<p>But Nasawatch's Keith Cowing, a former engineer for the agency, said the problem is poor design and planning, repeating some of the problems of Apollo without learning the lessons of such disasters as the Apollo 1 fire.</p> <p>A group of NASA engineers, working on their own time, and other experts have come up with an alternate moon rocket design that they contend is cheaper and could be ready earlier. NASA has rejected their proposal.</p><p>YEP, the current nasa is not the same as it was in the old days. Lost the secret sauce. Hiring the wrong people. Need visionaries like Rutan, and the guy with the blow up space station. They blame it on lack of funding, but from what I experienced at GRC and Goddard, while also monitoring cool programs cancelled, is that they simply are addicted to shoddy engineering and poor planning. Any outside people who come in with new ideas are targeted for abuse. </p><p>That is no way to run a company. If the managers don't know what they are doing, they cannot direct the crew of affirmative action hires saturating the payroll. There is quota hiring, that dilutes the workforce. <br /> <img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/12/6/0c4309ef-ad9a-4a3c-b6cb-9342dd1a243e.Medium.jpg" alt="" /></p><p>Not to mention all the dumb mistakes: G-switches upside down, poorly tested software that allowed legs snapping out to shut off the mars lander rockets, metric/english errors, telescope mirrors that are bent, toilets that clog, billion dollar mars probes that just explode when you pressurize the retro-rocket (lowest bidder, martin marietta with no deepspace experience, good choice), stupid foam insulation that the tree huggers got to eliminate freon from, then the troubles started. </p><p><img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-laughing.gif" border="0" alt="Laughing" title="Laughing" /> </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>