Expense Offsets
You know what NASA needs? Programs to identify opportunities to offset some project expenses. We do it all the time, especially if we're doing destructive prototyping. One of our regular projects are pressure vessels that clients use for stuff like building better beer cans and dive equipment and we've always got at least one company willing to pay us to stick something inside the extra proof(s) and film it. We send them the film and all the sensor data which they then use to in their sales pitches to their clients. It's a nice circle of life kind of thing, for liability purposes we don't ship out anything that has been assigned to a test group (no chance of mixups) and we destroy all test prototypes after the program is complete. Our contract transfers ownership of the prototypes to us on completion as well, so I don't even have to tell the clients what happens with their (ex)stuff after they sign off.
It's not a profit center for us, more of an expense inhibitor, but it does cover a few intern salaries or a mid level engineer salary (equivalent to several NASA senior management salaries) so it's a good thing. We aren't NASA, but customers still pay big bucks to stick something inside something else with some double sided tape. NASA could command a fortune for the same and looking at the contracts for work we've done for them in the past it's easy to see where the 'paralled embedded experiment' parts would fit (nicely).
I'm not advocating for the Commercialization of NASA, but reducing costs by maximizing project utility is a win-win for everybody. I guarantee that the pick and place machines that made your phone, or the machines that made your cigarettes or candy are several orders of magnitude more precise and reliable (by usage time) than anything that's ever gone into space (none of those things have Reynolds Wrap adhered to moving parts with Super 77 spray glue, and there are quite a few things in space, one worth several billion dollars, that do). So just build in an extra bracket, tiny weight and power allocations and sell the shit out of it. (Samsung Galaxy S6 - Truly out of this world).
*My 220 Swift rounds travel at 5,517fps (so groundhogs 1000 yards away are vaporized like shooting them with a laser) so NASA needs some better firearms techs.
^The entire program LADEE program was done in the basement of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Special effects wizard and King of Lizard People. You can tell because his reflection is on the side of the craft model in that first image.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
