Stardate 20010602.1750 (On Screen): What NASA does is, quite literally, "rocket science" and it is definitely difficult. But there is a long record of this kind of thing which suggests that it's possible to accomplish great things with a very high success rate. Starting with Pioneer, NASA has an unbroken string of successes coming into the 1980's, with such famous names as Voyager and Viking.
The huge rise in the last ten years of failed programs, especially regarding Mars missions, has led some wags to suggest that the Martians resent our snooping and are shooting them down. But the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our planets but in ourselves.
The current NASA administrator's emphasis on "faster, better, cheaper" is now exposed as a complete failure, motivated not by science or engineering but by politics, sounding good as long as it doesn't backfire. But two cheap missions which both fail yields less scientific data than a single mission which succeeds. The problem is that you can't have all three of those at the same time. An old engineering maxim says "features, schedule, budget: pick any two." Once you have, the third will be determined for you. NASA has been imposing "faster" and "cheaper" and so "better" is actually turning out to be "worse", with a skyrocketing (sorry) failure rate. I have to wonder whether today's failure is yet another manifestation of that issue. NASA needs to slow down, spend more and do less. Let's concentrate on "better" for a while and worry a bit less about "cheaper" and "faster". We'll go higher if we lower our sights. (discuss)
