In infinite wisdom Joseph Lazio answered:

"R" == Rich  <someone@somewhere.com> writes:

R> I only hope that you don't manage your checkbook the same way you
R> want the govt to borrow to pay for your pet projects.

R> As for NASA, it's an illustration of the way these things tend to
R> go.

R> http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/05/16/nasa.finances.reut/index.html

Note that you forgot to include a key paragraph in posting a portion
of this report:

Did I?

By this reckoning, a $40 billion contract that stretched over nine
years and several separate NASA centers generated $120 billion worth
of entries, and these were turned over to the auditors.

This is speculation. If they knew this was the cause, there would be
no audit problems.

R> $565 billion

R> "The documentation NASA provided in support of its September 30,
R> 2003, financial statements was not adequate to support $565 billion
R> in adjustments to various financial statement accounts," the
R> auditor wrote in a January 20 report to Cobb, NASA's inspector
R> general.

Indeed, even some simple arithmetic would show something funny about
this "$565 billion" number.  As the article states, NASA's current
annual budget is $16 billion.  So it would take about 35 years of NASA
spending, at the current rate, to produce $565 billion.

But NASA has not always been spending at the current rate. Think Apollo
for starters.

Here's some more data.

    http://www.richardb.us/nasa.html

But it's an interesting point. I checked about a dozen news articles
and all said the same. They all seem to derive from the same source.

I suspect
that the auditors simply added up everything that didn't make sense,
without taking into account double-, triple-, or quadruple-counting of
stuff and reported some huge number.

Of course, NASA is fine, the auditors don't know their job. How silly
of me to suspect a huge bloated bureaucracy like NASA. What was I
thinking?

The other question, of course, to ask is whether NASA is unique.

You seem to think that one irresponsibility excuses another. I find
this notion rather reprehensible.

Suppose you did an audit of any large government agency or private
firm? 

Why not do so and report back to me. Then I suppose you think NASA's
audit problems will be explained and can be forgotten.

R> And you might want to consider that *all* of the new planetary
R> projects Joseph Lazio posted of fall under the rubric of NASA's
R> mismanagement of debt dollars. Wonder where the money's actually
R> going? NASA has no idea.

That's not correct.  Two of the three missions that I posted were
European missions.

My mistake. But one remains.

Rich