Space Force Has The Air Force Academy. Why Doesn't NASA Have A Space Academy?
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The Space Force is ready to launch, OP Ed, Washington Post
“The Space Force was a pet project of President Trump’s, and there has been more talk about new uniforms and logos than the mission. But that’s about to change: Sadly, for a generation that grew up watching Apollo astronauts walking on the moon, space is now a contested domain. The latest sign was Russia’s launch of an anti-satellite missile on Wednesday, joining China in demonstrating war-fighting capability in space.”
Air Force Academy graduates cadets early amid coronavirus outbreak, first Space Force officers join the ranks, CNBC
“When you arrived in 2016 or so, you knew your graduation day would be memorable, but did you imagine that your commencement would take place in mid-April, or that each of us would have a face mask at the ready or that you would march a Covid compliant 8 feet apart on the Terrazzo, or for that matter, that commissioning into the Space Force would be an option,” Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett posed to the graduating class. “Today, you are living history,” she added. Of the graduating cadets, 86 commissioned for the first time into the U.S. Space Force. Vice President Mike Pence was on hand to deliver the commencement address.”
Keith’s note: NASA is doing the whole back to the Moon Artemis thing. They openly talk about grooming the “Artemis Generation”. Yet barely a few months into its official existence The U.S. Space Force has just commissioned 86 officers. If Space Force can draw upon institutions such as the Air Force Academy to train recruits for service why isn’t NASA developing a similar capability? Indeed, NASA often seems to be more interested in being a recruiting tool for Space Force than it does for itself.
Where is Starfleet Academy?
– Space Force Really Wants To Be Star Fleet, earlier post
– Space Force Is Using NASA Spacecraft As A Recruiting Tool, earlier post
It might be worth reversing the question. Why does the Air Force have an Academy? Presumably it provides some sort of training and education they need, and which universities can not provide (even with an ROTC program.) I think it would be worth knowing what that is, and then seeing if it’s applicable to NASA.
NASA does fund scholarships which support students at universities, as well as grants which do something similar (paying students and covering their tuition.) If they want to make sure those students go on to work for NASA (as opposed to universities and the aerospace industry), that wouldn’t be too different from many corporate scholarships or the military’s ROTC program. If that’s sufficient, then there wouldn’t be a need for NASA to set up its own academy.
NASa’s approach to supporting education and training is scattered, not internally or externally coordinated, ill-defined, under-funded, ad hoc, and totally lacking in strategy.
That’s all true. But the same could be said of all civilian government agencies. NOAA isn’t any better in this respect, and given the harm from climate change, maybe they should. My point was that, currently, only the military services have their own academies. I’d like to know why that is, before entering a debate over whether or not NASA needs one.
I do not care about other agencies. I did not mention other agencies. I mentioned USAF/Space Force and NASA.
The “scattered” nature of NASA’s funding for education draws a diverse workforce from wide segments of society, so the seeming disorganization serves a purpose.
Military service academies produce junior officers, many of whom are excellent and capable, and a great many of whom separate or retire at quite young ages. The military has specific needs for skills and education that have no analog in the outside world; this isn’t the case for aerospace, at all. The service academy approach might make sense for the military; would this make sense for NASA?
What, specifically, would be the advantages to NASA’s mission and operations from such an academy?
” only the military services have their own academies.”
Actually, there is a Merchant Marine Academy which is part of the Department of Transportation. If NASA ever gets its own Academy, it could be something like this.
USMMA grads are commissioned into the Navy Reserve.
I didn’t write that, but I’ll reply anyway. Does the Merchant Marine have a need for junior officers which college level education plus specialized skills? Specifically ones who are in their early twenties? I suspect so, but you might know better than I. That would mean their organizational needs are not radically different from those of the Navy, and explain why they have an Academy. I think an important question for this discussion is whether or not NASA has a similar organization or similar needs. As cool as the idea of a NASA space academy may sound, I don’t think NASA has those needs and academy graduates wouldn’t fit in with the existing organization on NASA.
fcrary and Brian Thorn – The US Merchant Marine Academy is a good comparison when considering a NASA school.
The MMA has suffered from neglect for years, a few years ago they had to hire a retired US Army Colonel to run the place, were no sailors available? They have had constant problems with poor maintenance of their facilities. The MMA is another school that duplicates what many other universities do – many universities produce officers for merchant ships. The MMA is another anachronism which should have been closed years ago – or merged with the Coast Guard Academy or Naval Academy.
When someone proposes creating another school which duplicates what many others already produce, we should look at MMA and see what should be avoided at all costs.
Many people who were never in the military have had great careers working in the space industry – have Service Academy graduates distinguished themselves sufficiently to have us think about building another specialized school? Have all NASA Administrators been Service Academy graduates? All SES level people? All astronauts?
