Hmm #52

'They threw my laptop into the atmosphere'

Two things:
1.) $94 million? In ten years? That's not even a blip in the noise.

2.) This was my mom's job when she retired from NASA. *snort*

Seriously, I've seen this story before. It was non-news then, and it's non-news now. But I've yet to see any items like this about any other federal agencies. I bet the dept. of defense's losses probably rival NASA's entire fucking budget.

It says the agency does not have "effective control" over the $35bn of property that it reports on in its financial statements.

Even insanely comparing the two numbers "94 million" and "35 billion", there's no slack for a third of one percent? Over ten years? But hey, this is NASA! They fly rockets and put people into space! At its heart the space program's primary purpose is to keep people employed. Its secondary purpose is national prestige. It put a man on the moon. Such an achievement is still unmatched. So I suppose it's not much of a surprise NASA gets crap thrown at it for things that barely raise an eyebrow when they surface anywhere else. We expect perfection from our dreams, and that makes NASA susceptible to these sorts of attacks. If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they account for every single nut and bolt?

It's probably some tree hugger who thinks spending money in space is a waste. OMGWTFBBQ, there are people starving here! Right. Have you seen NASA's budget? $16 billion a year. That's not even a percentage point of what we spend in Iraq, and it at least produces something. It frankly boggles my mind that we've managed to run a shuttle program and build a space station with an investment of less than $6 billion a year on manned space. (That's not a typo, NASA's budget it ~*16* billion total, but only 6 of that gets spent on putting people in space.) It's not like taking NASA's money away would magically cure hunger or provide free health care for all americans.

Ah well, I suppose I should stop ranting and raving.