I am so sick of these “public/private partnership” schemes. It always turns out to be a thinly veiled money laundering operation, produces terrible outcomes, and diminishes the in-house talent at NASA by outsourcing everything to vendors.
How many more Challengers do we need before we learn the lesson to stop outsourcing everything to the lowest bidder?
I disagree with you on this. NASA shouldn’t waste its effort and talent on what are basically solved problems. NASA should focus on cutting-edge science.
Kind of hard to work on cutting edge science, when private vendors are absorbing your entire budget by overcharging.
That’s why fixed price contracts exist.
Nationalization is better.
I think I agree with you… to a degree. On one hand something like CLPS has been a questionable use of funds at best, but on the other hand a NASA investment got us the greatest aerospace company in the history of humanity (SpaceX). Maybe it really depends how the program is structured?
All that being said, I’m not sure how Challenger relates to this considering that was a NASA program.
SpaceX is a joke.
The faulty o-rings that caused the challenger explosion were due to the private partner failing to provide the part to specs. To be fair, NASA knew of the shitty o-rings, and proceeded with the launch anyway.