NAS Report Cites Significant Issues Affecting NASA’s Future Viability

Keith’s note: according to the National Academies report “NASA at a Crossroads – Maintaining Workforce, Infrastructure, and Technology Preeminence in the Coming Decades” (full report) “The committee offers seven “core findings” that, in its view, rise to the highest level of priority. These issues often have cross-cutting connotations that impact more than one of the three resource areas cited in the legislation mentioned above and are interrelated. The committee’s findings regarding these high priority “core” issues are as follows:”

Core Finding 1: NASA’s ability to pursue high-risk, long-lead science and technology challenges and opportunities in aeronautics, space science, Earth science, and space operations and exploration has arguably been the agency’s greatest value to the nation. Pursuit of such potentially transformative opportunities requires constancy of purpose, consistent long-term funding commensurate with the tasks it has been asked to undertake, a technically skilled workforce able to devote sustained effort to address challenging problems, and leading-edge equipment and supporting infrastructure that enable work at the cutting edge of science and engineering.

Core Finding 2: NASA faces internal and external pressures to prioritize short-term measures without adequate consideration of longer-term needs and implications. This produces adverse impacts on contracting, budgeting, funding, infrastructure, R&D, and execution of NASA’s mission portfolio. If left unchecked, these pressures are likely to result in a NASA that is incapable of satisfying national objectives in the longer term.

Core Finding 3: NASA’s budget is often incompatible with the scope, complexity, and difficulty of its mission work. The long-term impacts of this mismatch include erosion of capabilities in workforce, critical infrastructure, and advanced technology development. The current relative allocations of funding to mission work as compared with that allocated to institutional support has degraded NASA’s capabilities to the point where agency sustainability is in question.

Core Finding 4: NASA’s shift to milestone-based purchase-of-service contracts for first-of-a- kind, low-technology-readiness-level mission work can, if misused, erode the agency’s in-house capabilities, degrade the agency’s ability to provide creative and experienced insight and oversight of programs, and put the agency and the United States at increased risk of program failure.

Core Finding 5: Mission effectiveness across NASA is compromised by slow and cumbersome business operations that have been a consequence of legitimate efforts to increase efficiency and better coordinate complex tasks.

Core Finding 6: Over the past decade, significant responsibilities and authorities for major programs previously delegated to the NASA center level have been shifting to the mission directorates. This may have potentially compromised checks and balances for a clear and independent technical oversight. While the optimum allocation of checks and balances can depend on the needs of a particular organization and mission, incorrectly establishing this balance can have extreme impacts.

Core Finding 7: Although NASA has successfully carried out many extraordinarily challenging missions over its lifetime, the agency has had a continuing failing in conveying to external stakeholders accurate cost, schedule, and technology readiness estimates, as well as estimated levels of budgetary reserves needed for complex major development projects. The profound negative consequences of this are felt far beyond the specific projects producing the delays and unanticipated funding demands.

Several other issues were identified that did not rise to the priority of “core issues,” but are important, are also addressed in this report. They are assigned to the categories of systemic issues, workforce issues, infrastructure issues, and technology issues. Each is accompanied by its own set of findings and recommendations.

(full report)