These things happen in private sector organizations too; the assumption that the private sector somehow will do it better needs to be supported.

It's the private sector. It does better than the government practically by definition. Sometimes it even does a better job at killing, which is why private contractors exist for warfare, such as Blackwater/Academi.

If this wasn't true, then the government wouldn't contract the private sector for various tasks. But it does, all the time, because contracting is far more effective, and results matter.

It seems like your view of NASA is rather rose-tinted. Along with the impressive, courageous explorers, there are political opportunists and all of the other drama you'd expect of any large organization.

It will be interesting to find out whether the private sector or the public sector reaches Mars first.

EDIT: Regarding the political nature of NASA: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roger...

That was a different time. In fact, it was an entirely different generation of people. But the important question is, in what ways has NASA changed since then?

EDIT 2: So, this is a troll comment, then? I'm becoming a little disenchanted with HN, actually. It's grown large enough that the voting system seems to be becoming less and less relevant. There's a certain effect that you see on Reddit where, if someone disagrees with your point, then they will downvote your comment and every subsequent comment you made, regardless of content. I've noticed the same thing happening here on HN, and it's a very recent phenomenon. I've also observed it happening to others, not just myself. I've restrained myself from talking about it, but I think I'll go ahead and speak up at this point.

I'm not sure what to do about this, actually. HN has always been a kind of second home to me, but now it's too large to have meaningful conversations. In order to even get into a position to have a conversation, you have to either be one of the top comments in the thread, or you have to reply to one of the top comments. This is less true than it is for Reddit, but it's definitely happening. The problem is this: Those who are quickest to a thread are usually the ones who will get those top spots, rather than the most reasoned or comprehensive comment. HN has some defenses against this; for example, all comments appear at the top of the thread for a limited time period, and ostensibly the voting system is supposed to keep the good ones there. But HN is growing so massive that those algorithms may need some tweaking, because the deluge of upvotes is making it difficult to achieve those spots.

But the distressing thing, for me, is that replies are becoming less and less logical and reasoned. For example, the question wasn't whether it's a good thing for governments to be contracting with the private sector, or what the negative consequences might be. The question was, is the private sector more effective than the government, in general? Yet the reply was "[privatization advocates] are the ones who get the lucrative contracts and the politicians who support 'privatization' get the lucrative donations. Also, as government diminishes, the wealthy and powerful grow even more powerful," which is totally unrelated to the question at hand.

Anyway. What I just did is against the rules, so I'll stop now. Sorry. I'm just becoming concerned with the timbre of the site, and feel like there is no outlet to discuss this kind of thing.