NASA's inspector general raises questions with cost management of Orion spacecraft

[Admin]

The OIG determined that Orion, the next-gen capsule that will carry NASA astronauts to the moon and other deep-space destinations, has continued to experience cost increases and schedule delays.

NASA's inspector general raises questions with cost management of Orion spacecraft : Read more

 

[Bruzote]

Well OF COURSE there are cost overruns, and they ARE expected to be tolerated as part of the deal of selecting Lockheed Martin for the prime contractor. If you don't think the well-established boys club of Lockheed and Boeing are not going to get a rich payment for overruns, just look at how special those companies are. When NASA decided to fund companies developing a system to replace the shuttle, they paid Boeing far more than SpaceX to accomplish the same thing. In fact, they should have paid a newcomer like SpaceX more to ensure a non-entrenched company could survive. Of course that didn't happen, and US taxpayers dollars were pumped into Boeing....just because it is a deeply-entrenched part of the military-industrial complex. The same goes for Lockheed-Martin.. Those two goliaths know how to spread their work in each of the 50 states and to get Congress to support them. None of this is a surprise - it is EXPECTED. The tolerance of this is payback for donations to Congress and "creating jobs" (using someone else's money!) in the various Congressional districts.

 

[Tishers]

NASA is a mechanism to provide corporate welfare to Boeing and Lockheed Martin. It has been decades since either company has had their feet held to the fire to come in on the deliverables, cost or schedule.

At some places you could say it is the incompetence of project management, but with these two companies it is a core part of their business strategy to double or triple the cost of a project to steal a few more billion dollars each year.

The upstarts (SpaceX, Bigelow, Sierra-Nevada) end up playing by the rules and delivering excellent results. But they do not have a ton of senators and congressmen from powerful districts to jam through favorable legislation. Maybe its time to dump Boeing and Lockeed-Martin.