uhhhh, NASA wtf?

[TK73]

NASA pays sky-high $66 a person for seminar snacks

A government watchdog says the nation's space agency paid the out-of-this-world price of $66 a person a day for bagels, cookies and juice at a conference.

The Associated Press
WASHINGTON —

A government watchdog says the nation's space agency paid the out-of-this-world price of $66 a person a day for bagels, cookies and juice at a conference.

The subject of the NASA seminar? It was a training session for its procurement officials - the people who do the buying with taxpayer funds. They were talking about how to determine reasonable prices.

The NASA Inspector General said that during the three-day conference in Baltimore in 2008, the 317 attendees snacked on soda, coffee, fruit, bagels and cookies at a cost of more than $62,000.

NASA has promised it will come up with better conference spending rules.

[PocketThunder]

Yep, Gov't overspending like usual.  Remember that story on the several hundred dollar toilet seat?...??   

[Ponch ®]

Yep, Gov't overspending like usual.  Remember that story on the several hundred dollar toilet seat?...??   

shhh...that's what's paying for the maintenance on the UFO's we don't have at Area 51, which doesn't exist.

[hemi68charger]

I know this, if true, is waste......... But what also is a waste is America's leadership in the Space Program (or the lack of it now).

Nuff said............

[Dans 68]

I know this, if true, is waste......... But what also is a waste is America's leadership in the Space Program (or the lack of it now).

Nuff said............

Ditto.

Dan

[Troy]

Is that considered irony - or does it just prove the need for the training session?

To be fair, "snacks" in this case it's more than junk pulled out of the vending machine. I'm sure it was catered and had attendants on duty as well (probably provided by the host hotel or conference center). Typically at a conference there's a break about every 2 hours so the attendants have to be there all day and the "snacks" have to be fresh. Could it have been cheaper? Yes, but I bet the costs for rooms and transportation makes this look like chump change.

Troy

[Mike DC]

     

shhh...that's what's paying for the maintenance on the UFO's we don't have at Area 51, which doesn't exist.

Rumor has it that a lot of extra undocumented currency gets printed by the govt for those kinds of under-the-table purposes.  It's good for CIA deals with bad guys overseas, etc. 

It begs the question of what a "real" and "counterfeit" dollar really is.

   

[bull]

The US is more than $12 trillion in debt, what does it matter what we spend on snacks? It could be $66,000 each and it wouldn't make a difference. IMO we're no longer a sovereign nation.

[Silver R/T]

The US is more than $12 trillion in debt, what does it matter what we spend on snacks? It could be $66,000 each and it wouldn't make a difference. IMO we're no longer a sovereign nation.

x2 on that bull

[Mike DC]

   

Dick Cheney took his family's assets out of US dollars while he was the VP. 

Any questions? 

 

[DodgeByDave]

The US is more than $12 trillion in debt, what does it matter what we spend on snacks? It could be $66,000 each and it wouldn't make a difference. IMO we're no longer a sovereign nation.

x2 on that bull

US total debt: 56 trillion

Debt Clock

Total US debt = Federal Government, State, Local, Business, Individual, and financial institutions

That isn't the scary number. The scary numbers are the debt per person (40,980) and the debt per taxpayer (115,408) (note: those two figures are based on the national debt)

Personal debt: All in trillions (total) 17, Mortgage 14, Consumer 2.4. 861 billion in credit card debt. 54k per person.

On topic, NASA gets a bum rap about certain expenses. Consider this. According to Mike Gray in "Angle of Attack" that:

For some time Bob Gilruth and Max Faget had been wrestling with the problem of defining reliability.......They batted it back and forth and came up with 99% mission success and 99.9% crew safety

On the surface, just arbitrary numbers.

Though it had been plucked from the air in ten minutes, it was the product of vast exp, If they dropped one decimal place, the program costs half. Add one decimal place and there probably wouldn't be enough money on the planet to finish the job

Why?

In the airplane business reliability is measured by testing until failure, then scheduling a time change well before the failure

For Apollo, that wouldn't work. For one, there were so many new parts, new materials, new technologies that you would have had to start that testing when christ was a pup. Kennedy did set the goal of "Before this decade is out".

SO what does that mean?

Engineering analysis and traceability. The saying was if you ordered a piece of plywood, there would be documentation all the way back to the tree it came from

Along came a whistleblower, cried to a congressman about 9 and 10 dollar bolts that were available at the hardware store for a nickle. The congressman called North American on the carpet:

The letter found it's way into the hands of Olin "Tiger" Teague. Charlie Feltz had to drop everything and fly to Washington, when he arrived he explained that these bolts had to be certified at every step of the 11 required to manufacture, and that not only that the bolts had to be certified from the Mesabi Iron range all the way to finished product. When you factor in everything it turned out the damn bolt didn't cost 9 dollars, it was more like 32

66 bucks a person isn't that much for a catered lunch. I've been to places that wouldn't put a half a cracker of caviar on the table. I've drank whiskey that 66 dollars wouldn't buy a shot of.

At the same time, when you spend public money on lunch, I would think that bologna and ham salad would do.

Hey, when the president is flying in chef's to make pizza, it's time for everybody to get while the getting is good. Eventually the curtain will come down on this dog and pony show called congress.