> Carl Sagan played a leading role in the American space program since its inception. He was a consultant and adviser to NASA beginning in the 1950s, he briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon, and was an experimenter on the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo expeditions to the planets. He helped solve the mysteries of the high temperature of Venus (a massive greenhouse effect), the seasonal changes on Mars (windblown dust) and the reddish haze of Titan (complex organic molecules).
> For his work, Dr. Sagan received the NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Distinguished Public Service twice, as well as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award.
I've met Sagan (he came by our dorm for conversation and dinner with the students). He was a great man. He was wonderful to talk to. He has made great contributions to science. He deserves all the credit and accolades you mentioned.
But I doubt he ever set foot in a machine shop. Making things is an entirely different skill.
Sorry, I'm not buying that. But that notion might be one reason why government projects cost so much.
I've taken apart cars many times. I know when I'm being fed a baloney sandwich when taking my car in for service, and use that to pare down the estimate sometimes as much as 50%.
(For all the women who rightly complain about being scammed by auto mechanics, I can vouch for them doing their best to scam me about 75% of the time.)
I'm not buying it either. NASA wasted billions on the space shuttle and single-use rockets until a programmer from Paypal showed them how to build re-usable rockets. Musk regularly refers to the economics of airliners as inspiration.
Obviously ideas to improve the economics of space exploration can come from anywhere, but one of the first places I'd look would be the Boeing machine shop.
And we haven't touched on human spaceflight, where economy must be balanced with safety. Hmm, I wonder what industry has the most experience with such engineering tradeoffs?
