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Reason
11-14-2009, 02:24 AM
NASA: A Third-World Agency


by Don Cooper (don@qaoss.com)
by Don Cooper
Recently by Don Cooper: One Sure Way To Profit From Obamacare (http://www.lewrockwell.com/cooper/cooper21.1.html)

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When in the Third World or at NASA, don't drink the water.
After recently reading the article on the MIT students that sent a camera into space for $150 (http://www.lewrockwell.com/cooper/%22http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget?npu=1&mbid), I had to comment on NASA.
I've recently taken a new job with an engineering firm. This small but growing firm has contracts with many organizations both public and private. The particular project I've been farmed out to is in fact located at NASA.
Having worked at NASA now for only 2 days, I've gotten a first hand look at the wonders of government inefficiency, irresponsibility, waste and unprofessionalism.

My first impression of NASA was when I entered the campus and saw communist-era looking cinder-block buildings, overgrown shrubs and unsightly, unfinished construction.
That turned out to be nothing though compared to when I finally actually entered one of these buildings: barren, sterile old hallways – some even with an odor of urine like one might expect in a county jail. Paper designs scathe taped to the hallway walls. Erratic air-conditioning working in some offices but not in most. The carpeting, in the offices that even had any, was badly stained and filthy. The office spaces were cramped and unorganized.
In any case I sat down at my new desk with no computer, no network credentials, no email account not even a permanent security badge. Every morning I have to call a colleague to come meet me at the gate and escort me around all day. When working for private engineering firms the past 3 years, I had all these things by the end of the first day of business.

So throughout the course of the day, I go about doing a whole lot of nothing because no one has any sort of orientation planned for new employees and I have no computer. Oh I heard and saw a lot of gossiping, sitting around talking about who didn't do what and what others were going to do about it etc... Typical government tax feeder-type conversations, but I didn't see a whole lot of work being done. Unfortunately, I did make the mistake of drinking a lot of water since my office was one of the ones with no air conditioning in August.
After my first day then at the venerable space agency I went home, ate dinner, and spent most of the rest of the evening on the john. I had no idea why, but I had a very bad case of diarrhea.

I started thinking through my day and what I ate: cereal for breakfast, pizza for lunch and a frozen dinner. That was it. Again, in the middle of the night, my stomach woke me twice to go pray to the porcelain god.
My second day at NASA found me still in squalor in the same office, still with no air, no computer, no nothing.
In passing I mentioned to my office mates that I had bad diarrhea, to which they immediately responded: did you drink the water? Of course, I responded: yes. I was then informed that the water coming out of the water fountains was not filtered and could make you sick.
In fact, my colleagues were part of a self-organized water consortium that provided either bottled or filtered water to its members on a daily basis. What a wonderful example of how people with similar wants can so easily organize themselves and solve a problem at a local level when the government doesn't intervene. In fact it's an example of how markets can organize to solve social problems that the government creates.
It's also clear that as interesting as space exploration is, it too should be left to the private sector. Don't get me wrong, I think, given their incredible goals, that NASA has done a great job. But it has cost trillions of dollars simply because they have no deadlines and an almost endless supply of money to fund their activities. They don't behave the same as a private firm would, which was competing with others for market share. If they are over budget, so be it. They get more budget from you and me. If they are over their time deadlines, they just take longer.
Burt Rutan and his group (http://www.space.com/) proved how quickly and efficiently private sector space exploration can be by buildng a space vehicle that was able to go into space and return twice within a five-day period.
Something that to this day, NASA still can't do.

September 21, 2009
Don Cooper [send him mail (don@qaoss.com)] is a Florida native, Navy veteran, economist, and editor of the daily non-partisan column Qaoss.com (http://qaoss.com/).

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

tangent4ronpaul
11-14-2009, 04:24 AM
The picture you see above was shot from around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. It’s short of the widely-accepted Kármán line, which is at 100km (62 miles) up, but it’s in the stratosphere, and it’s still impressive. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took 40 minutes to come back to Earth

==

There is so much wrong with the above artical it's not even worth commenting on...

-t

NYgs23
11-14-2009, 04:40 AM
It's certainly very different from "Hollywood NASA" with scientific geniuses in white coats determinedly working the bright buttons and dials on gleaming banks of supercomputers. Of course, the whole project was little more than a spectacle for the masses in the context of the Cold War. "We got the moon before the commies. We're number one!" Some people claim that the moon landing was staged. Well, of course it was staged. It just happened to be filmed on location.

Ian A.
11-14-2009, 11:56 AM
VERY informative. I always thought that the guys that put us on the moon (over 40 years ago) were the exception to crappy government programs. But that's all just propaganda.

Dunedain
11-14-2009, 11:59 AM
NASA has been going whole hog on the "diversity" craze (i.e. hiring incompetent engineers and scientists in exchange for a rainbow of skin colors).
To ensure their racism is institutionalized properly NASA has created a "Diversity Council" and a "Diversity Management Office" and many other communist egalitarian departments to make sure that skin color is mission critical.

I assume we won't be getting someone back to the moon anytime soon?

NASA diversity council
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/diversity/diversitycouncil.htm

Annihilia
11-14-2009, 12:23 PM
Excellent article. I reposted this on another forum I visit that has a major NASA ball-hugger.

james1906
11-14-2009, 09:48 PM
In passing I mentioned to my office mates that I had bad diarrhea, to which they immediately responded: did you drink the water? Of course, I responded: yes. I was then informed that the water coming out of the water fountains was not filtered and could make you sick.
In fact, my colleagues were part of a self-organized water consortium that provided either bottled or filtered water to its members on a daily basis. What a wonderful example of how people with similar wants can so easily organize themselves and solve a problem at a local level when the government doesn't intervene. In fact it's an example of how markets can organize to solve social problems that the government creates.


That's just our nasty Houston tap water.

Dionysus
11-14-2009, 11:03 PM
NASA has been going whole hog on the "diversity" craze (i.e. hiring incompetent engineers and scientists in exchange for a rainbow of skin colors).
To ensure their racism is institutionalized properly NASA has created a "Diversity Council" and a "Diversity Management Office" and many other communist egalitarian departments to make sure that skin color is mission critical.

I assume we won't be getting someone back to the moon anytime soon?

NASA diversity council
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/diversity/diversitycouncil.htm

Indeed. Check out the physics classes I posted in Off Topic from MIT, Berkeley and Stanford. The people on this forum represent the hope of liberty and prosperity in America, and we must all make ourselves into the best we can be. Physics is essential to any real education. Anyone can learn it. It's the root of all knowledge.