Posted 10/20/2004 05:51:00 PM by Douglas

One of the main reasons Lockheed is sucking at the preverbal teat is because there's no one else to do the work? Somehow I doubt that.

Despite four major disappointments involving Lockheed Martin Space Systems projects in recent years, NASA is unlikely to deny the Jefferson County company future contracts, space analysts said.

That's because there are few U.S. companies with the expertise to do the work, said Max Engel, a space industry analyst for California-based Frost & Sullivan.

"NASA can't afford to cut them off," Engel said. "That raises issues about how do you incentivize companies like Lockheed Martin not to do stupid things when they're so big you still have to use them."

NASA can't afford to cut them off? Sure they can. I can think of several companies that would love to get a piece of Lockheed's NASA action (and many of them don't even start with a "B"). Here's a really clever way to incentivize them to not do stupid things that cost the project millions of dollars. Don't Pay Them. If you crash a space craft on Mars, or in Utah, or drop a satellite during testing. . . guess what folks, that comes out of your budget, not ours. But maybe I'm oversimplifying things (as usual). While we're at it, let's take a look at Lockheed's greatest hits (pun defiantly intended)

Last month, the Lockheed- built Genesis lander slammed into the Utah desert, probably because company engineers, following faulty diagrams, installed four small switches backward on the $264 million craft.

In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into the Red Planet because Lockheed used English measurements while a NASA team used metric. Two months later, the Lockheed- built Mars Polar Lander also crashed after its descent rockets shut off prematurely, probably because of faulty switches. Those two Mars missions cost $230 million.

Last year, Lockheed engineers in a California facility dropped a $239 million satellite on the floor, causing $135 million in damage, according to a NASA investigation.

Please stop embarrassing us, Lockheed.