OIG: NASA Technology Efforts Are Still Incomplete and Out of Date
NASA OIG Report: NASA’s Efforts to Manage its Space Technology Portfolio
“We found deficiencies in NASA’s management processes and controls that may limit the usefulness of the Agency’s efforts to better manage its space technology investments. First, although NASA has revised its technology roadmaps to provide additional information regarding how specific technologies will help meet Agency mission objectives, it needs to complete the ongoing revision of its Strategic Space Technology Investment Plan to provide the necessary detail to determine the projects that best support Agency priorities. Second, the information in TechPort remains incomplete and inaccurate, impairing the value of the database as a tool to manage and share information about NASA’s space technology portfolio. For example, we selected a sample of 49 active projects and found the database contained no information for 16 (33 percent) of the projects.”
I must admit having lost the bubble on Space Tech a few years ago. Goodness knows they’ve struggled ever since their creation in 2010.
But whether or not STMD has a perfectly updated Talmudic plan for what/when/how/why to mature various space technologies is NOT the problem. The problem is that Congress views intramural space tech as a drain on programs, or in one distinguished Senator’s case, a slush fund for pork.
Clearly it doesn’t work to just give a separate office a big budget. But it also doesn’t work to expect programs to actually invest in the seed corn they need… since they always have overruns, and it’s always expedient to cut the future.
We have to find a “third way” that balances independence and programmatic relevance, perhaps requiring co-investment by mission directorates and a funded Office of the Chief Technologist.
It’s too bad the IG’s office is fixated on minutiae, rather than pointing out the strategic crisis of agency/congressional resistance.
Don’t forget that administration policy is as much or more to blame for this mess than Congressional meddling. The COTS / CCDev / Orion rat holes are swallowing the vast bulk of NASA’s human space flight budget with no significant technology advancement at all. Even their most optimistic projections show no significant reduction in cost per person or per pound of cargo compared to Shuttle, which itself never achieved a reduction compared to Apollo. To this day, nobody can even do the simple job of shuttling back & forth to LEO for a sustainable cost, let alone anytime of beyond LEO ops, or even just permanent presence in LEO. Yet the entirety of NASA’s minimal technology spending on space flight is completely focused on the unsustainable Mars fantasy mission that will probably won’t even remain as a fantasy after the next election. NASA’s space flight side needs to take a cue from their aviation side and refocus on the basics.
The co-investment requirement is rife with problems. It puts big ticket missions at increased risk, and its very hard to squeeze in really enabling technologies. These squeezed in technology approaches can never escape what we call ‘local optima’ problems.
STMD big office approach clearly isn’t working either.
Maybe a grants system, similar to academic grants, but where proposals compete based on their fit and value in the overall technology roadmaps ?
There is the size of the pie, and then there is what NASA does with the pie it has. I can tell you that NASA _IS_ the problem when their technology roadmap omits diligence in your field of research.
In my case, I read the Administrative Procedure Act and the Information Quality Act, and then submitted feedback during the public comment phase. Some of the same criticisms appear in this IG report.
To their great credit, OCT tried to remedy the situation. However, they still need to demonstrate that they are providing the cost-benefit analyses and level of scrutiny needed for the Economically Significant area of space launch.
Well, Kevin… I agree that NASA’s space launch investment strategy (including technologies) is pretty much a logic-free zone these days. I’m not sure it’s going to change until people care more about space outputs than inputs.