Science Advice 

to NASA

Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Joseph K. Alexander

Monographs in 

Aerospace History 

No. 57

Monographs in Aerospace History No. 57

Science Advice

to NASA

Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Joseph K. Alexander

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Office of Communications

NASA History Division

Washington, DC 20546

NASA SP-2017-4557
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Alexander, Joseph K., author.

Title: Science advice to NASA : conflict, consensus, partnership, leadership / Joseph K. Alexander.

Description: Washington, DC : National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Communications, NASA History 

Division, 2017. | Series: Monographs in aerospace history ; no. 57 | “NASA SP-2017-4557.” |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016049788 | ISBN 9781626830332 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Astronautics and state—United States. | Science and state—United States. | Scientists in government—United 

States. | Government consultants—United States. | United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Classification: LCC TL789.8.U5 A635 2017 | DDC 629.40973—dc23 LC record available at 

https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049788

This publication is available as a free download at http://www.nasa.gov/ebooks.
iii

Table of Contents

Preface v

Acknowledgements ix

Part I. The First Three Decades

1 Advisory Precedents before NASA 1

2 The Space Science Board Goes to Work 15

3 NASA’s Internal Advisory Committees 33

4 Congress Weighs in on Advice—The Federal Advisory Committee Act 47

5 The NASA Advisory Council and Its Committees 53

6 The Advisory Environment in the 1980s: A Critical Assessment 63

Part II. Advice in NASA’s Second Three Decades

7 NASA Creates Its Own Strategic Plan 73

8 Congress Issues a Mandate—The Government Performance and Results Act 83

9 Congress Drops Another Shoe—The NRC Gets Its Own FACA Section 93

10 NASA Senior Reviews 101

11 Expansion of the Decadal Surveys and Performance Reviews 109

12 A NASA Advisory Council under Stress 135

13 Comparing NASA’s Advisory Culture with Other Agencies 145

14 Revisiting the Advisory Ecosystem 159

Part III. Assessment and a Look into the Future

15 Case Studies: Advice Requested by NASA 169

16 Case Studies: Advice Initiated from Outside NASA 185

17 Assessing the Impacts of Advisory Activities: What Makes Advice Effective 199

18 Assessing the Differences between Internal and External Committees 215

19 The Big Picture—Lessons Learned 231

20 The Big Picture—Future Challenges 237

Bibliographic Essay 257

Acronyms 263

About the Author 265

The NASA History Series 267

Index 279

v

Preface

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a long history of interacting closely with and inviting advice from the 

scientific community. This tradition is integral 

to the culture of the Agency’s scientific programs 

and can be traced back to NASA’s predecessor, 

the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Several authors have examined the 

history of these relationships, both in the days of 

NACA and following NASA’s formation in 1958 

up through the early 1980s, but there has been 

no comprehensive treatment of the evolution of 

NASA’s scientific advisory activities for the Agency’s second three decades. Nevertheless, the latter 

period has seen important developments that are 

worth attention, and so this monograph both 

fleshes out aspects of the early advisory history 

that have not been treated in much depth and then 

follows that history forward into the mid-2010s. 

Aspects of the advisory process have changed over 

the past few decades, and there are sure to be more 

changes in the future. For example, the aftereffects 

of congressional enactment of the Federal Advisory Committee Act in 1972 and its amendment 

in 1997 are still impacting the way that NASA can 

obtain timely advice. 

History, of course, has a more important role 

than just recitation of a chain of events. NASA history is important as a way to help understand the 

technological and societal implications of the space 

age. Furthermore, in looking at NASA’s use of outside scientific advice, we seek to understand what 

good has come from it, whether it has had significant impacts, and if so, in what ways. The answers 

to such questions, of course, address the question 

of when NASA should seek outside advice. We ask 

how well has the advisory process worked, what 

efforts worked well, what fell flat, and why? Are 

there common attributes or recurring themes that 

help distinguish between effective efforts and runof-the-mill communications? What are the distinctions between different sources of outside advice 

and are those distinctions relevant and important? 

Finally, given past experiences and trends, can one 

count on the process working as well in the future, 

or are there obstacles to be anticipated and overcome? How might, or should, the advisory ecosystem adapt to be an asset to space research in the 

future, and are there any fundamental principles 

that need to be heeded going forward? 

From a broader perspective, there are aspects 

of NASA’s advisory relationships with the outside 

scientific community that are arguably exemplary 

and even unique and provide useful lessons for 

anyone interested in how government science and 

technology agencies can benefit from independent 

external scientific advice.

Consequently, the purpose of this book is to 

document highlights of NASA’s interactions with 

outside scientific advisors over the Agency’s full 

lifetime and to draw lessons from that history for 

research managers, decision makers, and scientists. 

The intended audience is broad and ambitious. It 

includes not only persons interested in the history 

of the U.S. space program but also current and 

future NASA officials, managers in other government research and development (R&D) agencies, federal R&D overseers and decision makers 

in the Executive Office of the President and in 

Congress, and of course, members of the scientific 

community. Officials and scientists involved in 

similar programs outside the United States might 

even find it interesting to see how and where this 

nation has tried to leverage its scientific brainpower to guide space research in the country. Perhaps, equally importantly, ordinary citizens have a 
vi Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

right to understand how priorities and directions 

for space research in the United States—it’s their 

program, after all—are determined. 

The book is divided into three parts—the first 

two focus on history and the third on synthesis and 

analysis. Part 1 briefly examines early forerunner 

activities at NACA and in the decade leading up 

to NASA’s formation; it then considers NASA’s use 

of outside advice during its first three decades. Part 

2 picks up the story in 1988 and follows it up to 

2016. Part 3 examines a sampling of case studies, 

discusses recurring characteristics of notably successful advisory activities, and provides a glimpse 

of what past experience might imply for the future 

of scientific advice at NASA. The last two chapters provide big-picture summaries of themes that 

have emerged from earlier discussions. In particular, chapter 19 recaps conclusions to be drawn from 

the history and case studies, and chapter 20 takes 

a forward look to speculate on how the advisory 

environment might evolve in the future.

Research for the book utilized three main 

sources. The first—archival research—drew on 

material in the archives of the NASA History Division and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 

as well as other publicly available documents. The 

bibliographic essay in the appendix highlights 

some of the most important of these. The NASA 

and NAS archives were especially useful for records 

and correspondence relevant to Part 1. There are 

also abundant Internet sites where one can obtain 

copies of past reports and government documents, 

information about legislative activities, articles on 

specific events, and the like. The second research 

resource has been the author’s own personal notes, 

which cover activities at NASA Headquarters from 

1980 until late 1994 and then at the National 

Research Council Space Studies Board from 1998 

until 2012. 

The final, and in many ways most interesting, 

research component is a collection of interviews 

that the author conducted with current and former 

government officials and with scientists from outside NASA. Many chapters of the book quote 

directly from the interviews, and in a great majority 

of cases those quotations illustrate a point or theme 

that other interview subjects also raised. Thus, in a 

sense the book tells the story from the perspective 

of many more people than just the author. A full 

list of the interviews appears in the bibliographic 

essay, and a subset of the interview transcripts will 

be available to the public through the NASA Oral 

History Program. (Footnotes in the text to quotations from oral history interviews include the page 

number(s) where the quotation can be found in the 

interview transcripts.) 

The scope of NASA’s science programs has 

included wide-ranging research in both the physical and biological sciences, but this book focuses 

on the former. The disciplines of interest include 

all the areas that are covered under NASA’s Science Mission Directorate as of 2016—namely, 

space astronomy and astrophysics, planetary science, solar and space physics, and Earth science 

and applications—all of which are conducted 

primarily via robotic spacecraft. NASA’s research 

programs in space life sciences and micro-gravity 

physical sciences, which are conducted primarily via laboratories with astronaut crews, are also 

worthy subjects, but their distinct history, community culture, and modes of operation make them 

better suited for a separate treatment. Therefore, 

they are not treated here.

One form of advisory activities that the monograph will not examine in any detail is the use of 

peer reviews of proposals from scientists seeking 

agency funding for research projects. Proposal peer 

reviews do represent a form of advisory activity, 

but their task is very specific to competitions in 

the procurement process. Although some agencies, 

notably the National Science Foundation as chapter 13 explains, do use the proposal peer review 

process as a measure of the views of the scientific 

community, peer reviews at NASA are a regular 
Preface vii

formal process apart from the broader questions of 

gathering scientific advice. Nevertheless, many of 

the attributes that make other advice effective will 

apply to peer reviews as well.

Also for the sake of keeping the discussion 

focused, the book looks mainly at scientific advisory committees established by NASA (deemed 

internal committees) and bodies established by 

the National Research Council (deemed external

committees), especially the Space Science Board, 

its successor the Space Studies Board (SSB), and 

their cousins, the Space Applications Board and 

the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. 

Several other NRC boards—notably the Board 

on Physics and Astronomy, the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, the Board on Earth 

Sciences and Resources, and the Board on Life Sciences—have organized important advisory studies 

for NASA. While the monograph’s discussions do 

not ignore those bodies, the work of the SSB has 

been sufficiently extensive that the lessons from 

the SSB-NASA experience should be more broadly 

applicable to the rest of the NRC in terms of advice 

on NASA space and Earth science. 

Finally, there have been other entities besides 

NASA’s formally established internal committees 

and separate groups operating under the aegis of 

the National Research Council that have provided 

advice from time to time about the Agency’s science programs. Examples include the National 

Academy of Public Administration, scientific 

societies such as the American Astronomical Society and the American Geophysical Union, public 

interest groups such as The Planetary Society, and 

a few “blue-ribbon” committees commissioned by 

the government. The advisory roles of these bodies 

and their cousins have been rather more ad hoc 

and much less ubiquitous than the NASA and 

NRC committees. Given that lessons from the 

large body of experience with the latter are quite 

likely to be relevant to the former, the monograph 

will not dig into the history of scientific advice 

from groups other than those formed by NASA 

and the NRC.

ix

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the help of many people. I want to begin with 

special thanks to individuals at NASA—William 

Barry of the NASA History Division, Jens Feeley 

and Max Bernstein of the Science Mission Directorate, and Susan Keddie of the NASA Research 

and Education Support Services office—who considered my proposal for the project and then guided 

me through the process of securing financial support, via Grant NNX13AL26G, to defray the costs 

of interviews and logistics. I am also grateful to 

NASA History Division archivists Jane Odom, 

Colin Fries, and Elizabeth Suckow and to National 

Academy of Sciences archivists, Janice Goldblum 

and Daniel Barbiero, all of whom helped me find 

records about early events of interest to the project. My former NRC colleagues, Porter Coggeshall 

and Janice Mehler of the Report Review Committee and Betty Guyot and Tanja Pilzak of the Space 

Studies Board, helped me track down aspects of 

the institution’s history that were not well documented except in their remarkable memories. I am 

also thankful for e-mail conversations with scientific colleagues Stephen Fuselier and Megan Urry 

who helped me understand some important events 

along the historical trail. Stephen Garber was the 

NASA History Division project manager for the 

book, without whose expertise and efforts this 

project would never have been completed.

