One cheer for the President's space plan

>
>> The main obstacles to shaking money out of the cobwebs are
>> political, so the additional funds are helpful since it reduces
>> the need for political fights. The main money sink in the short
>> term will be development of CEV, which will come entirely from
>> OSP, plus the 5%.
>
> You sure speak with the voice of someone who isn't a politician or a
> bureaucrat!
>
> You speak with a sense of rational management expectations.

Not in the least. NASA is dysfunctional, which is just one reason why
gobs of throwing additional money at them in pursuit of a Mars mission
is a bad idea. There are a variety of things that will happen in the
next few years, but the limited goals ensure that we won't have another
X-33 fiasco.
>
> The order of the day will be to maintain the army of employees at
> the NASA centers. My unsupported opinion is that jobs will be
> developed that make use of existing skill sets rather than looking
> for people with needed skill sets. This type of approach will steer
> the programs at NASA towards inefficiency.

Yet another reason this plan is as good as can reasonably be expected -
it develops a minimum of new technology, so the existing skill set
within NASA should be sufficient. The reason I like this plan is
precisely that it doesn't expect NASA to suddenly turn around and
become what it's always claimed it was, an organization of super-smart
people selflessly dedicated to opening the universe for all mankind.
This plan is good precisely because it works with what's available.

> Hmm, the cut's seem to be from programs that aren't funded and don't
> have existing constitutencies. There's not much pain there.

So they'll stick, and opposition will not be enough to turn things
around halfway through the program. It's a feature, not a bug.

> So that army of KSC workers needed for the shuttle will be needed
> for the new program. Yeah, design a program to use all the workers
> rather than designing a program to meet other objectives and then
> determining how many workers you'll need to operate the program.

How can you possibly imagine that any other alternative is politically
viable? Fire a few thousand people at KSC and congress will shut the
program down in a hearbeat. The only way NASA will shrink is through
attrition and small cuts. There is no way to make it really efficient
thanks to the facts of life in government bureaucracy, so the best hope
is to try and get something useful done within an inefficient system,
and perhaps gradually work some of the inefficiencies out.

> They probably have but the politics has yet to play itself out with
> respect to which centers will take which job and mission cuts. The
> broad strokes have been painted without looking at the specific
> missions to be cut.

That's appropriate at this stage. The details will be filled in later.
Making a comprehensive plan now would be a fool's errand.

This plan is good because it isn't extremely visionary. That is what
makes it politically viable. Be clear on this - I don't support this
plan out of a sense that it's the best possibly in an ideal world - I
support it because it's workable in the profoundly flawed system that
currently exists, and it doesn't threaten the independent startups who
are the real hope for getting each of us personally into space.

......Andrew