Why?

Not completely true.

Within NASA, well established and highly visible organizations, projects and programs that get a lot of attention are the ones that go after big dollars, and therefore employ an army to justify their spending.

On Phase A-D ISS, prior to the selection of the prime contractors, from about 1984-87, the total manpower working (what became) ISS was quite small. From the standpoint of the entire configuration of modules, nodes, cupola, international standard racks – the entire interior architecture was established by a handful of people. What NASA established during those years is essentially what the contractors bid and what flies today.

A second example: NASA-Mir had a fairly small budget and was not even initially recognized as a program. The entire effort, over the course of about 6 years, was carried out by about 110 contractor and about 5 CS working the Russian side, which included international process definition, contract definition, process and contract formalization, architecture definition, hardware development, safety and international certification, payload integration, training, mission support at TSUP and MCC, and post-flight de-integration and turnaround. The US had the Russians significantly modify their module, we redesigned the interior, established the architecture, and designed, built, tested, certified, integrated and flew all of the hardware for the interior which included mechanical systems, electrical systems, payload systems, and computer systems and software; and then we integrated payloads coming from every NASA center, Canada and ESA.

All of the flight and training hardware we began on in 1993 flew by early 1996. Some flight hardware started as late as mid-1995 (the COSS computer system was the result of feedback from the first US Mir crewman), flew by early 1996. Most hardware went from concept to certification and preparation for flight within less than a year. COSS went from concept to flight in 6 months.

Fewer than 50 people did the hardware and integration and about the other half of the group did round-the clock mission support.

None of these numbers include the Spacehab module (commercially owned, developed and operated) and launch integration contract, which employed another 130 people and which covered all aspects of cargo logistics on the Shuttle side. At its height, while the first modules were still being designed constructed and certified for flight, the total number of Spacehab employees, which includes their contractor, McDac, reached about 180 people plus about 4 NASA CS for oversight.

Now of course if you want to establish a large program/project office, then it means that responsibilities become very nebulous, interfaces far more complex, and the effort required goes up asymptotically. Its very easy to get out of control and make little progress.

Within NASA this seems to be the result of empire building, and newcomers who think that in order to accomplish a lot they need huge teams spending lots of money.

All three of the efforts mentioned above had a few experienced people leading the effort and the remainder of the team in each case were frequently fresh-out of college.

Interestingly, almost none of the people who were responsible for the success of any of the aforementioned projects were permitted to participate in the development of flight programs, all of which involved similar or analogous efforts, over the last decade.

“just as ridiculous as the people who claim to be right wing arguing for a government monopoly on space flight …”

“I don’t know very many people who “claim to be right wing.” That’s generally a phrase applied externally (and often misapplied).”

I think he meant free market enthusiastic Republicans

Everyone on here is missing the important distinction between Ares and COTS: It’s not that one is “commercial” and the other is “government”, the difference is only in the WAY the contractor gets paid. Shuttle and Ares pay cost plus, so the incentive to the contractor drives costs upwards and we get Ares at $ 1.5 billion per launch. COTS pays for achievement of milestones, so the incentive to the contractor drives costs down.

How anyone here who claims to be a supporter of space can miss the importance of bringing the cost of space access down is, well … just as ridiculous as the people who claim to be right wing arguing for a government monopoly on space flight …

“Deep seeded”? Hilarious.

No, his posts reveal his grasp of facts and logic. Yours reveal your lack of such.

Are you now going to accuse me of “being fired from NASA,” too?

The last numbers I saw on cost for a Bigelow stay was 15-20 million for the launch fee and 1 month stay. 3 million a month after that.

The cost of leasing a BA 330 was 88 million per year, 1/2 of a module was 54 million a year.