The USAF academy is for recruiting future USAF tech savvy leaders- not for growing scientists/engineers. AFIT trains for particular expertise- and they often contract through various universities.
When I worked at HQ space Division in Los Angeles we flew in top professors/industry from all over the world to get up up to speed with short courses/seminars – We also tap into local expertise UCLA- cal tech- USC- Stanford-Berkeley- uC Santa Barbara- UC. San Diego…
“The mission of the United States Air Force Academy is to educate, train, and inspire men and women to become leaders of character, motivated to lead the Department of the Air Force in service to our nation“
Keith may not like my opinion. As fcrary says – the right question is why does the DoD still have specialized schools?
First each Service Academy is TINY – about 4,000 students for the big three. Compare that to any State school – for instance Texas Tech has about 32,000 total. Many universities produce military officers via their ROTC programs – are those officers restricted from becoming pilots? Becoming General officers? Leading Divisions or Wings or commanding major ships? No. So what do we get in an Academy graduate that we don’t get from an ROTC graduate? The other schools can draw ROTC students from a far larger population (they join ROTC after the freshman year) and they train while in a situation far more like an actual military unit – mingling with civilians, contractors, etc etc. Also – as an example, Mike Fossum is an ROTC graduate – was he an acceptable astronaut? Mike Mullane is an ROTC graduate – did he do ok?
We could go on and on (many people do) but we get space industry workers from very respectable universities and they seem to do pretty well. Why ask for significant resources to build something that we do not seem to need?
OK so NASA can have a tiny space academy.
The space industry (which is much larger than just NASA as we all know) has a HUGE space academy – spread out among thousands of wonderful universities around the world. Let’s not create another one.
As I said in my other comment – oops! I have worked a lot with Mike Mullane and know that he is a Service Academy (West Point) graduate. This comment is to attach this revision to my earlier comment.
I proposed a Masters course/degree program at University of Houston-Clear Lake in 1993 that would have basically set the footing for such a specific career path or academy from entry level engineers/scientists through flight control, engineering/science, to flight director or astronaut. And the campus is right here at JSC’s back door. But, to no avail.
This is a good example of historical legacy. West Point was created by Act of Congress in 1802 to teach the art and science of war, including military engineering, to produce a more professional and prepared miltary. It was modeled on similar academies that had been created in Europe including Great Britain. Remember this was in an era when established universities focused on theology, the liberal arts, law and medicine. So there was a clear need for it to create a professional military, especially in terms of engineering skills.
The U.S. Naval Academy followed in 1845 to fill a similar need for the U.S. Navy. When the U.S. Air Force became a separate service it created its own academy in that tradition of practical instruction while establishing an esprit de corps for it. ROTC dates to the Morrill Act of 1862 which created the Land Grant Colleges that would teach the practical arts of science, engineering and agriculture. It created a reserve of individuals trained in basic military skills who could be called on in time of war, something that the Civil War demonstrated was needed. But at the time it was not intended to be an alternative career path to command in the military as it is today. Instead it was just seen as a way of being able to rapidly expand the military in wartime.
So given that background the question is, what would be the mission of a NASA Academy? What practical arts of space exploration would it teach? What would be the career paths of the graduates within NASA? And most important, how are existing educational institutions failing in that aspect?
And underlaying those questions is a bigger one. What is the purpose of American space policy and NASA’s role in it? It is only the exploration of space, or is it also space settlement and economic development? Is the U.S. going to the Moon and Mars to collect rock samples and do basic science, or to establish permanent settlements eventually consisting of thosands of individuals? The case for creating a NASA Academy would be a lot weaker for the former purpose than the latter one. Answer those questions and then you could start making a case for a NASA Academy as well as knowing what it should look like.
All the federal schools, academies and grad schools (around 20 of them total) are in either in the DOD, or in service of other military functions (USCGA, USMMA).
That’s an interesting point when it comes to the careers of graduates. NASA is a civil agency, and its employees and hiring practices are subject to different laws than the military. Graduates from the military academies go straight into what might be called lower-to-middle management positions (i.e. junior officers.) Would that be legal for an hypothetical NASA academy? Wouldn’t the lower-rated, but long-serving civil servants have a case to complain about fresh out of college academy graduates being given management positions? (Rather than prompting people from the rank and file, I mean.)
Veterans which includes everyone out of he service academies, along with lots of others (like minorities) already have job preference. They are selected first regardless, often, of whether they have relevant experience. During the 1960s NASA went out of its way to find and hire military personnel with relevant experience. Many were hired. Many made it into top leadership positions.
I would posit that the people NASA needs today are not the same as the people NASA needed in the early 60s. “what NASA does” today is different – I think there is a much heavier emphasis on science, for instance.
