The helmet camera of astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper shows her tool bag as it floats away from the International Space Station. She lost hold of it when when a grease gun inside it exploded. NASA/Associate Press.
by Frank James
Who knew that with a pair of binoculars you could see a tool bag flying through space in earth orbit? And this tool bag is turning out to be for NASA what the $400 hammer was to Pentagon as a symbol of insane overspending by a government agency.
Because this tool bag with a few commonplace tools in it cost NASA $100,000.
Mark Matthews and Robert Block of the Tribune write about how NASA spending ways are being examined by Obama's transition team as a way to try and get some of those cost cuts the president-elect is looking for in order to help pay for his health-care plan.
Most nights it's possible to look skyward with a pair of cheap binoculars and see a $100,000 mistake circling the Earth. The glowing object -- an orbiting NASA tool bag -- was lost last month by an astronaut during a routine spacewalk.
The canvas-and-acrylic caddy contained two grease guns, a scraper, a trash bag and some wipes, hardly cutting-edge technology. So why did it cost $100,000?
NASA officials said they had no answer to that question -- beyond the fact that, as spokesman Allard Beutel put it, "space flight is expensive." That expense is drawing serious scrutiny from the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Of 74 questions submitted to the agency by Obama's NASA transition team, more than half asked about basic spending issues, including cost overruns.
It's clear that NASA's long-standing inability to manage its money has attracted the team's attention.
For nearly two decades, NASA and its out-of-this-world projects have made a "high-risk" list compiled by government auditors because of cost overruns totaling millions -- sometimes billions -- of dollars.
The designation applies to programs that are "impeding effective government and costing the government billions of dollars each year," according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency.
NASA has been on this list since 1990.
"Our space program is running inefficiently, and without sufficient regard to cost performance," wrote Alan Stern, a former NASA associate administrator who has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Michael Griffin, the current NASA administrator.
In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Stern called the cost overruns a "cancer" that has cost the agency's science program about $5 billion over five years.
Comments
---a way to try and get some of those cost cuts the president-elect is looking for in order to help pay for his health-care plan
Won't do a thing for the American Public-
The Drug Companies will hike their prices , thanks to their friends in congress--
Posted by: Inky | December 19, 2008 11:17 AM
100K because those are very special Space Grease Guns which shoot high energy streams of Space Grease, stopping marauding aliens in their cosmic tracks!
Posted by: Buck Rogers | December 19, 2008 11:30 AM
They are specialized tools and bags, to function in zero gravity and the vacuum of space. It's not a Joe SixPack bag of junk from Home Despot.
Having said that, it's all too much money. Worried about the 100K tool bag? Check out the price of supporting 2000 military bases around the world. There's some real change.
Also, somebody stop the $500 billion trip to Mars.
Posted by: C.Morris | December 19, 2008 1:47 PM
Face it...all governmental agencies need a nit comb. They do not know what a budget is and that when they've spent their wad for the year, they're done. Maybe the purse should slam shut once they've spent their money. If that happens you can bet the will shop for bargains like the rest of us. Speaking of "tools", Google is a wonderful thing for saving a buck.
Posted by: lochnessmonster | December 19, 2008 2:21 PM
C.Morris, you're right in that these are custom made items. However, (like the infamous $600 toilet seat) they are typically overpriced anyway. As lochness noted, all gov't agencies don't know what a budget is and their suppliers exploit that by padding their bills big time.
.
An even more troublesome aspect of the space program is this quaint 15th Century notion that we must plant the flag in other worlds. We can get more info about Mars, for example, from robotic probes and radio telescopes than we can from having people walk there ...for a fraction of the cost.
Posted by: MJ | December 19, 2008 3:13 PM
MJ,
Right you are.
The only reason for a manned mission anywhere would be perhaps, the discovery of artifacts, or intelligent life, IMO.
Until then, the robots are doing a fine job.
Posted by: C.Morris | December 19, 2008 3:56 PM
Of course some of NASA's over runs are caused by Congress tinkering with the programs and making NASA spending money that they don't want to spend. Care to guess why there is a NASA facility in West Virginia? Two words--"Robert Byrd". There are better ways for NASA to do things, but keep in mind that the entire NASA budget is about equal to phase I of the auto industry bailout. At least no one at NASA has a million dollar salary.
Posted by: Karl | December 19, 2008 4:06 PM
My guess is Obama will get rid of some agencies and subagencies altogether, RIF a lot of them.
Oil Patch and Aerospace Houston have got to find some other way to bleed the public, with a new President talking alternative energy and moving to clamp down on the gold plating at NASA.
Posted by: ornery | December 19, 2008 6:06 PM
Right on Obama, lets go back to the horse and buggy. Take a look around the world the U.S. is falling behind in science, math,and research I think its time to rethink your priorities.Certain things need to be cut thats for sure. Why not cut the fat out of government? Like Congress's inflated salaries and pensions.And the other
pork from the various PACS.
Posted by: Paul | December 19, 2008 6:53 PM
I'm sure most scientists and engineers who depend on NASA to do interesting space science are cheering this move. Manned space flight is ultra expensive. The cost of lifting a pound of anything into Low Earth Orbit is north of $1000. So the airfare for that tool bag was at least $20-30k. Now what if the tools were made of titanium and weighed only 50% as much as regular tools? 100 pounds of Ti tools would save $100k in fuel costs.
But it is hard to imagine that anything going into space would be designed so that you could use regular old tools to work on it.
But if you don't send people into space, you don't need tools either. And if you do send 'em, it becomes impossible to argue about saving money.
Humans are expensive space cargo and contribute little to science.
Posted by: tomj | December 19, 2008 10:00 PM
It makes me SICK, to think that the US government is going to cut the nasa buget, when they give f3ewd money to certain colleges to do a study on weather santas reindeer are female or not. W T F????? nasa, real!!!! santa fake!!!!!! come on , space exploration is a needed part of the U.S. quit giving money away for needless studies, company bailouts, and lets do something good for a change
Posted by: jim learn | December 20, 2008 8:20 AM
How much is a jar of Tang worth?
Posted by: Kenny Bunkport ✌ | December 20, 2008 9:56 AM