Research Survey On NASA
Keith’s note: I got an email from Diana Acosta, a Masters student at London Business School. She and her classmates have chosen to research NASA for a team course assignment. They are particularly interested in the perceptions of NASA both outside the organization and within. Their own experience and research to date indicate that opinions and sentiments vary. At this point, however, they lack an appropriate breadth of data on perspectives within the organization. Their next step is to release a short survey to remain open through Monday 23 September. So … please visit their site and consider participating in their survey which is now live here.
Since that survey didn’t have a place for additional comments, I’ll make one here in the hope that they will see it. A survey of this sort inherently samples a self-selected group. The views of the people who bother to answer are probably not typical of the population as a whole (or even those who do or have worked for or with NASA.) So significant caution should be used when interpreting the results.
Your comments, fcrary, are noted! Thank you. Caution will certainly be taken in the interpretation.
Agree with fcrary. Also would add that when it comes to technology, NASA has a slit personality. For example, James Webb telescope uses cutting edge tech whereas for human spaceflight they’re stuck in the past although this is really due to politics. Politics has considerable influence due to the fact that NASA is a government funded agency.
Cheers
Neil
Very insightful points – thanks Neil
I have to agree with some of the other comments. There are multiple NASAs, in part because NASA has different functions in different areas. In astronomy and planetary missions, no doubt NASA is exploring space. In aeronautics NASA helps to advance US technology and economy. In human space flight they have really not done exploration in 45 years, and have not been advancing technology since Shuttle flew for the first time. I am sure people working in exploration and aeronautics feel they are a part of the advancement. Those in human space flight probably have been wondering just what their role is and whether they’ve been contributing, and a lot of people have left in the last ten years at least partly as a result.
At one time NASA ensured manned space was contributing to ‘exploration’ by giving grants to academia to develop science that flew on Apollo, Skylab, and Shuttle. The idea was they were proving that science had a role in earth orbit, in microG and on a maned platform. But they stopped for ISS, deciding they were in the business of operating a platform rather than conducting science. I think the last couple AAs forgot what their role was supposed to be.
Many thanks Richard and Brian, for the comments. We’ll keep these dimensions in mind, particularly if we see a spread or clusters in the data.