Thanks also go to the Communications Support Service Center (CSSC) team of talented 

professionals who brought this project from manuscript to finished publication. Chinenye Okparanta 

carefully copyedited the text, Michele Ostovar did 

an expert job laying out the design and creating 

the e-book version, Kristin Harley performed the 

exacting job of creating the index, and printing 

specialist Tun Hla oversaw the production of the 

traditional hard copies. Supervisors Barbara Bullock and Maxine Aldred helped by overseeing all of 

this CSSC production work.

Perhaps the most illuminating and valuable 

aspect of the project was the opportunity to conduct one-on-one interviews with more than 50 

experts in space science and/or political science and 

to get their candid perspectives on how the NASA 

advisory process works or has worked. The list of 

interview subjects is too long to reproduce here, but 

I encourage readers to consult the bibliographic 

appendix that contains the full list. They shared 

their time generously and gave me new insights 

every time I conducted a new interview. When 

interview subjects are quoted by name in the text, I 

have tried to ensure that I have quoted them accurately and true to their intent, but I take responsibility for any misstatements. 

No matter how many times I reviewed my draft 

text and refined it, novel ways to make it obscure or 

worse still lurked in the text. Consequently, I want 

to give most sincere thanks to my colleagues Len 

Fisk, George Paulikas, and Marcia Smith who read 

early drafts and helped me try to make the text 

more intelligible, complete, and accurate. Finally, 

I want to thank my wife, Diana, for her patience, 

encouragement, and eagle-eyed reading of early 

drafts and my son, David, for his extraordinarily 

insightful critique of key chapter drafts.

PART I.

The First Three Decades

1

CHAPTER 1

Advisory Precedents before NASA

I

magine the government of a young nation that 

is still organizing itself and is confronted with 

important decisions about issues involving science 

and technology, but that lacks the expertise to 

make those decisions or to convince its citizens of 

the right path forward. Or imagine an established 

government that suddenly faces alarming national 

security threats that call for scientific or technological expertise that is not available from inside 

its own corridors. Or imagine, if you will, a government that is heavily invested in science but that 

needs the best ideas scientists can provide to make 

decisions about where to place those investments. 

Those are the situations and some of the pressing 

reasons that call for outside scientific advice.

The practice of soliciting advice from citizen 

experts has been a feature of the federal government 

throughout its history. Some historians attribute 

the first advisory committee to President George 

Washington who, in 1794, created a commission 

to try to negotiate a settlement between the government and western Pennsylvania farmers who were 

violently protesting a new tax on distilled spirits. 

The commission’s attempts at peaceful negotiations were not as successful as the government’s 

threats of military action, thereby setting a precedent for having advisors provide political cover 

even when the advice might have limited grasp.1 

Nevertheless, the founders of the U.S. government 

are credited with creating and nurturing a system 

that was more open to outside advice and scientific 

input than many other countries at that time.

In March 1863, Congress enacted and President 

Lincoln signed a bill creating the National 

Academy of Sciences (NAS) as an independent, 

non-government entity. The action reflected the 

fact that the government needed an organized way 

to get assistance in evaluating the many ideas being 

proposed for technologies and devices to help fight 

the Civil War. Hence, the legislation spelled out 

the Academy’s advisory role “whenever called upon 

by any department of the government, [to] investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any 

subject of science or art.”2 Among the first tasks for 

the new organization were a study to recommend a 

uniform system of weights and measures and coins 

for the United States and a separate study on how 

to improve the performance of magnetic compasses 

on iron ships. The former effort is interesting in 

that it took nearly three years to complete, thereby 

being the first example of the Academy’s sometimes glacial pace in delivering advice, as well as 

in the fact that no one heeded the advice to adopt 

the metric system, thereby demonstrating that 

1. Bruce L. R. Smith, The Advisers: Scientists in the Policy Process (The Brookings Institution, Washington DC, 1992), pp. 14–15.

2. Quoted in National Research Council, The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863–1963 (Washington, DC: 

The National Academies Press, 1978), p. 53. The same article cites the early NRC studies that are mentioned in this paragraph.
2 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

recommendations are not always implemented. 

The latter study on magnetic compass corrections 

was completed in eight months, and it proved to be 

very helpful to the Navy Department.3

By 1916, with the First World War erupting in 

Europe, it became clear that the relatively small 

NAS could not handle the volume and variety of 

scientific and technical studies being requested 

by the government. Consequently, the Academy 

created the National Research Council (NRC) 

as its operating arm through which research and 

advisory activities were organized and conducted.4

When the United States entered World War II 

in 1939, the federal government recognized that 

research at both government and academic laboratories needed to be expanded to a whole new level. 

Consequently, the Academy-Research Council 

assisted in organizing a wide array of research 

projects at universities across the country, the vast 

majority of which were directed towards addressing 

military technology needs.5 The expansion of NRC 

activity continued after the war, especially due to 

the impact of the Vannevar Bush report, “Science, 

the Endless Frontier,” which advocated strongly for 

government support of science and the subsequent 

establishment of several new federal scientific 

organizations.6 NRC funding for government contracts jumped from $4 million in fiscal year 1949–

1950 to $10.6 million in fiscal year 1959–1960.7

The NAS-NRC staff grew from 186 employees in 

1946 to 643 in 1960.8

The institution’s post-war organizational structure had a few precursors to what would become 

a science advisory structure to NASA. For example, the NRC Division of Physical Sciences had a 

Research Committee on the Physics of the Earth, 

and the Division of Geology and Geophysics 

was the home for more than 25 topical technical 

committees. The NAS established an Advisory 

Committee on Meteorology in 1956, and it became 

the Advisory Committee on Atmospheric Sciences 

from 1958 until 1960. Aside from hosting the 

U.S. institutional membership in the International 

Astronomical Union, the only formal attention to 

astronomy in the late 1940s and early 1950s was an 

Advisory Committee on Astronomy for the Office 

of Naval Research.9

One important post-war policy change within 

the NAS was agreement that the NAS charter to 

provide assistance “whenever called upon by any 

department” needn’t be interpreted literally. Instead 

of having to wait for a request, the institution could 

3. National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863–1963 (The National Academies 

Press, Washington, DC, 1978), p. 81.

4. National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863–1963 (The National Academies 

Press, Washington, DC, 1978), pp. 200–241.

5. The phrase “Academy-Research Council” was used to refer to the new two-unit organization. The National Academies today also 

includes the National Academy of Engineering (established in 1964) and the National Academy of Medicine (established in 1970 

as the Institute of Medicine and renamed in 2015), which also utilize the NRC to conduct advisory studies. See The National 

Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863–1963 (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1978), pp. 382–432.

6. Vannevar Bush, “Science, the Endless Frontier” (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1945). For example, the 

Atomic Energy Commission and the Office of Naval Research were created in 1946, and the National Science Foundation was 

established in 1950.

7. The figures are from the Annual Report of the National Academy of Sciences for fiscal years 1949–1950 and 1959–1960, 

respectively (available at NAS Archives, Washington, DC). When adjusted for inflation, they correspond to $41 million in 1949 

and $87 million in 1959 in 2016 dollars. For comparison, the total National Academies federal contract payments in 2014 were 

approximately $226 million in 2016 dollars.

8. Rexmond C. Cochrane, The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863–1963 (National Academy of Sciences, 

Washington, DC, 1978) p. 563. This book provides a comprehensive history of the NAS over this period.

9. NRC Organization and Members Directory for fiscal years 1939–1940, 1944–1945, 1948–1949 and 1956–1960; available at 

NAS Archives, Washington, DC. 
Chapter 1 • Advisory Precedents before 

actively communicate its availability and propose to 

federal agencies to conduct advisory studies.10 The 

National Academy of Sciences became accustomed 

to, and accepted as, the premier source of expert 

recommendations on science and technology. 

As the space age began to emerge after World 

War II, government agencies turned to both the 

Academy-Research Council and ad hoc groups 

of scientists to help guide the directions of new 

space technologies. This chapter will examine a 

few examples of those predecessor advisory experiences to see what effect they had on NASA’s later 

approach to collecting outside scientific advice.

The NACA: Advisory Committee 

Was Its Middle Name

Part of NASA’s openness to outside advice can be 

traced to the fact that Congress also created NASA’s 

predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for 

Aeronautics (NACA), in the form of an advisory 

entity, and that the NACA retained much of that 

structure even when it grew to be a major research 

institution.

In 1911, a handful of aviation and aeronautical 

engineering enthusiasts came together to form the 

American Aeronautical Society. Noting the more 

organized and vigorous approach to this fledgling 

field that Europeans were taking compared to the 

relative inaction in the United States, some of the 

Society’s members saw a need to establish a national 

aeronautical research entity in the country. Navy 

Captain W. Irving Chambers initially developed a 

substantive proposal along those lines, and it was 

subsequently refined by others. It entailed creation 

of a laboratory modeled on European establishments that would involve substantial facilities, staff, 

and budget, all of which would be overseen by an 

appointed advisory committee or board. In spite of 

efforts by American advocates of the idea, a combination of classic Washington, DC, turf battles 

(involving the Navy, the Army, the Smithsonian 

Institution, and the Bureau of Standards) and 

political skepticism about whether the new area of 

aviation was to be taken seriously effectively stalled 

progress towards the creation of such a laboratory.11

It would be hard to miss the irony in the fact that 

similar obstacles often plague technological progress more than a century later.

After several years of unsuccessful efforts, 

Charles D. Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian 

Institution, hit upon a successful strategy in 1914. 

Rather than creating an operational laboratory, 

Walcott simply proposed the creation of an advisory committee “to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view 

to their practical solution, and to determine the 

problems which should be experimentally attacked 

and to discuss their solution and their application to practical questions.”12 The committee was 

to be comprised of seven representatives from relevant government agencies and up to seven other 

experts in aeronautical science and engineering. 

The committee would have an annual budget of 

only $5,000 and only a single full-time employee. 

Walcott’s proposal was tucked into the naval appropriations bill where it was approved in the waning 

days of Congress in March 1915, roughly a dozen 

years after the Wright brothers’ first flights in Kitty 

Hawk, North Carolina. Thus, the committee’s creation represented a classic example of adept political 

timing and getting the camel’s nose under the tent.

Notably, the entity that was later to become 

NASA began as an advisory committee—the 

10. Rexmond C. Cochrane, The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863–1963 (National Academy of Sciences, 

Washington, DC, 1978), p. 473.

11. For an excellent summary of efforts to create a national aeronautical laboratory in the period 1910–1915, see Alex Roland, Model 

Research (NASA SP-4130, NASA History Division, Washington, DC, 1985), vol. 1, chap. 1.

