Wise(r) Use of Government Funds

This link from NASA shows a spirit of Yankee Ingenuity which reinforces all the good stereotypes about NASA while attacking some of the bureaucratic impressions the agency has (justifiably) been saddled with. It discusses how two satellites, somewhat long in the tooth and short on power, were destined to become space junk, yet were given a new lease on life, and on exploring, by catapulting them into a new orbit -- the orbit of the moon. Originally designed as satellites to investigate how solar rays affect earth, their earth-centric orbits caused them to spend more and more time in the dark, unable to re-charge their batteries. Rather than give up, however, the cracks at NASA came up with a better idea: put them into another orbit! By use of some pretty fancy work along the earth-moon Lagrange line, our astronomers flung them away from earth, but let the moon catch 'em. Now the mission has gotten a brand-new shiny name (kinda like in the movie Air Force One when the rescue plane changes its callsign after Harrison Ford tosses Gary Oldman into the Caspian), and a new lease on life to see how solar rays affect the moon.

What's particularly heartwarming about this story is that it uses existing government resources to expand its scope of research. It seems hardly a day goes by where we don't hear about ridiculous government waste, or duplication, or agencies explaining that "if we only had more money, we could...." Here, we see the best sort of government management: when the administrators think about investment and loss, opportunities to get the most bang for the buck, rather than insuring they spend every last nickel to ensure the same budget next year, and taking opportunities when they come, rather than waiting for the window to close, shrugging their shoulders, and saying, "well, if we had only had more money."

That's not to say that NASA doesn't have its own stories of waste, like any bureaucracy. And undoubtedly NASA is unlikely to advertise the cost of any mission on its own website. But it seems like stories like this are an example of "good" government, rather than what is so often the opposite.