I don’t know what the CS/Contractor ratio was in the glory days of the 60s, but that also might be worth considering. One might also look at GS scale vs commercial company pay comparisons.
One can argue that maybe NASA’s direction and institutional emphasis might need to be changed, but that’s a separate issue.
“The mission of the United States Air Force Academy is to educate, train, and inspire men and women to become leaders of character, motivated to lead the Department of the Air Force in service to our nation”
The USAF also has the AFIT- Air Force Institute of Technology that is for developing technical expertise for USAF- the. Sometimes send people to various universities for specific areas they want.
The Research labs operate similar to NASA too with grants, space scholars program, intern programs…
The Space stuff is used by the USAF Academy to attract students and inspire. It also helps the USAF recruit tech savvy people who will be senior officers one day involved with space missions.
Most top notch want to be scientist/engineers don’t go to the USAF Academy to get an education- they to go to top universities. USAF from time to time has programs to send employees or recruit people by through various universities- usually AFT manages those programs not the USAF academy.
There are two A’s in NASA. Would there be two academies?
NASA is neither a uniformed nor a uniform service.
DUH. I used to work there. Never wore a uniform.
I used to wear a tie on Thursdays.
Once in the middle of a big test at KSC I wore a suit – I think I was the only person on KSC wearing a suit. People probably thought I was a HQ bigwig but I was just a peon running a test.
I rarely wore a suit. In my office in Reston and at HQ I wore a time but at all the centers I wore polo shirts.
Not even on Thursdays!
We had ugly tie day on Fridays.
I would locate it at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) if its built. You already have a variety of useful infrastructure that could be used for it. This would include the engine test stands, high altitude test chamber, a NASA tracking facility and White Sands Space Harbor. Working with the Gypsum sand at WSSH would be good practice for dealing with lunar and Mars dust.I heard the reason they never landed an orbiter there a second time was that it took too long to clean all the Gypsum out of it.
The classrooms and dorms should be built on the west side of the Organ Mountains with the academy’s spaceport either at White Sands Space Harbor or a new location away from the Gypsum. You could name the main building Goddard Hall as in the Robert Heinlein story “Space Cadet” which featured a space academy at WSMR. NASA could purchase some New Shepard and SpaceshipTwo vehicles to use for flight training at the spaceport. Cadets could also launch sounding rockets at the nearby WSMR. Nothing like hands on training. The NASA Space Academy would also include optical and radio observatories. Simulated Moon and Mars bases could be built in the area east of the mountains for field training. Cadets in classrooms on the west side of the mountains could support them by operating robots remotely. The diverse geology of New Mexico would also make regular field trips easy.
Cadets would be inspired by watching Boeing’s Starliner returning from the ISS at White Sands Space Harbor. There is also the history of the region available to inspire cadets. The Space Hall of Fame is in Alamogordo, the Goddard Museum in Roswell, and WSMR has its own museum. WSMR was the site of the first FAA license commercial launch, a suborbital flight in 1989, not to mention numerous early suborbital flights. Nearby Spaceport America would provide an example of a commercial spaceport with regular suborbital flights. And of course you have the sounding rocket program at WSMR.
When I worked on the original feasibility study in the early 1990’s for the Southwest Region Spaceport I proposed a New Mexico Space Academy at the spaceport that would have Summer and semester long programs targeted at High School and undergraduate college students in the STEM fields. It would still be a good idea.
Those are interesting, possibly even convincing, points. But, to be cynical, New Mexico only has three representatives in the House. It’s worth wondering why the service academies are at West Point, Annapolis and Colorado Springs. None of them are bad places for an academy, but none of them strike me as uniquely suited locations, even at the time they were established. I’m pretty sure there was some political wrangling over who’s state would get them. If so, then New Mexico has a political disadvantage when it comes to any future academy.
Yes, that is how the state of New Mexico lost the V2 program to Huntsville and Vanguard to Florida, not enough political pull to prevent the pork raids.
The military has certain tasks, functions, and missions, including the need for personnel to “go in harm’s way” in the defense of the United States. To accomplish these training in discipline, leadership and the requirement to obey lawful orders, in many cases without question, creating trained officers is what the service academies, ROTC, and some other courses do. Military officers can and do branch out from their basic military missions, into the sciences and engineering. Some do this as part of their military training and careers, others fulfill their duty obligations and may go on to careers in industry. (I did so, having obtained my commission in AFROTC.)
NASA’s function does not include the military aspects. Should military functions become necessary in space, that is why USSF has been stood up. Could NASA benefit from basic and advanced leadership training, apart from political appointments? DEFINITELY! But, IMHO, these courses might be set up in a post-graduate level school, just as the military has schools like the Command and Staff Schools, War Colleges, and Defense Industry courses.