12. “Naval Appropriations Act, 1916,” Public Law 271, 63d Cong., 3d sess., passed 3 March 1915 (38 Stat. 930).
4 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

NACA. By 1925, a decade after its establishment, the NACA was operating a national laboratory at Langley Field, Virginia, that had about 

100 employees and utilized a significant number 

of wind tunnels and research aircraft.13 One constant of the organization, however, was the continued presence of a broad oversight committee and 

a system of subordinate, discipline-oriented subcommittees. Shortly before the creation of NASA 

in 1958, the NACA organization chart showed the 

national committee, four technical committees, an 

industry consulting committee, and a special committee on space technology, all in line above the 

agency’s director and its program officers and field 

installations.14

Several issues that were prominent during the 

NACA’s history were harbingers of issues that 

remain significant in NASA today. First, there 

was continuing tension over whether the NACA 

would be a scientific or an engineering entity. 

That is, should the character of the organization be primarily influenced by basic research in 

the aeronautical sciences, or should it be driven 

by more practical problems in aeronautical engineering? This debate reflected early competition 

between the Smithsonian Institution, which was 

seen as a scientific organization, and the military, 

where practical engineering problems were considered paramount.15 The debate was rekindled after 

World War II over differing views about whether 

the NACA’s emphasis should revert to fundamental aeronautical science following the expansion of 

applied research and development in support of 

military needs during the war.16

A second issue involved advisory committee 

members’ independence from conflicts of interest. 

The NACA’s framers believed that the committee should not be vulnerable to the special interests of private or commercial influences. Rather, 

they believed the NACA’s priorities should be the 

service of the interests of the federal government. 

Therefore, the membership of the NACA was 

intentionally set to be dominated by government 

representatives, and a handful of experts from 

academia rounded out the original committee.17

Of course as time went by, the NACA policy on 

avoiding the influence of special interests did not 

prevent the research from producing important 

benefits for industry.

A third issue involved the roles and character of 

involvement of the technical committees and their 

subcommittees under the policy-setting national 

committee to which the NACA Director reported. 

There appears to have always been some level of 

tension between advocates of independent outside oversight and direction, on the one hand, and 

those (especially in the NACA laboratories) who 

sought more internal independence and authority. 

In 1950, soon after Hugh L. Dryden became the 

NACA Director, a document was issued that clarified the committees’ roles. Specifically, they were 

responsible for (a) reviewing research progress, (b) 

recommending problems to be investigated, (c) 

aiding in research program formulation and coordination, and (d) communicating about research 

progress and directions.18

Dryden was a particularly important force in 

shaping the transformation of the NACA into 

13. For an excellent summary of the early years of the NACA, see Roger E. Bilstein, Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and 

NASA, 1915–1990 (NASA SP-4406, NASA History Division, Washington, DC, 1989), ch. 1. 

14. Management Processes Branch, The Evolution of the NASA Organization (NASA Office of Management, NASA Headquarters, 

Washington, DC Nov. 1983), p. viii; also available online at http://history.nasa.gov/orgcharts/orgcharts.html#1958.

15. Alex Roland, Model Research (NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, NASA SP-4130, 1985), pp. 11–13.

16. Alex Roland, Model Research (NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, NASA SP-4130, 1985), pp. 

196–197.

17. Alex Roland, Model Research (NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, NASA SP-4130, 1985), pp. 23–24.

18. Alex Roland, Model Research (NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, NASA SP-4130, 1985), vol. 1, p. 232. 
Chapter 1 • Advisory Precedents before 

NASA. A brilliant student who received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University at age 20, 

he joined the National Bureau of Standards in 

1918 and moved to the NACA in 1939. He earned 

national and international recognition at both 

institutions for his research and leadership in aerodynamics. Dryden served as Director of the NACA 

from 1947 until he became NASA’s first Deputy 

Administrator in 1958, and he held that position 

until his death in 1965. Dryden had served on 

numerous scientific advisory committees, including the Scientific Advisory Committee to the 

President, the Interdepartmental Committee for 

Scientific Research and Development, and others 

that advised U.S. and international military R&D 

organizations. His experience with these advisory 

bodies and his views about the roles of the NACA 

committees after he became the NACA Director 

very probably influenced NASA’s early thinking 

about the same kinds of relationships.19

Thus the scene was set for NASA’s forerunner—the NACA—to create a tradition and 

culture in which the agency’s operations were 

guided by an independent advisory body. In 

practical terms, the NACA’s operations were not 

always determined by the oversight committee. 

Freelancing often did occur in the NACA’s laboratories, and the discipline subcommittees could be 

co-opted by laboratory self-interests. (That aspect 

of the culture is not unheard of in NASA today, 

of course.) Nevertheless, the advisory-committee 

structure persisted throughout the NACA’s history. 

This practice was a springboard for advisory relationships in NASA’s early organization.

Rocket Panel

The work of 19th century science fiction writers 

and early 20th century visionaries such as Russian 

mathematician Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy, 

American physicist Robert H. Goddard, and 

German space pioneer Hermann J. Oberth stimulated thinking about the possibilities of spaceflight.20 Tsiolkovskiy developed the theoretical 

basis for rocketry, including a theory of multi-stage 

rockets, around the turn of the century. Goddard 

conducted groundbreaking experimental tests 

of liquid-fueled rockets in the 1920s and 1930s. 

Oberth contributed to the foundations of astronautics for four decades starting in the 1920s, and 

he later collaborated with Wernher Von Braun in 

developing the German V-2 rocket. By the 1940s, 

scientists were using balloons and small sounding rockets to carry research instruments to study 

the upper atmosphere and cosmic rays.21 After 

technologies for missile systems, electronic communications, and radar were developed for the 

military in World War II, the visions of spaceflight 

began to seem achievable, albeit probably costly. 

Furthermore, many scientists who detoured from 

their academic research to apply their skills to the 

war effort returned to academia after the war and 

applied what they had learned and developed to 

advancing technologies for basic research.

In 1945, officials at the U.S. Naval Research 

Laboratory (NRL) formed a new Rocket Sonde 

Research Section to explore and develop capabilities to study the upper atmosphere. Soon afterward, 

in early 1946, the U.S. Army sought to identify 

19. For a concise but thorough biography of Dryden, see Michael H. Gorn, Hugh Dryden’s Career in Aviation and Space (Monographs 

in Aerospace History, No. 5, NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1996).

20. For a nice summary of early work, see Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (NASA SP-4211, 

NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1980), chapter 3.

21. Cosmic rays are high-energy, electrically charged fragments of atoms that move at a significant fraction of the speed of light. Their 

origin was not understood in the 1950s, but they are now known to come from the Sun and from stellar explosions in the Milky 

Way galaxy and other galaxies.
6 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

scientific experiments that could be carried on 

flights of V-2 rockets that had been captured from 

Germany at the end of the war.22 The NRL team 

organized discussions amongst university and military scientists to respond to the Army’s invitation, 

and the discussions led to empanelment of a small 

group of scientists to assist in advising the Army. 

The panel’s name changed over time, beginning as 

the V-2 Upper Atmosphere Research Panel, then 

becoming the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research 

Panel (UARRP), and finally the Rocket and 

Satellite Research Panel, reflecting the evolution of 

the panel’s scope of attention. Thus began a tradition of involving outside scientists in providing 

specific advice on scientific uses of space vehicles.23

The members of the ad hoc rocket panel elected 

NRL physicist Ernst H. Krause as the panel’s first 

chair, and he was succeeded in 1947 by physicist James A. Van Allen from the Johns Hopkins 

University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Van Allen, 

who returned to the University of Iowa in 1951, 

served as chair until the time of NASA’s formation 

in 1958. Mathematician and theoretical physicist 

Homer E. Newell from NRL, and later NASA, 

succeeded Van Allen and served as chair until 

1961. Van Allen and Newell each played key roles 

in setting the scientific course for the U.S. space 

program—Van Allen as a member of the outside 

scientific community and Newell as an insider.24

Van Allen was an Iowa native who spent most 

of his career there. After working at the Carnegie 

Institution of Washington and then the Johns 

Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory 

(APL) from 1939 to 1942 and a tour as an officer in 

the U.S. Navy, he joined the University of Iowa faculty in 1951 to become the long-time chair of the 

physics department. His research focused on studies of the upper atmosphere and cosmic rays; the 

origin of the latter was still a mystery at the time. 

Van Allen and his colleagues used V-2 rockets and 

a newly designed Aerobee sounding rocket to carry 

their instruments into the upper atmosphere, and 

then his Iowa team experimented with a scheme to 

launch small rockets from high-altitude balloons. 

In January 1958, Wernher von Braun’s U.S. Army 

team launched Explorer 1 carrying Van Allen’s 

Geiger counter instrument that led to discovery of 

the band of magnetically trapped radiation particles around Earth, and subsequently, to fame for 

the discoverer of the “Van Allen Belts.”25 Van Allen 

made extraordinary contributions not only via his 

groundbreaking research, but also as a thoughtful 

member of nearly all key advisory panels in the 

formative years of the space program—starting 

with the rocket panel and extending through service on the NACA Special Committee on Space 

Technology that was formed in 1958 to advise the 

agency on how it could make the transition from 

being an aeronautics research institution to the 

nation’s space agency.

Homer Newell was a mathematician who earned 

a doctorate degree in 1940 from the University of 

Wisconsin. After a teaching stint at the University 

of Maryland, he joined NRL in 1944 where he 

became head of the rocket sonde group in 1947 

and then acting superintendent of the Atmosphere 

and Astrophysics Division and scientific coordinator of Project Vanguard in 1954. Newell joined 

22. “Sonde” is the French word for “probe.” The “V” in “V-2” comes from “Vergeltungswaffe” or “vengeance weapon.” For a full 

account of early involvement of scientists in using the V-2’s, see David H. DeVorkin, Science with a Vengeance: How the Military 

Created the U.S. Space Sciences after World War II (Springer-Verlag, New York, NY, 1993). 

23. For a concise summary of scientists’ interactions during this period see John E. Naugle, First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA 

Space Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, NASA History Division, Washington, DC, 1991), ch. 1.

24. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (NASA SP-4211, NASA History Division, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1980), ch. 4.

25. For a comprehensive biography of Van Allen see Abigail Foerstner, James Van Allen; The First Eight Billion Miles (University of 

Iowa Press, Iowa City IA, 2007).
Chapter 1 • Advisory Precedents before 

NASA at its formation, and he held successively 

more responsible leadership positions in space science, becoming Associate Administrator for Space 

Science and Applications in 1963. From 1967 until 

his retirement in 1974, Newell was NASA Associate 

Administrator—the number three position in the 

Agency—where he played a key policy-making 

and advisory role on all types of issues regarding 

NASA science. It is no exaggeration to say that his 

interactions with the outside scientific community 

on behalf of the government were pivotal in ensuring that outside advice was heard and applied. He 

was involved in establishing NASA’s early advisory 

committee structure, he met often with NASA’s 

internal committees and with the external Space 

Science Board, and he was a steady source of advice 

to NASA’s senior leadership about the importance 

of maintaining constructive relationships with the 

scientific community26 (See chapter 3).

