It also meant that, when the National Space Council to its credit resuscitated the program, the NASP was "behind the powercurve:" the best that could be done was to restore part of its earlier funding, to oblige the Defense Department to reassume its share of the management responsibility and to stretch out the development schedule.
This non-linear tendency is why complex systems are more likely to follow a power-law probability distribution than the more familiar bell-curve distribution.
These days, the best network comedies are too good for viewers to grade newcomers on a curve, out of gratitude for a bit of representation, a slice of the power pie.