Rarely do you see NASA’s fiscal management proclaimed as a good example of how to run an agency. Yet, in an op-ed piece in today’s Seattle Times, Norton R. Nowlin compares funding for AIDS research efforts—scattered among various local, state, and federal programs—to the approach at NASA:
The money appropriated by Congress for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the international space station and other such efforts goes into one large disbursement pot. NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have intertwined working budgets, centrally controlled for all aspects of the international manned space program. This allows for a centralized focus on the primary technical objectives.
Um, yeah, okay.
