$349 million is a lot of money, if it is yours. For a public works project, it's construction of three medium size US high schools when the land has been donated.
In terms of NASA's budget [never mind the US Federal budget] the Washington Post is ranting about rounding error only because the project is in a state for which their audience has little sympathy. Producing four fewer F35's would save more money, just on initial cost...never mind that the costs of operating just one well exceed $700k a year.
For anyone with a passing interest in the integrity of journalism, the J-2x rocket engine for which the A-3 Test Stand was built to test was let on a $1.2 billion dollar contract to Pratt & Whittney RocketDyne. The program was only killed this year [1]...and a new $2.8 billion dollar contract to develop the alternative was let just this July to Boeing. Purportedly this contract was a continuation of an undefined contract with Boeing let back in 2007 -- the same year as the A-3 Test Platform broke ground.[2]
What NASA got for the money is an additional capability that is reasonably likely to be useful over the next several decades so long as manned missions beyond LEO remain within the agency's potential mandate. Given the speed with which the hot air of politicians changes directions, moving forward on infrastructure makes sense.
It seems to me like NASA's internal strategy right now is "build systems that will be useful no matter what the politicians decide to do, and make sure we finish them before they change their minds".
It's not the most efficient way to get to Mars. It's probably the only way we will given the politics involved.
Nasa's annual budget is around $17 billion, so $349 million is about 2 percent of it. A better comparison might be to the cost of significant individual programs: commercial crew has a current annual budget of $696 million, down from an administration request of over $800 million. That's not an entirely fair comparison because the expenditure was spread out over several years, but it's still past what I'd consider rounding error.
Ground breaking was in 2007. Design preceded it. That means less than $50 million a year -- tenths of a percent of their budget on the project.
Throw in the "shovel ready project" aspect and there was no political will to halt the project from the Executive or Legislative branches of the Federal Government.
It's still wrong no matter what the price tag is. It isn't just wrong, it is a symptom of a broken system. It's a very simple and easy to understand example of the brokenness, where as your examples aren't quite as convincing, because they aren't as simple.
The way for NASA to be effective, is to make a plan and follow it. I am very skeptical of your claim that it made sense to complete this project. Would it have made sense at a billion dollar price tag? What about 2 billion? All of your arguments in favor of completion, would still apply. It would still be relatively inexpensive (compared to defense expenditures).
“It’s heartbreaking to know that, you know, you thought you’d done something good,” Forshee said. “And all you’ve done is go around in a damn circle, like a dog chasing his tail.”
^^^ Another strong sign of dysfunction.
I don't expect NASA to be perfect, but it seems as if you are setting a very low bar for NASA.
In terms of NASA's budget [never mind the US Federal budget] the Washington Post is ranting about rounding error only because the project is in a state for which their audience has little sympathy. Producing four fewer F35's would save more money, just on initial cost...never mind that the costs of operating just one well exceed $700k a year.
For anyone with a passing interest in the integrity of journalism, the J-2x rocket engine for which the A-3 Test Stand was built to test was let on a $1.2 billion dollar contract to Pratt & Whittney RocketDyne. The program was only killed this year [1]...and a new $2.8 billion dollar contract to develop the alternative was let just this July to Boeing. Purportedly this contract was a continuation of an undefined contract with Boeing let back in 2007 -- the same year as the A-3 Test Platform broke ground.[2]
What NASA got for the money is an additional capability that is reasonably likely to be useful over the next several decades so long as manned missions beyond LEO remain within the agency's potential mandate. Given the speed with which the hot air of politicians changes directions, moving forward on infrastructure makes sense.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-2X
[2] http://spacenews.com/41139nasa-boeing-finalize-28b-sls-core-...