Although the NRL’s ad hoc rocket panel had no 

formal charter and was largely self-governed, it provided a broad array of advice to the Navy and Army 

on topics such as scientific opportunities and priorities for sounding rocket flights, rocket instrument 

payloads, performance requirements for rockets 

and flight support systems, alternatives and successors to the V-2, reference standard atmospheric 

properties, and the potential impacts of (unsuccessful) efforts to impose security classifications on 

atmospheric research. The panel also served as a 

forum for communication amongst scientists about 

the results of sounding rocket research. The panel 

ceased operations in 1961.27 The relationships 

between the rocket panel and other complementary advisory bodies during the same period are 

illustrated in figure 1.1.

International Geophysical Year 

Committee

A small gathering of scientists at a dinner party 

hosted by Van Allen in April 1950 played a key role 

in the genesis of U.S. space science. The guests discussed and embraced an idea proposed by Lloyd V. 

Berkner of the Carnegie Institution of Washington 

for a third International Polar Year from 1957 to 

1958.28 Berkner and others subsequently stimulated international support for the idea, which 

became known as the International Geophysical 

Year (IGY), and in 1952 the International Council 

of Scientific Unions created a special Committee 

for the International Geophysical Year (referred to 

as CSAGI after its French name, Comité Special 

de l’Année Geophysique Internationale). Soon 

afterward, in 1953, the U.S. National Academy of 

Sciences formed a U.S. National Committee for 

the International Geophysical Year (USNC-IGY) 

to represent the United States in IGY activities.29

Also during 1952 the members of the NRL 

rocket panel began to discuss the idea of sounding rocket launches from a high-latitude site at Fort 

Churchill, Canada, as a part of the IGY. The proposal took hold, and in late 1953 the USNC-IGY 

created a Technical Panel on Rocketry to lead an 

IGY Sounding Rocket Program. Rocket panel chair 

Van Allen formed a special committee for the IGY 

26. John D. Ruley, The Professor on the Sixth Floor: Homer E. Newell, Jr. and the Development of U.S. Space Science (University of 

North Dakota M.S. Thesis, Grand Forks, ND, 2010); available in NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, 

record #61484.

27. Newell’s book provides a good summary of the history of the rocket panel; see Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early 

Years of Space Science (NASA SP-4211, NASA History Division, Washington, DC, 1980), ch. 4.

28. The first International Polar Year was a collaborative effort between scientists from 11 nations who organized geophysical 

studies in the Arctic and Antarctic from 1882 to 1883. The second International Polar Year, from 1932 to 1933, expanded the 

collaboration to 40 nations and emphasized studies in meteorology and geomagnetism.

29. The National Academy of Sciences maintains a collection of records from the IGY at http://www.nasonline.org/about-nas/history/

archives/milestones-in-NAS-history/the-igy.html (accessed 18 October 2016).
8 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

(SCIGY), chaired by Homer Newell, to organize 

and coordinate the Fort Churchill launch campaign on behalf of the rocket panel in early 1954. 

SCIGY was subsequently transferred to operate 

under the auspices of the USNC-IGY, where it was 

merged with the Technical Panel on Rocketry.30

30. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (NASA SP-4211, NASA History Division, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1980), pp. 45–46.

Naval Research Laboratory Rocket Panel, 1946–1961

NRL Special Committee 

for the International 

Geophysical Year

USNC-IGY Technical Panel on Rocketry

Working Group 

on Internal 

Instruments

1946 1953 1955 1959

Vanguard Technical 

Panel on the Earth 

Satellite Program

NAS Space Science 

Board 1958

National Academy of Sciences US National Committee 

for the IGY (USNC-IGY)

FIGURE 1.1 Key advisory entities in the years before NASA was established

The IGY was a seminal effort for U.S. space 

research for several reasons. First, it became the 

initiative to which the first U.S. artificial satellite 

program was tied, thereby making the program 

a scientific endeavor open to international view 

rather than a closed military effort. Second, it was 

an activity planned and conducted by scientists, 

with the National Academy of Sciences playing 

the lead role in the United States. Third, especially 

because the IGY predated any formal U.S. government space agency, U.S. IGY leaders saw themselves as being in charge of U.S. participation and, 

thereby, providing a logical precedent for how a 

national space research program might be expected 

to emerge.

Vanguard Selection Committee

In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower 

announced that the United States would develop 

and launch several scientific satellites as part of 

the IGY. The Navy’s proposed Vanguard rocket 

was chosen to be the launch vehicle, and the 

Vanguard Program was to be supported by the 
Chapter 1 • Advisory Precedents before 

National Science Foundation (NSF), Navy, Army, 

and Air Force. Joseph Kaplan, chair of the USNCIGY, formed a new Technical Panel on the Earth 

Satellite Program (TPESP) that was responsible for 

planning the scientific program and selecting participating scientists for Vanguard. Kaplan named 

Richard W. Porter of General Electric as TPESP 

chair and charged the panel to 

a. formulate the scientific program to be 

carried out by means of artificial satellites as part of the U.S. program for the 

International Geophysical Year;

b. delegate and direct the execution of this 

program; and

c. establish policies and formulate procedures related to the program in the fields 

of (i) budget, (ii) information policy, and 

(iii) institutional relationships.31

The TPESP subsequently created a working 

group on internal instrumentation with Van Allen 

as chair. In 1956, the working group established 

criteria for selecting experiments to be launched 

aboard Vanguard, reviewed proposals, set priorities 

for experiments to be selected, and recommended 

specific selections to the TPESP. Thus, the TPESP 

and its working group were considerably more than 

advisory groups. Rather, they provided direction to 

the government agencies about how to carry out 

the scientific aspects of Vanguard.32

While Vanguard was still in development in 

preparation for launch, the Soviet Union captured 

world attention with its launch of the Sputnik I satellite in October 1957.

Space Science Board

The surprise and sense of alarm in the United States 

that accompanied the successful launch of Sputnik 

I and the launch of Sputnik II in November set off a 

period of intense activity regarding space research. 

Vanguard I failed to achieve orbit in December. In 

the same month, the renamed rocket panel issued 

its own ideas for a new space agency in a report 

titled “National Space Establishment: A Proposal 

of the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel.”33

The U.S. Army’s Jupiter-C rocket successfully 

launched the Explorer 1 satellite (developed by the 

Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and carrying Van Allen’s cosmic ray experiment) in January 

1958, the Eisenhower administration submitted 

legislation to transform the NACA into NASA in 

April, Van Allen’s team announced the discovery 

of trapped radiation belts around Earth in May, 

and Congress passed and the President signed the 

National Aeronautics and Space Act in July. All in 

all, it was a breathtaking sequence of events. 

Action by the National Academy of Sciences 

was also prompt and direct. In response to a 

request from the National Science Foundation, 

the NACA, and the Department of Defense 

Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 

NAS President Detlev W. Bronk formally established the Space Science Board (SSB) on 4 June 

1958, and appointed geophysicist Lloyd Berkner 

to serve as chair. At the time, Berkner was president of Associated Universities, Inc., president of 

the International Council of Scientific Unions, 

and a member of the President’s Scientific Advisory 

31. Minutes of the First Meeting, Technical Panel on Earth Satellite Program, 20 October 1955, NAS Archives, IGY Series, 

Washington, DC.

32. John E. Naugle, First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, NASA History Division, 

NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1991), pp. 7–12.

33. J. A. Van Allen, “National Space Establishment: A Proposal of the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel,” 27 December 1957, 

reproduced in Logsdon, John M., ed., with Amy Paige Snyder, Roger D. Launius, Stephen J. Garber, and Regan Anne Newport, 

Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume V, Exploring the Cosmos (NASA 

SP-4407, NASA History Division, Washington, DC, 2001), p. 87.
10 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Council.34 In a 26 June letter to Berkner, Bronk set 

down the charge to the SSB as follows:

[W]e shall look to the Board to be the focus 

of the interests and responsibilities of the 

Academy-Research Council in space science; 

to establish necessary relationships with civilian science and with government scientific 

activities, particularly the new Space Agency, 

the National Science Foundation, and the 

Advanced Research Projects Agency; to represent the Academy-Research Council in our 

international relations in this field on behalf 

of American scientists and science; to seek 

ways to stimulate needed research; to promote 

necessary coordination of scientific effort; and 

to provide such advice and recommendations 

to appropriate individuals and agencies with 

regard to space science as may in the Board’s 

judgment be desirable. 

As we have already agreed, the Board is 

intended to be an advisory, consultative, correlating, evaluating body and not an operating 

agency in the field of space science. It should 

avoid responsibility as a Board for the conduct 

of any programs of space research and for the 

formulation of budgets relative thereto. Advice 

to agencies properly responsible for these matters, on the other hand, would be within its 

purview to provide.35

Bronk’s direction to the SSB to confine its roles to 

advisory rather than operational matters marked 

a significant departure from the earlier roles of 

bodies such as the NACA technical committees, 

the rocket panel, and the Vanguard selection 

committee.

Lloyd Berkner was an engineer and physicist 

who earned a baccalaureate in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1927. He 

never received a Ph.D., but he was the recipient of a 

dozen honorary degrees in recognition of his technical and scientific leadership accomplishments. 

After graduation, Berkner worked as an engineer 

at the U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses, the National 

Bureau of Standards, and the Carnegie Institution 

of Washington. While on active duty in the Navy 

during World War II he became responsible for all 

naval electronics engineering, especially including 

airborne radar systems for navy fighter aircraft. 

He returned to Carnegie after the war to become 

chair of the Section of Exploratory Geophysics of 

the Atmosphere. However, his time there was often 

interrupted as he took on assignments as executive 

secretary of the Research and Development Board 

established by the Departments of War and Navy, 

special scientific assistant to the Secretary of State, 

and leader of a National Academy of Sciences 

study on science and foreign relations.36 As one of 

the nation’s scientific leaders who was known for 

being especially persuasive and energetic, who had 

argued for the creation of a civilian rather than 

military space agency, and who had been involved 

in many interagency and international scientific 

and technical negotiations, Berkner was an ideal 

choice to be the founding chair of the SSB.

The original board had 15 members, including 

distinguished physicists, chemists, and engineers, 

plus a biologist, a meteorologist, and a psychologist.37 Nearly all of the members were then or would 

34. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (NASA SP-4211, NASA History Division, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1980), p. 30.

35. Logsdon, John M., ed., with Amy Paige Snyder, Roger D. Launius, Stephen J. Garber, and Regan Anne Newport. Exploring the 

Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume V, Exploring the Cosmos (NASA SP-4407, 

NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, 2001), p. 100.

