A few days ago NASA took a bit of a beating before the House Science Committee. Unfortunately, the panel of experts presenting to the committee did not go far enough. In one case, an expert testified that NASA should get even more money, arguing that Americans spend more money on pizza than they do NASA.

Well, blow me over. One would think that Americans believe they are getting something out of their money when they invest in pizza. A full stomach perhaps. And maybe, just maybe, if Americans were getting as much or more perceived benefit from NASA, then they would willingly invest that money themselves.

Of course, Americans do not willingly invest in NASA - they just pay their taxes, and their congressman spend that money for them on things like NASA. And boy, do they spend it. Fifteen billion dollars this year, and to finish the space station look to that number to climb to twenty billion dollars a year. That's a lot of pizza.

When a monopolistic monolith is managed and implemented by government, a number of events are certain to occur: (1) innovation ceases (there is no competition driving innovation, and in such an organization any change is anathema) (2) bad decisions become policy and remain that way (there are no self-correction mechanisms, such as a stock value).

NASA became a government entity for one reason, and it had nothing to do with space. NASA existed for the sole purpose of beating the Russians. The only reason that NASA existed as a space organization was that the contest with the Russians was to be the first to the moon. NASA effectively died when Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins returned safely to Earth. The remaining six Apollo missions were ultimately pointless. NASA has been rudderless ever since.

In the 1970s, seeking to artificially extend the gravy train, the bright lights at NASA came up with the Shuttle program. The idea was to suck as many taxpayer dollars into NASA as possible, to retain the tens of thousands of employees who otherwise would be doing productive work in the private sector.

Therefore, instead of developing one vehicle which could lift large, heavy payloads into space, and another to ferry people back and forth, NASA mated a bus with a semi trailer and added wings (because flying a spaceplane is sexy). They decided to re-use the engines on every launch, which led to enormous mantenance bills and the awkward, side-by-side configuration of the shuttle and external fuel tank. This also forced the use of Hydrogen fuel instead of kerosene, which requires the spray-on foam insulation to keep it insulated.... and we know what chunks of foam breaking off the external tank can do to the brittle carbon-carbon panels on the shuttle wings. Why does it need carbon-carbon panels? To absorb the incredible heat along the leading edge of the wing during re-entry. Why is that heat there? because the shuttle has wings. Why does it have wings? because flying a spaceplane is sexy...

So a bad decision was made in the 70's, and since there were no market forces to drive that decision into the ground, we still have the shuttles around today (grounded, but still around and the only American human-launch system). Another bad decision (and an example of stifled innovation): When the shuttles were being constructed, a decision was made to freeze the technology level. I suppose the idea was to avoid having upgrade issues. So the space shuttle fleet keeps going, each space shuttle with its five 8086 or 80286 computers, merrily chugging along. NASA needed to shop on eBay last year for 8-inch floppy disk drives for the shuttles. On all the space shuttles, there is NOT ONE compact disk connected to a computer.

Over the last thirty years, NASA's record in human spaceflight has been a flop. It is a litany of wasted assets (Skylab, the Saturn V blueprints), bad decisions perpetuated for decades, and white elephant projects (International Space Station springs to mind).

I will give credit where it is due: on the non-human spaceflight side, NASA has made considerable progress. Here, though, there is a form of competition. There are hundreds of NASA teams trying to get their bird launched, or their study done, so there is a mini-marketplace effect occurring. Some of these efforts have succeeded beyond all expectations (Pioneer, Voyager, and NEAR Shoemaker are prime examples).

So, if NASA is to continue to exist at all, it should stick the aspect of space that it does well: basic research, unmanned probes, orbital observatories, and the like. It should get out of manned spaceflight altogether.