[el_toast]

Same story with shuttle and that's why it looks the way it is and was as expensive as it was. It would have been a completely different vehicle if Congress weren't meddling.

[wongarsu]

What NASA wanted was a space station, a small tug to move stuff in space, and a small shuttle to move people and cargo from earth to that station.

The whole point of the space shuttle was to have it service the space station, but the station wasn't greenlit. Instead we got a much bigger shuttle that was useful as a military asset but was a money pit with terrible safety record. Luckily the Soviet Union collapsed and the ISS was funded as a job program for Soviet rocket scientists (out of fear they could be poached to work on ICBMs for other nations).

[lhoff]

> Luckily the Soviet Union collapsed and the ISS was funded as a job program for Soviet rocket scientists (out of fear they could be poached to work on ICBMs for other nations).

It's the first time that I heard this theory. Do you have any sources to read up on it?

[dingnuts]

Congress is the owner. Want a different management ideology? Get different management.

NASA is wasteful, eh? Maybe that's because they have no incentive not to be wasteful..

[eggy]

NASA is neither a public or private company, but rather a government agency. Congress is an employee of the US taxpayer. I think that makes them more of a manager of NASA and we should hold Congress accountable.

[jlarocco]

I think the point being made is that NASA is wasteful because the people in charge (Congress) told them to be wasteful.

[margalabargala]

The leadership and composition of Congress has changed numerous times over the years without change to management ideology. It does not seem likely that electing mildly different people will change the management ideology. Management acted in accordance with the incentives they were presented with.

I can't say NASA seems particularly wasteful outside ways in which they are mandated to be so.