Lack of commitment led to disaster on Columbia shuttle =TheHill.com=

Critics contend that NASA is bloated and inefficient. And, to an extent, they’re right. Cost overruns are commonplace, and compared to old-fashioned rockets, the shuttle is very expensive to fly. But it’s possible for an agency to be bloated, inefficient and underfunded. In fact, the latter can sometimes lead to the former.

The problem is like that of an under-capitalized business or a falling-apart old car that costs more money in upkeep than it would to buy a newer model. In the 1990s, NASA did make some serious attempts to develop a successor to the shuttle.

But at half-a-billion dollars a launch, says Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), “Every time [the shuttle] went up it was consuming all of the extra resources that were necessary in order to develop the technology that was needed to find a replacement. It was a vicious cycle.”