NASA's Technology Transfer Continues To Be Uncoordinated

Right on schedule yesterday NASA LaRC posted 3 (not 2, not 4) of these Technology Transfer Opportunities.

- NASA Technology Transfer Opportunity: Thin High Contrast Targets for Ultralightweight Structures
- NASA Technology Transfer Opportunity: High Density Optical Storage System
- NASA Technology Transfer Opportunity: New Probe for Detecting Deep Flaws in Structures

Keith's note: A week or so ago, I submitted some questions to NASA and Rich Atcliff at NASA LaRC was kind enough to send me a prompt reply. Among the questions I asked was "Why are there never more (or less) than 3?" Atcliff replied: "This is simply a matter of workforce available to respond to the opportunities. Three has worked out to be a reasonable number such that we can respond to the inquires in a timely way and not leave the potential customers waiting."

My response: "In other words you actually have technology transfer info available to release but you will not release it other than 3 per week - and the reason being that you can only respond to more than three topics/week? What about all of the previously released tech transfer opportunities? There are certainly more than three of them. Do people not ask questions about those previously-released topics - and just the three you release every week? Or do they not see them because you only post them in the procurement pages and FedBizOpps (not the best way to reach business, the media, or the public, BTW) Have you ever stopped to consider that people do not ask about this stuff because they never see it?"

Of course, NASA Tech Briefs and NASA OCT pay no attention to things like this. NASA OCT has no link to NASA Tech Briefs. NASA Tech Briefs does not link to NASA OCT. Last week, I did a search of the source HTML code on the NASA Techbriefs home page. There are still no links whatsoever to anything at NASA.gov. Yet this page features the NASA logo. Baffling.

Uncoordinated Technology Transfer at NASA, earlier post