this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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And, sadly, it might be too late to even salvage any funds by cancelling it.
NASA has had a long string of giant budgetary boondoggles throughout its history. I think there's something fundamentally broken about how it manages these projects and I don't know how it can be fixed.
Separation of Congress from budgeting beyond a government wide yay/nay vote might help. As it stands, much like most of the military Nasa is a congressional district jobs program that occasionally outputs something useful more than an actual public service.
You get the output of what you incentivize, and Nasa’s funding incentivizes jobs in key districts no matter how much more efficient it would be to put all their buildings in the small town they own in Florida.
Unfortunately if that was the case then NASA simply wouldn't get much funding at all.
If it's too late to free up the budget, then by all means continue the program. But no more long shots like this until we have a solid plan. I love NASA, I love the prospect of getting these things done, but no one nation can do something like a Mars sample collection effectively. It needs to be a planetary effort. And I don't mean getting an actuator from the UK and a commemorative plaque in 40 languages from Luxembourg or whatever, I mean serious funding. It's long past time we turn our symbolic collaboration to actual funding, agreeing to match the expenditure with 20 countries as percentage of federal budget or what have you. Like if the EU matched the percentage of our budget (however many billions) from their budget. Now add China, Russia, India, Japan, Australia - even 10mil or however little the percentage would add up to from South africa would help if every moderately big county on Earth did that.
I really don't think it's a question of not enough funding. NASA just doesn't seem to be capable of spending and planning efficiently.
By comparison, the whole cost of SpaceX's Starship program is estimated to be between $5 and $10 billion. It should be possible to do a far cheaper and more effective sample return with launchers like that available.
They basically aren't allowed to spend efficiently or else they wouldn't get funding in the first place. NASA is just an excuse for congressmen to funnel money into their districts. The fact that any science happens along the way is a miracle already.