36. Anton L. Hales, “Biographical Memoir of Lloyd Viel Berkner” (National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, 1992).

37. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (NASA SP-4211, NASA History Division, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1980), App. F.
Chapter 1 • Advisory Precedents before N

become elected members of the National Academy 

of Sciences, and the membership included one current and two future Nobel laureates.38 The SSB 

held its first meeting on 27 June 1958, and after 

that meeting a geophysicist was added to the roster. 

All of the early members were men.39

During its first year of operation, the SSB established eleven ad hoc committees to carry out the 

Board’s work, widely circulated an invitation to 

U.S. scientists to propose scientific experiments 

to be conducted in space, utilized its committees 

to provide an initial set of recommendations (to 

NASA, NSF, and the Advanced Research Projects 

Agency) for specific experiments to be selected, collaborated with NASA to hold a seminar to stimulate interest in space science,40 and published an 

article in Science 41 to encourage scientific interest 

in space research.

Although Bronk and Berkner sought to keep 

attention focused on the SSB’s advisory and planning roles, some members still hoped that the 

Board would have more to say about operational 

decisions. This issue was put to rest when NASA 

prescribed a statement of work for the Board’s 

contract renewal for fiscal year 1960. In it, NASA 

made clear that it sought “thoughts, ideas, and 

recommendations...on the broad overall objectives” and that “Guiding principles are needed, 

rather than a detailed program formulation....” 42

However, as we shall see, a certain vagueness about 

where to draw the line between strategic advice and 

programmatic guidance continued to give the SSB 

openings and challenges in the years to come.

Post-War Precedents for Technical 

Agencies and Advisors

The immediate post-war period saw a flurry of 

new government scientific and technical organizations and accompanying advisory bodies, and 

these very probably influenced the heads of the 

National Science Foundation, the NACA, and 

the Department of Defense Advanced Research 

Projects Agency when they asked Bronk to 

create the SSB. For example, the Army Air Force 

Scientific Advisory Board, which had been formed 

in 1944 and later became the USAF Scientific 

Advisory Board, served as an advisor to the Office 

of Air Research starting in 1948, and it became the 

top-level advisory body for the Air Force Office 

of Scientific Research in 1951. The Office of 

Naval Research and its Naval Research Advisory 

Committee were formed together in 1946. The 

Atomic Energy Commission, which was a predecessor to the Energy Research and Development 

Administration and then the Department of 

Energy, also was created in 1946, and its General 

Advisory Committee was established the next 

year. When the National Science Foundation was 

created in 1950, the National Science Board was 

legislatively established to be both the governing 

entity of the Foundation and a source of science 

policy advice to the government. As a consequence 

of these and other precedents, there was a degree of 

shared experience across the government regarding 

the interactions of science and technology agencies and their advisors. Not only were government 

38. Harold C. Urey (1934), Joshua Lederberg (1958), and Haldan Keffer Hartline (1967), respectively.

39. The SSB did not have its first female member—astronomer E. Margaret Burbidge—until 1971.

40. John E. Naugle, First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, NASA History Division, 

NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1991), pp. 31–34.

41. Space Science Board, “Research in Space” Science Magazine 130, no. 3369 (24 July 1959): p. 195.

42. See John E. Naugle, First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, NASA History 

Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1991), p. 72. 
12 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

officials familiar with the process, but there was 

enough overlap between membership in the various committees, including space program committees, to ensure a degree of continuity across the 

whole U.S. R&D scene.

Impact of the Pre-NASA 

Committees

Looking back on the lineage of the many advisory bodies that operated before NASA was established, it is easy to see the list as confusing and 

convoluted. But, in fact, the membership of these 

entities gave them coherence and continuity. For 

example, James Van Allen was among the first 

members appointed to the rocket panel and he 

served for many years as its chair; he served on 

the Vanguard selection panel and was chair of its 

working group on internal instrumentation; and 

he served on the SSB from 1958 to 1969. Richard 

Porter chaired the Vanguard selection panel, sat 

on the working group for internal instrumentation, and was a charter member of the SSB. Homer 

Newell served on the rocket panel, chaired the 

Scientific Committee for the IGY, was a member 

of its Vanguard selection panel, and framed much 

of the policy about the operation of NASA’s early 

science organization. Berkner was chair of the 

USNC-IGY and original chair of the SSB. Another 

important member of these early entities was Fred 

L. Whipple, a Harvard astronomer, who served 

on the first rocket panel and was a member of the 

Vanguard selection panel. Consequently, these scientists, among others, helped ensure that ideas and 

concerns were well understood across the scientific 

advisory ecosystem.

Indeed, one can view some of the major players 

who helped develop independent scientific advice 

for an embryotic NASA as visionaries similar, in 

their own way, to Tsiolkovskiy, Goddard, and 

Oberth. The latter created a technical foundation 

for later spaceflight. The former were movers and 

shakers who brought the scientific community and 

the government together to make a space science 

program feasible and to put it in motion. Dryden, 

who was a member and home secretary of the 

NAS, helped ensure that the NACA’s technical 

committees had meaningful roles, and he carried 

that tradition to NASA. Berkner had the vision 

and the drive to ensure that the idea of the IGY 

took hold internationally, and he guided the launch 

of the SSB. Van Allen used his capacity for innovation and leadership to create a sustainable scientific 

enterprise. 

One important point to draw from the experience of the advisory forerunners to NASA is that 

while their control of decision making (e.g., about 

flight payloads) would diminish when NASA was 

established, their importance would not. Indeed, 

the tradition of utilizing outside scientific advisory 

panels had become ingrained in the early culture of 

space science. Scientists came to expect, and NASA 

understood, that their voices would be heard. (See 

box on the following page.)

The process by which scientists’ views would 

be heard in the future NASA continued to 

be influenced by some of the same issues that 

weighed on the framers of the NACA. In particular, issues of advisors’ independence versus conflicts of interest and of the operational reach of 

advisory committees’ recommendations continued to color the character of the advisory process 

for years to come. 

The Scope of Space Science 

Then and Now

Early planners for research in space had a very broad 

vision of the scientific potential of a national space 

program. At the first meeting of the Space Science 

Board, chairman Berkner identified seven disciplinary areas—astronomy and radio astronomy, 

geochemistry of space and exploration of moon 

and planets, geodesy, ionospheres of Earth and 

planets, meteorological aspects of satellites, physics 

of fields and particles in space, and psychological 
Chapter 1 • Advisory Precedents before N

ADVICE 101: THE PRINCIPAL MEANS AND MEDIA FOR OUTSIDE ADVICE

NASA often received advice via both formal and informal routes. The Agency regularly established formal, standing, advisory bodies that served over the time for which they were chartered 

and ad hoc groups that served just long enough to perform a specific task. (See chapter 3.) NASA 

also turned to outside entities, especially the National Research Council (NRC), to formally 

empanel independent advisory bodies, sometimes also on a continuing basis and sometimes for 

one-of-a-kind projects. The Space Science Board (SSB) and its standing committees are the premier example of the former, and committees to advise on specific planetary protection protocols 

are examples of the latter. (See chapter 2.) NASA also established ad hoc advisory groups that 

operated outside the constraints of federal advisory committee rules and regulations, and these 

groups usually focused on lower-level tactical issues of concern to individual program managers. There also was no lack of informal advice from individuals and special interest groups who 

would not hesitate to catch a NASA official’s ear whenever the opportunity, and occasionally 

the invitation, appeared. These informal advisors most often approached NASA at their own 

initiative rather than at NASA’s.

The advice itself came in many forms. Starting with the most comprehensive, some of 

NASA’s formally chartered committees and nearly all NRC committees have delivered their 

advice via full-length (i.e., 30 to 300 page) study reports that often include summaries and analyses of data or information collected by the committee plus the committee’s conclusions, generally in the form of specific findings and recommendations. Other advisory reports may take 

the form of position papers (NASA calls them white papers) that outline salient aspects of an 

issue, possibly including alternative perspectives and options for action, but that do not make 

explicit recommendations. An NRC version of this type of document is the workshop report that 

summarizes discussions by experts assembled to chew over an issue without offering consensus 

recommendations on the subject.

There are also options for shorter, more concise advisory documents that are presented in 

the form of a letter to NASA. Such letter reports were often used by the SSB up through the 

1990s, and they have been a common vehicle for NASA’s internal committees to communicate 

their views. In a few instances, an advisory body will deliver its advice simply by briefing the 

appropriate Agency officials without any accompanying document, except perhaps for copies of 

the briefing charts. 

Finally, there is an option for airing advisory perspectives that involves no documents at all. 

Instead, the advisory group may simply engage in an informal discussion with the NASA official 

so that the latter can hear from the former in real time but without any formal documentation. 

The NRC employs this vehicle, which it calls a round table, as a means of convening experts for 

discussions with agency officials without going through the process of endorsing the discussions 

as formal advice from the NRC.
14 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

and biological research—around which to form 

ad hoc committees.43 These areas constituted the 

SSB’s first definition of the scope of space science. 

NASA’s first standalone Office of Space Sciences 

emerged in 1961 with Homer Newell as Director. 

He had three science-discipline offices—bioscience, geophysics and astronomy, and lunar and 

planetary programs—which covered most of the 

same territory as the early SSB science categories. 

If we fast-forward to 2016, there were both similarities and interesting differences in what one finds 

under the rubric of space sciences. As of this writing, 

the Space Studies Board (the Space Science Board’s 

successor in the National Academies structure) has 

standing committees in astronomy and astrophysics, 

astrobiology and planetary science, Earth science 

and applications, and solar and space physics. That 

structure mirrors the four science program offices in 

NASA’s 2016 Science Mission Directorate.

But behind the simple differences between the 

names of modern SSB committees and NASA 

organization charts and their predecessors more 

than five decades ago is a story of revolutionary 

advances and accomplishments across all fields. 

“Astrophysics” in the nomenclature for the contemporary space astronomy program reflects the 

explosion in new knowledge brought about via 

measurements from space across the full electromagnetic spectrum from millimeter waves 

to gamma rays. The planners of the 1950s could 

hardly imagine how dramatically space astronomy 

would open up new research areas such as high-energy astrophysics, observational cosmology, and 

detection of extrasolar planets.44 The coupling of 

“astrobiology”45 and planetary science reflects the 

emergence of searches for evidence of life, or its origins, in solar systems as a maturing field. 

Perhaps the biggest change in the inventory of 

major areas of space science is the development of 

Earth science and applications as a mature, vibrant, 

and societally important research field. Neither the 

original SSB nor NASA’s early science offices fully 

anticipated the potential of measuring Earth from 

the remote perspective of space. The combination 

of in-situ atmospheric measurements and remote 

sensing of the land, oceans, biosphere, and cryosphere have had revolutionary impacts on topics 

such as global change, climate, land use, oceanography, and ecosystems management. Thus, as 

these capabilities evolved, Earth science became 

very much a part of space science—when the latter 

term is used in its broadest sense.

