Checked out a couple articles about the Columbia accident, and this bit from a BBC News piece caught my attention:
This occurred against a background of massive budget cuts, with Nasa losing 13% of its purchasing power from 1993 to 2002 and over 10,000 staff.As a result, "safety and support upgrades were delayed or deferred, and shuttle infrastructure was allowed to deteriorate".
Most of the noise about the Columbia accident seems to be about management failures at NASA, which I'm sure did play a role, but it seems to me that we should look a little wider than that. In an atmosphere of constant budget cuts, any organization is going to be forced to reduce their efforts somewhere. It seems that in this country nearly all public institutions are constantly being exhorted to "do more with less" even when that becomes impossible, or even dangerous. Think about it-- what's it like down at the DMV? What do your local schools (or those in a neighboring community) look like? What condition are your local interstate highways in? How much was tuition raised this year at your state universities? Hell, what does Iraq look like? At a certain point we have to quit blaming the managers and get more money pumped into these organizations.
Posted by Jason at August 26, 2003 02:37 PM