Governing by Network [antikvár]

Foreword he job of running American government now faces a profound problem: much of what is written doesn't match much of the way government actually works. Consider the tragic disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia in February 2003. As it reentered the atmosphere over the southwestern United States, repeated efforts by ground control to raise the ship got no response. Horrified observers watched it break apart into thousands of pieces, and soon television viewers around the world saw, again and again, the sad end of the shuttle and its crew. As investigators tried to piece together the clues, they discovered that a piece of foam insulation had broken off during launch and struck the edge of Columbia's wing. NASA's cameras had detected the strike, but engineers concluded it was unlikely that it had caused serious damage. They were wrong. The small, light piece of foam had punched a hole in the shuttle's wing, and as the craft descended, hot gases flooded into the hole and caused the shuttle to break apart. Why hadn't NASA officials detected the problem, warned the crew, and attempted somé kind of emergency repair? Investigators concluded two things. First, NASA had no capability for such an in-flight repair. Second and more disturbing, NASA itself did not have the capacity for assessing the situation. As part of the agency's "faster, better, cheaper" strategy of the 1990s, virtually all of the operations-designing, building, launching,