Japanese/ US space budget comparison

Flame warning :-)

If politically incorrect flaming offends, delete this message now.

Hmm.. from my understanding the overhead and support budgets are in
that "other"category, so to first order both organizations are about
the same in overhead. From my admittedly limited direct experience,

Percentage wise yes, but not in absolute dollars. It makes all the difference culturally.

Japanese aerospace organizations have much more bureaucracy and close
control of their workers, and typically have somewhat worse working
conditions.

Well, I have no personal experience.

They get more "paper" out of each employee, but usually
not more work and definitely not more new knowledge. Their system
works, but is even more hierarchical and bureaucratic than NASA (NASA
at least has a tradition and some cultural acceptance of mavericks
and breaking through the system to get things done).

My limited data actually suggests the opposite. In about ten years as a NASA contractor, I never once saw anybody stick their neck out. I saw a competent engineer fired because he was a little too emotional and outspoken with his professional opinions. On more than one occassion I was told specifically to keep my mouth shut and not to rock the boat. As for NASA tolerating mavericks, well they do tolerate lower productivity than private enterprise would, it is really difficult to fire a civil servant provided they keep a low profile.

I have no personal experience of Japan. But a close family member worked with Japanese oil engineers for some time in an overseas location. There was one maverick Japanese engineer/manager on the crew who several times cut through the red tape of the other contractors and (with a winning smile) presented the cool solution to several difficult problems, developed entirely by himself. He was always right, and people usually shut up when he entered a room, because they knew his reputation. Such people are indeed rare in Japan, but in my experience practically non-existent in NASA today. I have proper nostalgia for the "old guard", e.g. Gene Kranz and co, but they are long gone.

There are a reasonable number of competent technical folk at NASA, but conformity is an essential survival skill.

Cheers.

Charles R.