All of the contemporary science fields cited 

above have been pursued through the use of robotic 

spacecraft. Two other science areas—space life sciences and microgravity physical sciences—have 

developed primarily along a different track. Both 

the life sciences, which includes the study of biological processes in cells, plants, and animals (including humans), and study in areas such as materials 

science, fluid physics, combustion, and fundamental physics have been pursued mainly in space laboratories staffed by in-flight astronaut crews. These 

space laboratory sciences are certainly appropriate 

categories of science in space, but they are distinctly different from the other fields mentioned 

above in terms of the manner in which they have 

been conducted and the character and traditions of 

the space research communities that pursue work 

in these fields. 

Henceforth, this book will focus on the areas 

that have been pursued primarily through robotic 

spacecraft—astronomy and astrophysics, Earth 

science and applications, planetary science (including astrobiology), and solar and space physics. The 

discussion will consider the laboratory sciences in 

microgravity only when there is a need to compare 

the latter with the former.

43. Space Science Board, “Minutes of the First Meeting, 27 June 1958,” reproduced in John M. Logsdon, Exploring the Unknown, Vol 

V: Exploring the Cosmos, (NASA History Division NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, 2001), pp. 99–113.

44. Extrasolar planets are planets that orbit stars other than the Sun.

45. In the early decades of space science, this research was known as “exobiology.”
15

CHAPTER 2

The Space Science Board Goes to Work

After organizing itself in 1958, the SSB lost no time in getting to work. During its first three 

years of operation, the SSB developed guidance to 

the U.S. delegation to the United Nations regarding international cooperation in space activities; 

prepared a major strategic review of prospects and 

opportunities for science in space; and delivered 

letters to senior NASA officials regarding policies 

for human space exploration and basic research in 

space science, data exchange policies, and tracking 

and orbit computation services.1

Thus, a spectrum of products and services 

emerged that responded to Bronk’s original charge. 

Namely, the Board conducted advisory studies and 

organized workshops, both to gather information 

and perspectives for use by its study committees 

and to promote communication about space science across the government and non-government 

scientific communities. It began to produce three 

kinds of advisory reports: (a) broad-based reports 

on strategic issues, (b) more narrowly focused study 

reports on specific topics about which the government (mainly NASA) needed advice, and (c) brief 

letter reports that communicated a perspective or 

set of recommendations developed by the Board on 

a more rapid time scale than was required to complete study reports. 

The SSB’s relationship with NASA gained 

heightened visibility beginning with an agency 

reorganization initiated by NASA’s second 

Administrator, James E. Webb, in 1961. Webb’s 

organization chart included a dotted-line (i.e., 

advisory) connection between “Research Advisory 

Committees” and the Administrator’s office.2 The 

arrangement probably reflected the ideas of Deputy 

Administrator Dryden, who had blocked out similar arrangements in potential organizational 

schemes for NASA while he was still the NACA 

Director.3 By November 1962, this dotted-line 

advisory position on the NASA organization chart 

was specifically identified with the “Space Science 

Board of National Academy of Sciences.” (See 

figure 2.1.) The special advisory role of the SSB 

was explicit in NASA’s organization charts until 

1967 when the role was expanded to encompass the 

National Academy of Sciences and the National 

Academy of Engineering. Three national academies—NAS, NAE, and the National Academy of 

1. All reports prepared by the Space Science Board, the Space Studies Board, and the committees of the boards are listed in the 

annual reports of the Space Studies Board (see http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/SSB_051650), and they are all available at the 

SSB Web site: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/index.htm.

2. See The Evolution of the NASA Organization (Office of Management, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, March 1985) http://

history.nasa.gov/orgcharts/orgcharts.html for a complete compilation of NASA organization charts.

3. The NACA, “A National Research Program for Space Technology,” a staff study of the NACA, 14 January 1958, Model Research, 

NASA SP-4103 Volume 2, Appendix H, no. 45.
16 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Public Administration—were included in 1968–

1976 versions. A specific relationship with the 

national academies no longer appeared in the final 

organization charts issued under Administrator 

James C. Fletcher in 1976.5

 Nevertheless, the 

SSB and its counterparts experienced a remarkable 16-year period of responsibility during which 

NASA portrayed them as integral elements of the 

process of obtaining advice for the Agency. After 

1978, the SSB’s advisory activities for NASA continued without change, even though the Agency no 

longer called attention to its relationships with the 

academies as adjunct elements of the NASA organizational structure.

While the SSB and NASA officials communicated freely and often with each other, the NAS 

guarded its independence resolutely. For example, 

Harvard planetary scientist Richard Goody, who 

chaired the SSB from 1974 to 1976, recalled that 

when he was recruited to become Board Chair, 

Administrator Fletcher objected because he was 

concerned that Goody would not be a supporter 

of the proposed Large Space Telescope. (In fact, 

Goody turned out to be an active supporter.) 

Office of Tracking 

and Data Acquisition

Office of the 

Associate 

Administrator

Office of the NASA 

Administrator

Ames Research 

Center

Inventions and 

Contributions Board

Lewis Research 

Center

Wallops 

Station

Marshall Space 

Flight Center

General Counsel

Management 

Development

International 

Programs

Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory

Flight Research 

Center

Legislative Affairs

Goddard Space 

Flight Center

Public Affairs

Plans and Program 

Evaluation

Langley Research 

Center

Manned Spacecraft 

Center

Office of 

Manned Spaceflight

Office of Advanced 

Research and 

Technology

Office of 

Space Sciences

Office of 

Applications

NASA Research 

Advisory 

Committees

Space Science 

Board of the National 

Academy of Sciences

Office of Programs Office of 

Administration

FIGURE 2.1 NASA Organization Chart as of August 19624

4. Adapted from 17 August 1962 NASA Headquarters organization chart presented in “The Evolution of the NASA Organization” 

(Office of Management, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, March 1985); also available at http://history.nasa.gov/orgcharts/

evol_org.pdf.

5. Office of Management, The Evolution of the NASA Organization (NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, March 1985); also 

available at http://history.nasa.gov/orgcharts/evol_org.pdf.
Chapter 2 • The Space Science Board Goes to W

Fletcher appealed directly to the president of the 

NAS, Philip Handler, to stop Goody’s appointment. In a classic show of the Academy’s independence, Handler ignored Fletcher’s plea. Goody 

recalled how the episode played out:

What happened was that the President of the 

Academy simply said nothing about it. He let 

them come and see him and make their objection, but he did nothing, didn’t say a word to 

me, didn’t tell me that they had visited him 

or anything. As far as he was concerned, their 

statements didn’t exist. When I look back 

I realize that he had no choice, because the 

Academy has to act on its own and not on the 

behest of others. I mean, it can accept requests, 

but it doesn’t accept orders.... This was purely 

a NASA problem, which we at the Academy 

had no intention of taking any notice of.6

Homer Newell described this event from his 

inside-NASA perspective in his 1980 book:

But in the early 1970s the Academy of Sciences 

began to show great concern over questions of 

conflict of interest and potential charges of 

being captive to those it advised. Thus, when 

a new chairman was needed for the Space 

Science Board, instead of consulting with 

NASA on possible choices as had been the 

custom, the Academy unilaterally—as it had 

every right to do—selected a candidate. James 

Fletcher, the fourth NASA administrator, had 

doubts about the choice—doubts that were 

shared by the author—since the proposed 

chairman had previously shown little evidence 

of giving thought to the negative effect that 

his outspoken criticism of various space science projects could have on NASA’s efforts to 

defend its budget on the Hill. NASA objected 

to the choice; the Academy stood firm; and 

Fletcher gave serious thought to withdrawing 

NASA’s financial support from the board and 

relying on NASA’s own committees for advice. 

In the end NASA fortunately did not sever 

the relationship with the board, and the new 

chairman did an excellent job.7

Standing Committees

When Berkner formed seven discipline-oriented, ad 

hoc committees at the SSB’s first meeting, he also 

established five other implementation-oriented, ad 

hoc committees covering future vehicular development, international relations, near-term issues and 

problems, long-term space project planning, and 

general engineering services. Before retiring as SSB 

chair in 1962, Berkner led a reorganization of the 

Board in which the original set of ad hoc committees was replaced by a new executive committee 

and eight standing committees with the following 

areas of responsibility:

• Earth’s Atmosphere,

• Environmental Biology,

• Exobiology,

• Geodesy,

• High Altitude Rocket and Balloon Research,

• International Relations,

• Man in Space, and

• Physical Contamination of Space.8

6. Goody interview, p. 2. All footnotes that cite NASA Oral History Program transcripts include the page number for the interview 

quotation cited in this text.

7. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, 

Washington, DC, NASA SP-4211, 1980), p. 214.

8. Memorandum from Berkner to NAS President Detlev Bronk dated 5 January 1961, “Reorganization of the Space Science Board,” 

NAS Archives, Washington, DC.
18 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Interestingly, the old ad hoc committees covering astronomy, lunar and planetary exploration, 

meteorology, and physics of fields and particles in 

space were dissolved, because Berkner argued that 

their work was completed and NASA’s plans were 

well underway in those fields. Of course, all those 

areas came home to roost and merited renewed 

attention just a few years later. 

Throughout the SSB’s first three decades, the 

work of the Board was often carried out by its 

standing committees or by ad hoc, topical committees, which often operated with oversight by the 

standing committees. Besides organizing and conducting advisory studies, the standing committees 

regularly met with senior NASA officials who were 

responsible for programs in the committees’ areas 

of interest to stay abreast of program developments 

and plans and to promote communication between 

NASA and the interested scientific community. A 

full set of discipline-oriented standing committees 

was re-established in 1974 under Richard Goody 

as chair, and they were the same in 1988 when 

Thomas M. Donahue completed his six-year term 

as chair three decades after the SSB was formed, 

as follows:

• Committee on Earth Sciences from Space

• Committee on Space Astronomy and 

Astrophysics

• Committee on Data Management and 

Computation

• Committee on Planetary Biology and 

Evolution

• Committee on Planetary and Lunar 

Exploration

• Committee on Solar and Space Physics

• Committee on Space Biology and Medicine

This committee organizational structure 

largely reflected the way members of the research 

communities were organized and interacted with 

each other (or didn’t). Astronomers belonged to the 

American Astronomical Society, and they rarely 

interacted with the Earth scientists who had their 

own professional societies. Likewise, the solar and 

space plasma physicists probably never interacted 

with the biologists, and their interests overlapped 

with relatively narrow sub-segments of the astronomy and Earth sciences communities. But the committee assignments made sense then in terms of 

scientific expertise, experience, and interests. The 

broadening of scientific perspectives occurred at the 

level of the SSB where all relevant disciplines came 

together. Later chapters will show how advisory 

activities began to take on more cross-disciplinary 

perspectives as the space science program evolved.

