Same story with shuttle and that's why it looks the way it is and was as expensive as it was. It would have been a completely different vehicle if Congress weren't meddling.

Congress is the owner. Want a different management ideology? Get different management.

NASA is wasteful, eh? Maybe that's because they have no incentive not to be wasteful..

NASA is neither a public or private company, but rather a government agency. Congress is an employee of the US taxpayer. I think that makes them more of a manager of NASA and we should hold Congress accountable.

The leadership and composition of Congress has changed numerous times over the years without change to management ideology. It does not seem likely that electing mildly different people will change the management ideology. Management acted in accordance with the incentives they were presented with.

I can't say NASA seems particularly wasteful outside ways in which they are mandated to be so.

I think this is because local state concerns are so prevalent here. Political colour doesn't even matter, but getting the pork barrel for the state manufacturing locations is.

This won't change no matter who you vote in. It's like hardwired into the system.

Exactly. There's not actually much of an incentive for a congressperson to create something broadly positive for the US as a vague whole, like an independently-operating excellent space program.

The incentive massively is instead in favor of that congressperson to have a space program that is meets some minimum bar of competence, and past that point do everything to benefit that congressperson's voting district such as mandate certain things be manufactured there, etc.

I think the point being made is that NASA is wasteful because the people in charge (Congress) told them to be wasteful.

You are in charge. Congress is your employee.

Except I can't do anything about Senator John Jones from Arizona who wants to keep the couple thousand jobs he brought to his constituency. He won't budge on it because non-Arizonans didn't vote for him.

You’re probably thinking about the former senator of Alabama, Richard Shelby. There is no current or former senator by the name John Jones in Arizona. Additionally it is Alabama that benefits from the SLS program, not Arizona.

Sure. It doesn't change anything, though.

NASA's doing what they're told, and Congress is doing what we asked them to.

If that's true, then I'm officially notifying everyone in Congress and the Senate, they are terminated immediately and need to clear their offices by the end of the week. Let's see if it happens or not, and then we'll know whether you were correct or not.

What NASA wanted was a space station, a small tug to move stuff in space, and a small shuttle to move people and cargo from earth to that station.

The whole point of the space shuttle was to have it service the space station, but the station wasn't greenlit. Instead we got a much bigger shuttle that was useful as a military asset but was a money pit with terrible safety record. Luckily the Soviet Union collapsed and the ISS was funded as a job program for Soviet rocket scientists (out of fear they could be poached to work on ICBMs for other nations).

> Luckily the Soviet Union collapsed and the ISS was funded as a job program for Soviet rocket scientists (out of fear they could be poached to work on ICBMs for other nations).

It's the first time that I heard this theory. Do you have any sources to read up on it?

this