within a reasonable percentage of the projected budget and timeline? Project management of any type is difficult. Space is no exception. In many respects, it's more difficult to manage a software development project than one involving physical hardware like space probes.

Software is intangible. You can't see it (only its behavior), touch it, taste it. If you're designing a physical device, you have mathematical laws for things like strength of materials and physical behavior. None of that exists for software. Despite all of these challenges, software projects can and do go through to completion. Some of them actually come in reasonably close to budget and time projections.

So, why does NASA have so many problems with their projects? Are they over-engineering everything to squeeze out that last 0.1% of performance, but, in so doing, causing the prices to skyrocket? I argue that's part of their problem.

NASA's original culture was set during the Apollo era where the operating motto was "waste anything but time." Since Apollo, they've consistently managed to bust the budget on just about every big project they've tried. In many cases, their projects have also been years behind schedule and didn't live up to expectations.

Put it another way, if you had an employee who never lived up to expectations, would you keep giving him raises and increased responsibilities? Perhaps you would but I wouldn't.

NASA's predecessor was the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA). That small agency existed for decades and did a tremendous amount of valuable R&D on aeronautics. Following Sputnik, Eisenhower pushed for the establishment of NASA as a civilian agency responsible for aeronautical and space R&D. The first astronauts were all white military test pilots because Eisenhower ordered it so, partly because these pilots already had the necessary flight experience, security clearances, and discipline, and partly because he didn't want the selection process to become a circus. Most of the early engineers were white males simply because the overwhelming majority of engineers graduated during that era were white males.

Before I'd trust NASA on another big ticket project like sending humans to Mars, I want to see them perform in a responsible manner. I'm not holding my breath.