about NASA concluded that NASA isn't going to be able to keep doing business-as-usual as expenses go up and budgets stay flat.
Underfunded, aging NASA may be on unsustainable path, report warnsNASA is not focused enough on the future, fails to think strategically and has a mismatch between ambitions and budget, says a sweeping report by aerospace experts.
"NASA pursues spectacular missions. It has sent swarms of robotic probes across the solar system and even into interstellar space. Astronauts have continuously been in orbit for more than two decades. The most ambitious program, Artemis, aims to put astronauts back on the moon in a few short years. And long-term, NASA hopes to put astronauts on Mars.
But a truism in the industry is that space is hard. The new report contends that NASA has a mismatch between its ambitions and its budget, and needs to pay attention to fundamentals such as fixing its aging infrastructure and retaining in-house talent. “NASA’s overall physical infrastructure is already well beyond its design life, and this fraction continues to grow,” the report states."
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