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PSAD-81-7 1 (1980-11-26)

handle is hein.gao/gaobabbgh0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 
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               COMPTROL-IER GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES

.                       WASrHING0ON, D.C. 20548


B-201056
                                        NOVEMBER 26, 1980

To the Cognizant Congressional

   Committees and Subcommittees:

   - Subject: Need for the National Aeronautics and
     /?<i rAwmSPee     i-sLation to Provide the
               Congress More Complete Cost Information
               on its Projects (PSAD-Bl-7)

      This report discusses our observations on the need for
 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to
 provide the Congress more complete cost information in its
 annual budget justification documents. Our observations
 arose during a study we made of NASA's cost estimating pro-
 cess.

      As you know, NASA has underestimated the costs for some
 of its major projects--for example, the space shuttle and
 the Landsat-D project. As a result, NASA has had to request
 supplemental appropriations to continue the development of
 the space shuttle program and is anticipating a cost overrun
 of about $100 million in the Landsat-D project. Consequently,
 we made this study to determine if there were weaknesses in
 NASA's cost estimating process which, if corrected, would
 result in more accurate and reliable estimates.

      Our study was limited to three projects at two NASA
 centers--the Space Telescope and the High Energy Astronomy
 Observatory at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville,
 Alabama, and the Dynamics Explorer at the Goddard Space Flight
 Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. We did not include either the
 space shuttle or the Landsat-D project in our study because
 NASA was conducting its own cost study of those two projects.

      For the three projects included in our study, we found
 no major problems regarding those costs which NASA included
 in its project estimates. However, as discussed on page 2,
 NASA does not include certain major categories of costs in
 its estimates. Also, as we have reported in the past, the


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