For those calling for a “Space Academy” or “Star Fleet Academy”, even in science fiction, those had a certain aspect of military schools. The service academies and ROTC provide those functions. NASA Academy? Not on the undergraduate level, thank you.
Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
I don’t need to remind you, Keith, that “Starfleet Acadamy” is a military officer training university.
Does NASA need their own University? How many people do they employ? The Air Force Academy as I recall is officer’s training school. NASA does not have officers, but what is the civilian equivalent of an officer? A person with a college degree…and you need one of those to get into NASA anyway. By that equivalency there are no enlisted persons at NASA unless they work in the Creasy truck. Right? You worked there, you tell me.
Actually…they are their own academy. College graduates from various areas get hired by NASA and then trained to do NASA Stuff.
I read about schools that specialize in aerospace science training a while back. They exist and serve the same purpose as a NASA college would.
I think that it would be nice if they had one, but the direction that things have been going and are going now it might seem unnecessary.
The future could change that.
Star Trek kinda went back and forth on the subject, but Starfleet generally was supposed to be a non-military organization. This was most prominent in “Star Trek: Enterprise” when Captain Archer fought having Marines (“MACOs”) stationed on the ship and in the movie “Into Darkness” where Scotty resigned to protest the militarization of the Enterprise. Roddenberry’s idea was that Starfleet was supposed to be like the Coast Guard, only military in times of war.
Unforunately they seem to have plenty of war in their universe. I recall a Deep Space 9 epsoide where Chief O’Brien was asked how many space battles he was in and he said something like 237. That is more than even the most battle experience vets had in WWII and amazing for someone serving in a non-military organization.
Right. A Coast Guard with the front-line “exploration” vessel designated as a Heavy Cruiser through most of the Star Trek timeline.
For our part, what percentage of Space Shuttle missions and funding were Air Force?
Starfleet, and NASA, are only non-military to an observer who chooses not to look at the military part.
At this point get some bill text written. Who knows what else could be slipped into further coronavirus relief legislation? I daresay we could get an academy stood up by year’s end. Base it in Cleveland since they’ve got plenty of academic institutions already there in the vicinity of the Glenn that you could procure the campuses of if the expected slumps in enrollment happen.
We already have a Space Academy in Huntsville. We’ve trained more than a dozen astronauts and thousands of NASA and space contractor engineers, managers, and scientists already. All we’d have to do is add some dorm space. https://www.spacecamp.com/s…
What is not needed is operations training. The building and compiling of checklists and procedures and rules and then using those is a pretty well established process and works. Understanding organizations, design, development, procurement and integration processes needs attention.
That’s probably true, but does that attention need an academy along the lines of the service academies? Those academies are, in effect, specialized colleges, with students typically between 18 and 22. The students then go on to work for the parent service as soon as they graduate, and need the things they learned as soon as they start work. I don’t see how that applies to NASA. People who start off as engineers and technicians don’t need the things you mention until they are promoted into management. That gives time to learn on the job, or from the numerous, available training courses and seminars. Whether or not those courses teach the right thing is a separate issue. But I don’t see how NASA’s needs would be served by a specialized, 4-year, full-time college before starting in lower-to-middle management immediately after graduation.
Maybe NASA could use something like the U.S.A.F. Air University or U.S. Navy’s Naval War College where promising mid-level officers are prepared for higher positions. Both also serve as in-house Think Tanks for preparing the services for the future while capturing the wisdom of perious generations of leaders.
Incidently, the actual birth place of the Space Force was the Air University looking at how to more effectively win future wars.
https://www.airuniversity.a…
Having worked for NASA for most of the last half century, I have been amazed to see just how poorly the current set of leaders in human space flight perform. Many have no prior experience doing the kinds of things they now lead. And it shows. The program management is very poor. Everything is always over budget, never meets schedule, poorly established processes, nonexistent documentation. It is probably now too late because those who had the successful experience are for the most part gone but it would have been worthwhile to establish an academy internally to train some of the engineers in how things were done for some of the successful earlier programs. No doubt some things could have been improved upon but my experience especially in ISS and to some extent in Orion was that the leaders always felt they knew what they needed to do and would do it better than ever before. But in reality they had no idea what they did not know and so I always wondered how they would improve upon it if they did not know what was done in the first place. A training academy for the people working inside NASA would be a good idea.
Seems to me a space academy and comparing NASA with SF with lots of references to Star Trek is confusing. NASA and SF missions are totally different, and yes ST is notably iconic but it’s fiction. There’s more to NASA than putting people into space i.e. aeronautics. Though there was a time when 100,000 people were in the air at any given time compared to six people in space.