--- title: "NASA Facilities Are Falling Apart, Experts Say" description: "A group of experts from the public and private sectors are warning that NASA's Earth-bound facilities are not at all up to snuff." date: "2024-09-14" modified: "2024-09-14" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-facilities-falling-apart" categories: - "NASA" - "Space" tags: - "buildings" - "facilities" - "NASA" - "the digest" --- # NASA Facilities Are Falling Apart, Experts Say ![A group of experts from the public and private sectors are warning that NASA's Earth-bound facilities are not at all up to snuff.]() *\Image: Smiley N. Pool/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images\* ## Infrastructure Week In a new report, a [group of experts]() from the public and private sectors are warning that NASA's Earth-bound facilities are not at all up to snuff. As [*Ars Technica* reports](), the [200-page dispatch]() from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine details how NASA is experiencing overarching mission failure, with its physical facilities serving as a key indicator of its woes. In the report, the assembled experts from institutions as disparate as SpaceX and Stanford found via a scoring system that most of its facilities are out of shape. The worst offender is the Johnson Space Center in Houston, which is where NASA's astronauts are trained and where its Mission Control Center is located. Of its [more than a dozen centers]() and its headquarters in Washington, only the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which is operated in tandem with the California Institute of Technology, and the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, didn't score "poor" for infrastructure. Rather than covering the technology in these centers, the scoring system takes into account building infrastructure and utilities. "You can have a world-class microscope and materials lab, but if the building goes down, that microscope is useless to you," Erik Weiser, NASA's director for facilities and real estate, said during a National Academies panel discussion last year, [as quoted by the website](). ## Liminal Space In a more recent interview with *Ars*, former Lockheed Martin CEO and lead report author Norm Augustine joked that "NASA’s problem is it always seems to have $3 billion more program than it has of funds." While the same could be said of the former analytical reports he led on NASA in 1990 and 2009, the stakes are all the higher now that NASA is ramping up projects [riskier and more complex]() than any it has [undertaken in its history](). "Since the year 2010, the NASA budget for missions has gone up by 8 percent," Augustine said. "Meanwhile, the budget for mission support has dropped by 33 percent. If you do a little arithmetic, it shows that every dollar of mission support budget today has to support 50 percent more mission activity than was the case in 2010, not that long ago." As Weiser [told the National Academies last year](), a whopping 83 percent of NASA's facilities have lived past their design lifetimes, and with a $3.3 billion maintenance backlog, it's hard to imagine them being brought into the future any time soon. **More on NASA woes:** [*As NASA's Mars Sample Return Stumbles, China Is Looking to Beat Them to the Punch*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()