We called them "rice bowl" projects, because they were the source of their salary funding. Another term would be "hobby horse", because they were usually related to the staff's fixed ideas on what to do. A current example is the Artemis "Gateway": not needed to replicate the Apollo missions, but deliberately made indispensable to do something different and arrive at someplace else.
Oh wow. I understand. Taking money and not doing the work. I got you. I think Michael Crichton or one of those writers got a book about the lie.
Oh, they do the work. The question is whether the work is worthwhile to do (e.g., climate science satellites).
Like doing bean counting? LOL
We called them "rice bowl" projects, because they were the source of their salary funding. Another term would be "hobby horse", because they were usually related to the staff's fixed ideas on what to do. A current example is the Artemis "Gateway": not needed to replicate the Apollo missions, but deliberately made indispensable to do something different and arrive at someplace else.
Oh, you even got names for them. Got you. I was just calling them bean counters.