The space program and Legos.
This entry rants about this article on CNN.
People wonder why NASA isn't held in the same esteem that it was 30-40 years ago, during the golden age of the Apollo programs. During the cold war we took the easy route - a mix of liquid and solid based fuels of fairly easy to come by componants. We got to the moon, yes, and certain fields (optics and nanotechnlogy primarily, that I can think of) benefited from research conducted in space and on the Skylab space station of the 80's.
Then, we made a grave mistake - the shuttle fleet. Its more economical and honestly, safer, to use a single-use reentry vehicle with reusable rocket boosters than to have a reusable entry vehicle with single-use boosters. Not only that, but orbiters require a lot more systems and thus suffer from reduced payload capacities. During this time we wanted to cement our lead over the Soviets (remember, this is 25 years ago that the shuttle fleet was constructed) with an impressive American victory. Then, there was a second grave mistake made - power. The shuttle fleet (and the upcoming Orion fleet, as they'll be using the same booster rockets) will operate on a mix of Liquid Oxygen and Hydrogen power, efficient (for chemical based rockets) and old. We should be moving into nuclear based reactions and pushing the Earth to Moon and Earth to Mars mission times down, saving on fuel costs while increasing payload. (Nuclear rockets are, by far more efficient and capable than chemical rockets, they're capable of out-of-atmosphere propulsion without even sustaining a nuclear reaction.)
Now, we're heading into a third mistake - instead of innovating, we're rennovating. "Apollo on steriods" they're calling the Orion project. Yet, the program has been assigned a contractor with severely limited manned-space mission experiments without clear cut goals - such as reusability (a major indicator of cost) and landing sites (another major indicator of cost - landing capability is the foundation of the lander idea, the entire engineering section is built around it).
Lastly, we have no reason to innovate to push cost down. Our current pay plan is known as cost-plus. Essentially, contractor bids x amount of currency, wins contract. Spends x amount of its own currency but the project isn't complete. Spends y amount of currency from its own pocket also (y is not included in the original design bid - and can be anything) and completes project. Recieves x+y+z (z being the profit) money back from the government as profit. So - whatever a company spends is paid for, thus, no reason to push down costs. Essentially, they're not paying for it.
I am so, so tired of NASA and the space program. I hope at least the Chinese get it right, maybe we'd pull our head out of our ass and figure out which way is up.
In other news, interview went awesome today. They mentioned that I was very, very overqualified for the position and I managed to talk them into a raise of $.75/hr. God, I love being a salesman sometimes.
Its a little bit different of a position than I thought though, its a software support position, rather than hardware. The only thing I hope is that they don't figure I'm too overqualified, and wouldn't be happy/would leave quickly (I might, but technical jobs are hard to find down here, so I'll take what I can get).
Oh... and I want one of these. Dude. Its a robot.
Edit: I wanted to add: I'm running the Riverfront Run for the Southwest Georgia Cancer Coalition in Albany, GA on Nov. the 12th. Its an easy 5k that benefits local cancer patients (Georgia has a 35% higher incidence rate of cancer, and people have a hard time paying for their tests). If you're in GA near that time and wanna run with me, its only like a $15 entry fee, no fundraising required.
Or, if you wanna donate, I'm trying to raise between $2-500 for the SwGCC, so let me know.