QUESTION:
How come you have different space centers in different states and towns?

ANSWER from Marc Siegel on January 29, 1997:
NASA has about 11 or 12 centers spread out around 
the United States.  There are a few good reasons for that.

1) Sometimes a location has special characteristics which make it
especially desirable for certain reasons. For example, the Kennedy Space
Center in Florida is good for launching rockets because it is fairly
far south and next to the water. NASA Ames Research Center is the the place 
where NASA does its most advanced computer and networking research; this works
out well since NASA Ames is located in Silicon Valley (northern California)
where the world's best computer and networking companies are located.
NASA Dryden flies test airplanes so it is located next to Edwards Air Force
Base in the southern California desert.  There are very few cloudy 
days and the desert is fairly empty (in case a test plane crashes), so it
is a good place to experiment with new airplanes.

2) Often big businesses spread out to better connect with their customers
or for other reasons.  Big companies like IBM, or Intel, or General Motors
have operations all around the world. Think of NASA as a big company and it
should be no surprise that NASA is spread out in many locations.

3) NASA is part of the federal governement, and as such it is governed
by politics.  So powerful congressmen or other politicians win points
with the voters in their districts if they help locate a NASA center 
nearby, to add jobs to the local economy.  I'm sure there was some
heavy politics involved in deciding where to build the current NASA centers.
There is a fairly new facility in West Virginia and the rumour is that
powerful politicians helped determine that course of action.