The U.S. risks falling short of its ambitious human space-exploration plans if it follows the advice of a recent report from the National Academies.
The U.S. risks falling short of its ambitious human space-exploration plans if it follows the advice of a recent report from the National Academies.
A recent report published by the National Academies concludes that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is at a crossroads. The committee behind the report ominously claims: “Today, NASA faces a new challenge: a challenge to avoid a hollow future NASA.” The report goes on to explain how today’s NASA “must contend with those threats common to large, mature, and successful organizations, including burgeoning bureaucracy, excessive centralization, and in NASA’s case, extreme funding uncertainty.”
Unfortunately, while the report is moderately successful in identifying the ways NASA has failed in recent years to accomplish its largest, most challenging goals, most notably human exploration of deep space, the solutions offered would do little to address them. In fact, most of the recommendations provided would do the opposite.
If the recommendations were to be implemented as proposed, NASA might, at least for a while, continue to maintain the veneer of the organization it once was. But if actual results are desired, NASA would be wise to look elsewhere.
Nostalgia is a powerful force in the space community. For those of us who were born after the wildly successful Apollo era, every year that humans remain stuck in Earth’s orbit is a reminder of what was accomplished more than 50 years ago and is excruciatingly elusive today.
That nostalgia explains the make-up of the report committee chartered by the Academies: Almost every member is either a retired space executive, a longtime consultant, or a seasoned academic. The committee is headed by a former undersecretary of the U.S. Army, the 89-year-old Norman “Norm” Augustine.
If you have heard that name before, it is because this is not Augustine’s first rodeo. This is his third report reviewing the United States civil space program. The first two were used in the successful dismantling of two bold human-space-exploration programs proposed by two previous administrations, the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) under George H. W. Bush and the Constellation Program under George W. Bush. Following the advice of this report would complete the trilogy by risking the termination of NASA’s Artemis Program.
The report provides eight core recommendations. More than half (numbers 1, 3, 6, 7, and 8) require diverting much-coveted congressional funding to rebuild the NASA bureaucracy and aging infrastructure that has (rightfully) eroded over time.
Yes, NASA does not have the same type of workforce, infrastructure, and technology development that successfully completed the Apollo Program. But no amount of pining over the past will persuade Congress to add billions of dollars to the NASA budget.
To add insult to injury, the report in its chapter “Systemic Issues” goes out of its way to criticize the recent positive movement by NASA to embrace the commercial space industry. The main worry? That NASA would not be “smart-buyers” of commercial services. While that conclusion is an understandable outcome from a committee that wants to bring back 1960s NASA, is that really the solution to solve the budgetary and performance challenges within the agency?
As Andrew Follett aptly points out in his NR piece “We Need Billionaires In Space,” “SpaceX’s successes have very much been despite the U.S. government, not because of it.” What NASA should be doing is investing more in commercial services and working with other government entities to remove obstacles to progress instead of creating more of them. Otherwise, NASA will continue to be a “mere jobs program intent on bringing home the space bacon.”
In “Starships Are Meant to Fly,” a lengthy post on its website, SpaceX explains that “we continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware.” This is in direct reference to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and its burdensome review process.
The FAA must take immediate steps to streamline the approval process so that SpaceX can move forward with Starship tests. As Starship is the spacecraft that will land the first Americans on the Moon in over 50 years, not doing so directly impacts the Artemis program and will only cost taxpayers more as progress is further delayed.
If there is a silver lining in the report it is pointing out the obvious: the need for a long-term plan and strategy. Recommendations 2 and 5 advocate that NASA establish “a formal, long-range planning roadmap” as well as “a prioritization and phasing for mission critical technology development.”
But this is not a message for NASA, this is a message for U.S. politicians. As NASA leaders correctly point out, “there is little point to internal strategic planning, given the overriding influence of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congress on programs and budget.” The committee offers no solution to this problem but persists in its insistence that NASA should proceed on its own with detailed planning exercises (which are inevitably institution- rather than mission-driven), regardless of the value or how it is connected to political priorities.
The committee was right about one thing: We are indeed at a crossroads. With the first crewed mission still at least a year away, it is currently unclear whether NASA’s Artemis program, established by Trump and continued by Biden, will be successful. Diverting precious resources for a trip down memory lane certainly won’t help it happen any faster.