matthews@ecfa.jesnet.jsc.nasa.gov (Michael C. Matthews) (06/19/91)
In article <YAMAUCHI.91Jun12175113@heron.cs.rochester.edu> yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: > >But if the the shuttle launches are a separate ($54.4B) item here, and >so are personnel costs ($25B), what does the $50B under Operations >Cost pay for? > Contractor personnel, mostly. The $25B only covers NASA employees. Most of the people working on NASA programs are employed by the major NASA contractor companies (Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed, Grumman, Boeing, Martin Marietta, Northrop, TRW, IBM and dozens of other computer companies, Link, Bendix, Krug, Mitre, etc., etc., etc.) I'd guess there's at least a 2:1 ratio of contractor to NASA personnel. This is, incidentally, something the Augustine Commission complained about. Civil service salary schedules make it impossible for NASA to pay competitive salaries for engineers and scientists, so they all get hired by contractors. These companies put them to work on NASA contracts doing the exact same thing they would have been doing if they were NASA employees, only making a lot more. Then the companies charge NASA for all that salary plus benefits and overhead, plus a profit. So, NASA ends up paying $20-50K more per year per head than they would have had to if they had been able to hire the engineers at their contractor-paid salaries in the first place -- and those engineers that NASA does get wind up spending an exasperating amount of their time managing contracts. Pretty depressing, isn't it? About the only advantage for NASA that I can see in this scheme is that they don't have to provide office space, etc. for all those personnel, and they're a whole lot easier to get rid of than civil servants when the budget crunch comes... -- DISCLAIMER: I probably don't know what I'm talking about. My perspective may be warped by working for a contractor. -- Mike Matthews | matthews%ecfa@jesnic.jsc.nasa.gov Tethered Vehicle Analysis Group | (backup) --> matthews@asd2.jsc.nasa.gov Advanced Projects Section; Navigation, Control, and Aeronautics Department Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Company, Houston, Texas, (713) 333-7079