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Originally Posted by joshbaumgartner
The Aerospace industry is facing a significant crisis, particular in the United States, over the issue of recruitment and retention. The biggest problem is not training, education, or even pay and benefits. It is the sense most young people have of the industry being a moribund place where they will have little opportunity for initiative or to make a difference. The thought is that it is an industry afraid to take risks, unwilling to fund new ideas, and closed to inventiveness and entrepreneurship.
You can train all of the engineers you want, but if you do not give them even the hope of ever seeing their dreams take flight, why would they seek to join such an industry?
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As an employee in the aerospace industry who works at Johnson Space Center I find it difficult to really make other people understand what the main problem is with the aerospace industry.
The single biggest problem why our space industry is plateaued and has the appearance of an industry "afraid to take risks" is because we lack one major all important ingredient. NATIONAL LEADERSHIP.
Why was NASA so effective in the 60's up to Apollo 11? Because we had large national leadership and a goal.
Countless dollars were wasted throughout the 90's because NASA had no defined goal. Programs were started, funded, then canceled a year or so later because no one would see them out to the end.
The other main issue is that NASA budget has literally remained constant since the mid 80's at some 14 billion per year. It hasn't even been adjusted for inflation which means since the 80's NASA purchasing power has decreased every year. There was a time when in order to fly the shuttle in the 90's NASA had to sacrifice money from the budget to build a space station or in order to actually develop a space station it had to sacrifice money that should have been spent on shuttle improvements and upgrades. This continued for over 15 years. Now at least we have a goal to finish the station by 2010, fly Orion by 2015, and go back to the moon by 2020. This of course could all go out the window if a new president steps up and kills our budget. And then of course all the money and effort that went into the program up to that point would have been wasted.
What we need is someone with the guts to make a plan and see it out to the end. Not more budget cuts and setbacks which ultimately causes more apathy and mistrust in the space program.
Furthermore, proponents of slashing NASA's budget to fund other government programs need to really take a look at how well NASA manages its money for all that it has to do every year. NASA is charged with launching the space shuttle to construct the space station, run space station operations, run un-manned exploration operations, research space, research and develop new space technology (probes, launch systems, manned vehicles), research and develop new aircraft and aircraft technology, and do ALL of this in full view of public scrutiny with stricter safety standards than ANY other industry out there. I challenge anyone to find any government program that can do that with a measly 14 billion per year or less than 1% of the total national budget.