Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Yeah, but even us nerds like competence for our money. I mean look at the shuttle. It never lived up to its original specs because the tiles (which cracked and fell off periodically) were heavier than they'd planned. It was sold as "Mass transit in space" and "reusable" but it cost a half billion to refurbish between launches. Of the five nominally space worthy ones that were built, two (40%) had catastrophic failures with loss of life of everyone on board. Of the 355 people that ever flew on the Shuttle over 135 missions 14 individuals died, a fatality rate of ~4%.
There are things that NASA does well, but manned space flight would not appear to be one of them. And yeah, some of the "missions" are just stupid and/or PR, like putting a schoolteacher in space - even worse when you kill her in the attempt.
Nature of .gov. Good news is NASA is feeling competitive pressure from both private sector and other governments (space race 2.0?).
I do agree that privatization is appropriate for routine ops, and NASA is definitely shifting (or being forced) in that direction. Even for deep space/exploratory missions, they now have plausible private sector subcontractors / competition (Starship).
Also there's an alibi for Shuttle... there was major DoD involvement, and they set some *very* specific mission requirements which drove the program to the bleeding edge of the available technology. Wasn't just .gov ineptness, they went out on a limb due to the cold war.