Increasing NASA’s budget would ease pressure and allow it to dream even bigger
Ironically, the source of this is here on Earth: Congress, which has the penny-wise but pound-foolish policy of trickling out space agency funding every year, hobbling many of NASA’s mission goals that require thinking past the usual two-year House or six-year Senate term. This has repercussions that can be felt across the solar system.
Until very recently, the plan was to use Perseverance itself to bring the collected samples to a suitable landing spot. While this would take time away from its exploration it’s likely the safest and easiest method. Certainly, the most cost-effective. It’s easy to point fingers at NASA for the cost overruns and schedule delays, but to be fair, the agency played by all the administrative rules. That’s not to downplay mismanagement issues, which the independent review report pointed out in detail, but which, honestly, can be expected for huge projects across multiple divisions in a government agency. Committees met, ideas were debated, reviewers reviewed, and the best plans advanced. Then reality intruded. Getting to Mars is hard.
The basic issue here is that NASA’s funding is a zero-sum game, so cost overruns in one mission will necessarily impact others. But that game of shuffling money wouldn’t be so dire if NASA very simply had a bigger overall budget. This would also fix many of the management problems pointed out in the 2023 MSR report, allowing NASA to hire more technical and administrative staff for the job.
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