More likely the problem is DBC (designed by congress). Where are those old Shuttle Boosters made? The Orange tank? There are 535 member of Congress of which 10 are engineers of any kind. Probably even less Scientist.

That's not on congress though. If a budget for the agency only comes with those kinds of political strings attached, the right thing for the agency would be to say "please keep your money, the US won't be going to Moon or Mars".

I'm not very familiar with how US politics works internally, but how would it play out in practice? My experience with my (admittedly flawed) government is that the head of such agency would be dismissed from his position, and a new - more amicable - one appointed not long after. Are the US different?

It usually plays out like this.

The Congress person from Alabama where the fuel tank is built refuses to ok spending for NASA's other projects (or some other desirable project that needs to get done) unless the design requires things be built in their district. Since the tanks were previously built there it becomes the easiest way to satisfy their black mail. This may not be explicitly stated other than in meetings with the speaker of the house but it is understood none the less. This is not Congress people directly profiting from this decision but they have to run for office every 2 years and need to have consistent pork returns to keep their constituents happy.

There is nothing illegal here in fact the system is pretty much designed to work this way to insure that Federal money is distributed among the states.

Congress dictates what executive branch agencies do, not the other way around.

Notice, however that it's not about _what_ to do, but _how_ to do it. And when it comes to to the how of human space flight, NASA has the experts, not Congress. Politicians rely on Engineers and Researchers to make informed decisions, it is therefore only a natural expectation on behalf of Congress that unreasonable, meaningless, or dangerous requests should be denied. If that doesn't happen the Administrator screwed up, it is that simple.

I think what you mean to say is congress approves the appointment of officials nominated by the executive branch and approves the budget for agencies. Agencies have no control over congress. The executive branch can dictate what an agency can do, within the boundaries of a law originally passed by the congress (though almost never a recent congress).

> I do wonder if a project is going "right" only when it starts to hit excruciatingly long shifts and burns workforce like coals - especially if it is expected to safely carry humans to the Moon. I think it's more likely a sign of doing something that wasn't planned and budgeted properly

I want to agree, but for literal moonshots, I'm not sure I can.

We all know there's a point after which throwing more people at the problem won't solve it. For complex, integrated products this can be a relatively low number. So maybe even an infinite budget does not help.

Planning maybe, but then again maybe a high launch cadence is a necessity for projects like this? I'm thinking of the learning cycle -- if there are years between missions maybe we will forget some of the knowledge obtained from the third when we launch the fifth, in a way we wouldn't have had with months between missions.

So maybe there are some things that are best done at high cadence with a small-ish number of people. If there are, then complex, integrated, innovative products would be it.

> If you worry about your workforce being motivated, transparently tying compensation to company success does wonders.

That works only if the company is small, otherwise the worker's compensation isn't really tied to the success. And once the direct link is broken all you have is KPIs.