Hopes for Finding Mars Life After Rover's Ground-Penetrating Radar Discovery

Re:Hopes for Finding Mars Life After Rover's Ground-Penetrat... by stetrain on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @08:43AM (#39189986)

The public sector doesn't have a monopoly on internal politics. Posturing between departments to be included in the next big initiative happens in lots of companies.

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Re:Hopes for Finding Mars Life After Rover's Ground-Penetrat... by BurningFrog on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @08:47AM (#39190033)

The point of competition is that if 10 deeply flawed organizations take a crack at a problem, they won't all produce garbage.

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Re:Hopes for Finding Mars Life After Rover's Ground-Penetrat... by stetrain on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @12:32PM (#39193013)

That's not guaranteed. Really it's a question of incentive structure more than public vs private.

For example there are cases I can point to of poor competition and high costs in NASA picking private companies to do big cost-plus development contracts, and cases where they did fixed-price contract bidding among a larger pool of competitors and got much better results.

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Re:Hopes for Finding Mars Life After Rover's Ground-Penetrat... by Shinmon on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @12:11PM (#39192701)

While that might be true the costs of going up there are so high that there won't be 10 companies who get a crack at it.

Besides, the radar isn't the only instrument on the rover. There aren't many companies/groups in the world who have the know-how and financial means to do what NASA does here.

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Re:Hopes for Finding Mars Life After Rover's Ground-Penetrat... by sdenton4 on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @10:51AM (#39191512)

Or! They all produce garbage as they chip away at costs, and make bank telling people what they want to hear. The incentives are all wrong.

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