STAN HONDA\/AFP\/Getty Images NASA logo on a protective box for a camera near the space shuttle Endeavour. <\/p>\n
In June, NASA finished work on a huge construction project here in Mississippi: a $349million laboratory tower, designed to test a new rocket engine in a chamber that mimicked the vacuum of space.<\/p>\n
Then NASA did something odd. <\/p>\n
As soon as the work was done, it shut the tower down. The project was officially mothballed closed up and left empty without ever being used. <\/p>\n
You lock the door, so nobody gets in and hurts themselves, said Daniel Dumbacher, a former NASA official who oversaw the project. <\/p>\n
The reason for the shutdown: The new tower called the A-3 test stand was useless. Just as expected. The rocket program it was designed for had been canceled in 2010. <\/p>\n
But, at first, cautious NASA bureaucrats didnt want to stop the construction on their own authority. And then Congress at the urging of a senator from Mississippi swooped in and ordered the agency to finish the tower, no matter what. <\/p>\n
The result was that NASA spent four more years building something it didnt need. Now, the agency will spend about $700,000 a year to maintain it in disuse. <\/p>\n
The empty tower in Mississippi is evidence of a breakdown at NASA, which used to be a glorious symbol of what an American bureaucracy could achieve. In the space race days of the 1960s, the agency was given a clear, galvanizing mission: Reach the moon within the decade. In less than seven, NASA got it done. <\/p>\n
Now, NASA has become a symbol of something else: what happens to a big bureaucracy after its sense of mission starts to fade. <\/p>\n
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How NASA spent $349 million on a useless tower<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" STAN HONDA\/AFP\/Getty Images NASA logo on a protective box for a camera near the space shuttle Endeavour. Continue reading