content: There's a different problem; the NASA of yesteryear had engineers up and down the line and were allowed to make mistakes. These days it's engineers on the bottom, politicians and business critters on top- god help you if you EVER make a mistake. The risk/reward ratios are way lower, and considering that even the projects that they get working tend to get funding yanked after a few years, I'm not surprised that NASA doesn't produce any major results.  Even if they got  a full 1% of the budget- if the project gets cut after 4 years and it's a 10 year project, what are you left with?