Science Strategies and Focused 

Reports

By 1988, the Board and its committees prepared 

more than 100 advisory reports for NASA. Of 

those, approximately 40 percent were major strategic reports, about 30 percent were focused topical reports, and 30 percent were letter reports to 

the NASA Administrator or other senior officials. 

Table 2.1 presents an abbreviated list of examples 

of reports of each type during the period.

The science strategies are particularly notable. The Board began with studies that outlined 

major scientific opportunities and broad priorities 

for the full range of fields in space science (e.g., 

the 1966 report “Space Research: Directions for 

the Future”9) and then revisited and updated that 

comprehensive look across all of space science in 

1971 and 1988. The SSB also used its standing 

committees or formed specialized study committees to prepare more detailed examinations and to 

recommend scientific directions in a specific discipline (e.g., a 1968 study on “Planetary Exploration 

9. National Research Council, Space Research: Directions for the Future (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1966).
Chapter 2 • The Space Science Board Goes to W

TABLE 2.1 Illustrative examples of SSB reports, 1958–1988*

Strategic Reports

A Review of Space Research (1962)

Space Research: Directions for the Future (1966)

Physics of the Earth in Space—A Program of Research: 1968–1975 (1968) 

Planetary Exploration 1968–1975 (1968)

The Outer Solar System—A Program for Exploration (1969)

Priorities for Space Research: 1971–1980, Report of a Study on Space Science and Earth Observations Priorities (1971)

Space Plasma Physics—The Study of Solar System Plasmas (1978)

A Strategy for Space Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s (1979)

Solar System Space Physics in the 1980s: A Research Strategy (1980)

Space Science in the Twenty-First Century—Overview (plus six discipline-specific volumes, 1988)

Focused Reports

The Atmospheres of Mars and Venus (1961)

Biology and the Exploration of Mars: Report of a Study Held Under the Auspices of the Space Science Board, National 

Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 1964–1965 (1966)

Scientific Uses of the Large Space Telescope (1969)

Sounding Rockets: Their Role in Space Research (1969)

Institutional Arrangements for the Space Telescope—Report of a Study at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, July 19–30, 

1976 (1976) 

Recommendations for Planetary Quarantine for Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Titan (1978)

Data Management and Computation—Volume I: Issues and Recommendations (1982)

The Role of Theory in Space Research (1983)

The Explorer Program for Astronomy and Astrophysics (1986)

Letter Reports

Policy Positions on (1) Man’s Role in the National Space Program and (2) Support of Basic Research for Space Science 

(27 March 1961)

Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on NASA/University Relationships (1962)

Space Science Board Assessment of the Scientific Value of a Space Station (1983)

Space Telescope Science Issues (1983)

On the Continued Development of the Gravity Probe B Mission (1983)

The Categorization of the Mars Orbiter Mission (1985)

On the Balance of Shuttle and ELV Launches (1986)

Assessment of the Planned Scientific Content of the LGO, MAO, and NEAR Missions (1986)

On Mixed Launch Fleet and Policy Option (1987)

Assessment of Planned Scientific Content of the CRAF Mission (1987)

*All SSB reports are available at http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/index.htm. The SSB also tracks the history of its advisory 

activities in its annual reports, which are posted at http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/SSB_051650. One particularly useful feature 

of the annual reports is a set of diagrams that display timelines and relationships for SSB reports in each scientific discipline area.
20 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

1968–1975”10 and a 1978 study on “Space Plasma 

Physics—The Study of Solar System Plasmas”11). 

All of the science strategies focused on scientific priorities, and they usually stopped short of addressing programmatic aspects such as implementation 

of spaceflight missions or research facilities. Thus, 

the science strategies stayed mostly true to NASA’s 

request in 1960 that the Board concentrate on 

broad overall objectives and not be concerned with 

detailed program formulation. Nevertheless, they 

were especially important guides for NASA’s scientific priorities, and they were forerunners of the 

decadal science strategy surveys that followed in 

later decades (see below and chapter 11).

However, it was not unusual for the SSB’s 

focused study reports and letter reports to move 

into implementation issues. Sometimes these 

reports were prepared at the Board’s initiative without receiving a request from NASA. For example, 

SSB chair A. G. W. Cameron established a committee on data management and computation in 

1978, and the committee published its first report, 

“Data Management and Computation—Volume 

I: Issues and Recommendations,”12 in 1982. In his 

Foreword to the report, Cameron wrote

The present report on data management and 

computation was prepared in response to our 

perception [emphasis added] that data problems were pervasive throughout the space sciences. The data chain from satellite to ground 

to processing to principal investigator to 

reduction and analysis and archiving is central 

to all of space-science results. Yet it has suffered 

from inefficiencies all along the line, ranging 

from inadequate funding and application of 

advanced technologies to indifference on the 

part of management and scientist alike. The 

present report of the SSB Committee on Data 

Management and Computation (CODMAC) 

systematically addresses these issues and makes 

recommendations for improved treatment all 

along the data chain.13

Thus, the report’s 21 recommendations included 

a list of specific technologies that NASA needed 

to address as well as recommendations for organizational changes that, in CODMAC’s view, were 

needed (specifically, creation of a software organization to support NASA’s efforts). While the 

report heightened consciousness about these issues 

inside NASA, actions in response to the committee’s specific recommendations were few and slow 

to develop. Andrew Stofan, who was Associate 

Administrator for the newly reorganized Office 

of Space Science and Applications, did create an 

Information Systems Office to focus on data 

system issues.14

A second example of a Board-initiated letter 

report is the February 1987 letter from SSB 

chair Donahue to NASA Administrator Fletcher 

regarding the Board’s views on launch vehicles for 

space science missions. Prior to the Space Shuttle 

Challenger accident in February 1986, NASA had 

been pursuing a policy whereby the Shuttle was 

to be the primary launch vehicle for all NASA 

missions. Donahue expressed concerns about the 

lack of near-term robustness in NASA’s launch 

10. National Research Council, Planetary Exploration: 1968–1975 (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1968).

11. National Research Council, Space Plasma Physics: The Study of Solar-System Plasmas (The National Academies Press, Washington, 

DC, 1978).

12. National Research Council, Data Management and Computation—Volume I: Issues and Recommendations (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1982).

13. National Research Council, Data Management and Computation—Volume I: Issues and Recommendations (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1982), p. vii.

14. Alexander document files from the 19 November 1981 SESAC meeting, NASA HRC.
Chapter 2 • The Space Science Board Goes to W

capabilities as the Agency began to consider a 

post-accident strategy that would employ a variety of expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) in addition to the Space Shuttle. The letter urged NASA 

to have “back up modes of launching”15 upcoming science missions to alleviate possible schedule 

delays if future Shuttle launches were delayed in 

the years before the mixed-fleet strategy could be 

implemented. The letter went on to specifically 

recommend that:

• ELVs be acquired to launch ROSAT 

[German-U.S.-U.K X-ray observatory] 

in 1989; Mars Observer in 1990; EUVE 

[Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer] in 1991; 

and Wind, Geotail, and Polar [part of 

the multi-spacecraft International SolarTerrestrial Program] in 1992.

• At least one backup Titan IV, with conversion hardware, be acquired to guard against 

failure to launch one of the three major 

‘planetary’ missions, Galileo, Magellan, 

and Ulysses, during the 1989–1990 opportunities. We urge that an effort be made to 

launch both Galileo and Ulysses in 1989.

• The backup ELVs be used for later missions, such as CRAF [Comet Rendezvous 

and Asteroid Flyby], if they are not 

required for one of these missions.16

Donahue’s letter implicitly acknowledged that 

there were budgetary implications accompanying 

the Board’s proposal, but there was no reference to 

whether the Board had considered the budgetary 

realism of the SSB plan. In the end, all six spacecraft mentioned in the first point were launched 

on ELVs between 1990 and 1996, and Galileo, 

Magellan, and Ulysses remained on the Shuttle 

for successful launches from 1989 through 1990. 

While CRAF was cancelled later for other reasons, 

NASA did not pursue the Board’s ideas about purchasing backup rockets. 

On other occasions, such implementationspecific letters responded to a question for which 

NASA sought a quick authoritative answer. 

Such was the case with the 1962 “Report of 

the Ad Hoc Committee on NASA/University 

Relationships,”17 in which a committee appointed 

by Berkner conducted a short study to answer 

NASA officials’ questions about whether, and if 

so how, it would be appropriate to establish programs at universities to address national needs for 

a skilled science and engineering work force. This 

particular interaction between NASA and the 

SSB brought together NASA’s interest in finding 

ways to satisfy its needs for a space-oriented workforce and the academic community’s interest in 

creating new opportunities for research support. 

NASA Administrator Webb translated his interest in engaging universities in the space program 

into action by creating the Sustaining University 

Program,18 and the SSB letter helped him make 

the case. The idea of a fundamental NASA commitment to universities was to become a recurring 

theme of advice from the scientific community, 

and NASA’s response was sometimes supportive 

15. Space Science Board letter report, “On Mixed Launch Fleet Strategy and Policy Option,” Thomas M. Donahue to James E. 

Fletcher, 11 February 1987 (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1987), p. 1.

16. Space Science Board letter report, “On Mixed Launch Fleet Strategy and Policy Option,” Thomas M. Donahue to James E. 

Fletcher, 11 February 1987, p. 1.

17. National Research Council, Report of the ad hoc Committee on NASA/University Relationships (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1962).

18. See W. Henry Lambright and Edwin A. Block, “Launching NASA’s Sustaining University Program” (Inter-university Case 

Program, Syracuse NY, 1969) and also John M. Logsdon, Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. 

Civilian Space Program, Vol. II: External Relationships, NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, 1996), 

pp. 420–421.
22 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

and sometimes indifferent, especially at the very 

highest levels of the Agency.

