Beancounting: the honorable profession!

I’m surprised I haven’t seen this story in play more: NASA’s budget books are a mess, to the tune of $565,000,000,000. As a Carl Sagan parody artist might say, that’s “billions and billions”.

My problem is, from reading the article linked, I’m not sure what the error is here. Are they saying that NASA can’t account for $565 billion? or that NASA overspent by $565 billion? or that NASA underspent by that amount? What gives?

And if NASA’s current budget is $16.2 billion, how many years did it take to rack up $565 billion in errors? I don’t really understand this stuff.

(via Paul Riddell)

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