A 1985 letter from the chair of the Board’s 

Committee on Planetary Biology and Chemical 

Evolution on “The Categorization of the Mars 

Orbiter Mission” is another example of a prompt 

response to a specific question from NASA. NASA 

needed quick guidance regarding appropriate planetary protection19 provisions for the mission. In 

this case, the committee reviewed NASA’s plans 

on 15 and 16 May 1985 and made specific recommendations for clean-room standards and risk 

assessment limits in a letter to NASA on 6 June.20

NASA was able to meet its September deadline for 

completing the final planetary protection plan for 

the mission and to comply with the committee’s 

recommendations.21

Finally, the SSB also prepared several reports 

that made implementation recommendations as 

a follow-up to prior science strategy reports. For 

example, in the 1980s the SSB Committee on 

Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX) 

prepared several science strategy reports for aspects 

of the planetary sciences, and COMPLEX then 

followed up on its strategy recommendations by 

reviewing the programs that NASA subsequently 

proposed in response to the strategy. One such 

review was the committee’s 1985 “Assessment of 

Planned Scientific Content of the CRAF [Comet 

Rendezvous and Asteroid Flyby] Mission,”22 in 

which the COMPLEX provided its views about how 

NASA intended to act on recommendations from 

the committee’s 1980 “Strategy for the Exploration 

of Primitive Solar System Bodies—Asteroids, 

Comets, and Meteoroids: 1980–1990.”23 In the 

opening of the 1985 report, COMPLEX made its 

approach clear:

As you know, it is the practice of COMPLEX 

to assess the scientific content of a mission, 

as it nears proposal as a new-start candidate, 

in order to measure how well the agency has 

responded, in a mission context, to the committee’s science strategy. The conclusions of 

the assessment are a measure of the support of 

the committee and the Space Science Board 

for the proposed planetary mission. The committee intends to make further Assessments 

during the development period of the mission 

leading to launch.24

The phrase “a measure of the support of the committee and the Space Science Board” above illustrates an interesting aspect of the SSB’s clout during 

the 1970s and early 1980s. NASA and the scientific 

community regularly sought SSB blessing for newstart candidates, and here COMPLEX was saying 

that this report would render a verdict on CRAF.

19. Planetary protection involves the prevention of biological contamination of other solar system bodies by spacecraft from Earth 

and of terrestrial contamination by samples returned to Earth.

20. Letter from Harold P. Klein, chair of the Committee on Planetary Biology and Chemical Evolution, to Arnauld E. Nicogossian, 

Director of Life Sciences, ”On Categorization of the Mars Orbiter Mission: Letter Report”(National Research Council, The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 6 June 1985).

21. Michael Meltzer, When Biospheres Collide: A History of NASA’s Planetary Protection Programs (NASA History Division, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC, NASA SP-2011-4234, 2011), p. 372.

22. National Research Council, Assessment of Planned Scientific Content of the CRAF Mission Letter Report (The National Academies 

Press, Washington, DC, 1985).

23. National Research Council, Strategy for the Exploration of Primitive Solar-System Bodies—Asteroids, Comets, and Meteoroids: 

1980–1990 (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1980).

24. Space Science Board, Assessment of Planned Scientific Content of the CRAF Mission, Letter Report (National Research Council, The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1985), p. 1.
Chapter 2 • The Space Science Board Goes to W

Another example of a strategy follow-up report 

is the 1985 report by the Board’s Committee on 

Solar and Space Physics, “An Implementation Plan 

for Priorities in Solar-System Space Physics.”25

That report built on the committee’s 1980 report, 

“Solar System Space Physics in the 1980s: A 

Research Strategy,”26 and it recommended missions 

and mission priorities, launch rates, and supporting research programs and facilities and discussed 

budget levels and decisions that would be required 

to accomplish the recommended program. Then in 

1991, the committee followed up on its follow-up 

with “Assessment of Programs in Solar and Space 

Physics,”27 which examined the state of NASA’s 

responses to the NRC’s advice over the preceding 

decade. The 1991 report is an interesting forerunner 

to what later became a regular series of legislatively 

mandated SSB assessment reports (see chapter 11). 

It is also notable as an example of the SSB’s occasional collaboration with other units of the NRC. 

In this case, the report was prepared jointly with 

the Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Relations of the 

Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate. The 

two committees worked together routinely starting 

in 1990.

The 1986 letter report by COMPLEX, 

“Assessment of the Planned Scientific Content of 

the LGO, MAO, and NEAR Missions,”28 provides 

an interesting example of interactions between the 

SSB and NASA’s internal advisory committees. In 

1978, COMPLEX produced a “Strategy for the 

Exploration of the Inner Planets: 1977–1987,”29

which included the committee’s recommendations for the primary scientific objectives of studies of Mars and the Moon. A complementary 1980 

COMPLEX report, “Strategy for the Exploration 

of Primitive Solar-System Bodies—Asteroids, 

Comets, and Meteoroids: 1980–1990,”30 outlined 

similar priorities for those bodies. Then in 1983, 

NASA’s own Solar System Exploration Committee 

(See chapter 5 for a discussion of NASA internal 

committees.) recommended three moderate-scale 

missions in a report entitled “Planetary Exploration 

Through the Year 2000: A Core Program.”31 Thus, 

the 1986 COMPLEX report was an SSB-sponsored 

evaluation of the response by a NASA committee 

to an earlier, SSB-sponsored, science strategy. This 

approach of linking science strategy recommendations to implementation plans to implementation 

assessments was repeated in several forms in ensuing years. (See chapter 11.)

Letter Reports

Both kinds of regular study reports (i.e., strategic and topical) were generally developed after 

a period of information collection by the study 

committee, consultations with additional experts, 

25. National Research Council, An Implementation Plan for Priorities in Solar-System Space Physics (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1985).

26. National Research Council. Solar-System Space Physics in the 1980’s: A Research Strategy (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1980).

27. National Research Council, Assessment of Programs in Solar and Space Physics—1991 (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1991).

28. National Research Council, Assessment of Planned Scientific Content of the LGO, MAO, and NEAR Missions: Letter Report (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1986). LGO was Lunar Geoscience Observer; MAO was Mars Aeronomy Observer; 

and NEAR was Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous.

29. National Research Council, Strategy for Exploration of the Inner Planets: 1977–1987 (The National Academies Press, Washington, 

DC, 1978).

30. National Research Council, Strategy for the Exploration of Primitive Solar-System Bodies—Asteroids, Comets, and Meteoroids: 

1980–1990 (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1980).

31. Solar System Exploration Committee, Planetary Exploration through the Year 2000: Part 1: A Core Program (NASA Advisory 

Council, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1983).
24 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

and internal committee discussions. However, the 

letter reports were often “eminence-based.” That 

is, they were founded upon the collective expertise 

and experience of the Board members themselves 

and drafted in a few months or less. The Board’s 

first initiative of this type was a 1961 letter from 

Berkner to NASA Administrator Webb, in which 

Berkner outlined two policy positions that the 

Board wished to communicate to NASA. The first 

position addressed “Man’s Role in the National 

Space Program” and stated that “scientific exploration of the Moon and planets should be clearly 

stated as the ultimate objective of the U.S. space 

program for the foreseeable future.”32 Such a bold 

piece of advice to the leader of NASA—telling 

him not only what should be the principal goal of 

the nation’s new space program but also that the 

goal should be communicated broadly and with 

fanfare—reflected the confidence with which the 

SSB embraced its early role. Chutzpah, one might 

say. NASA did continue to support a strong science 

program, thanks in no small measure to vigilant 

efforts by Homer Newell and other insiders (see 

chapter 3), but science never rose above the Apollo 

program as the Agency’s flagship endeavor. 

The second issue in Berkner’s 1961 letter, which 

“represented careful discussions over a period of 

some three years,” concerned NASA support for 

basic research. Here the letter articulated a set of 

principles for a basic research program, “quite aside 

from current flight-package and related research,” 

that the SSB viewed as essential “for the longrange success of our national space efforts.”33 This 

point, about the importance of the basic scientific 

underpinnings of the program, was a theme that 

has remained central to SSB advice throughout its 

history. It is also reminiscent of the earlier NACA 

debates over emphasis on basic aeronautical science 

versus applied research.

As time went by, members of the Board became 

especially interested in the option of preparing 

letter reports, and, sometimes, NASA also found 

this approach to be preferred. Both the SSB and 

NASA appreciated the Board’s ability to prepare a 

brief report with specific recommendations quickly 

and with minimal bureaucratic overhead. The 

letter reports were usually drafted by the members of the Board itself and communicated to the 

appropriate agency official by the Board (or standing committee) chair. Thus, they drew on the collective experience of the members, all of whom 

were usually distinguished experts from across the 

scientific, technical, and policy spectrum for space 

science. When NASA needed a prompt answer to a 

specific question, usually about policy rather than 

detailed technical issues, the SSB could respond 

via a letter report. Of course, there were also times 

when NASA might just as well have preferred not 

to receive a report at all. The Board sometimes prepared letter reports at its own discretion without 

receiving a request from NASA, and these reports 

also carried the full weight of the SSB and the NRC 

when they were delivered. [See chapter 9 for more 

discussion of the introduction of specific NRC policies on letter reports in the 2000s.]

In addition to formal letter reports, which 

were produced by the Board or an authoring study 

committee, the Board chair himself also prepared 

letters to NASA officials from time to time. For 

example, in 1983 SSB chair Donahue wrote to 

NASA Administrator James M. Beggs to forward 

recommendations regarding “Space Telescope 

Science Issues.” In this letter, while applauding 

NASA for its leadership and commitment to the 

program, Donahue also voiced concerns about 

(a) how NASA was obtaining scientific advice for 

use in the Space Telescope program, (b) whether 

there were adequate provisions for testing telescope 

32. National Research Council, Policy Positions on (1) Man’s Role in the National Space Program and (2) Support of Basic Research for 

Space Science (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 31 March 1961), p. 2.

33. National Research Council, Policy Positions on (1) Man’s Role in the National Space Program and (2) Support of Basic Research for 

Space Science (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 31 March 1961), p. 1.
Chapter 2 • The Space Science Board Goes to W

instruments, and (c) the need to protect other 

high-priority science missions from the impacts of 

possible Space Telescope development problems.34

Donahue was a space scientist whose specialty was the study of planetary atmospheres. His 

research career began with the use of high-altitude sounding rockets and moved into space flight 

missions to the Moon, Venus, and the outer solar 

system. Donahue was a gregarious leader who 

guided the SSB through a notably active and occasionally confrontational period. The use of letter 

reports and letters from the chair expanded during 

Donahue’s tenure from 1982 to 1988, during which 

time the SSB sent 25 letters or letter reports to 

NASA.35 During that time he also worked closely 

with his scientific colleague Frank McDonald, who 

was NASA chief scientist over the same period, to 

maintain a continuing dialog between the SSB and 

the NASA Administrator’s office. On more than 

one occasion Donahue and McDonald collaborated on initiating SSB studies to advise NASA 

and to elicit NASA commitments on behalf of 

space science.

Summer Studies

One of Berkner’s actions during the 1962 reorganization of the SSB was initiation of a series of nearly 

annual summer studies. The Board’s first summer 

study was hosted by Van Allen at the University of 

Iowa over an eight-week period from 17 June to 10 

August 1962. It was a massive undertaking with 

over 100 outside scientists as full- or part-time participants, along with scientists and managers from 

NASA and representatives from the Department 

of Defense, Atomic Energy Commission, National 

Science Foundation, and National Bureau of 

Standards. The study’s findings and recommendations, some of which were rather general, and 

others of which were quite detailed, covered topics 

that ranged from flight program science and technology to administrative and policy matters and 

international cooperation to the social implications 

of space activities. These outcomes and the summaries of the work of the various topical working 

groups from which the conclusions were derived 

were published together in a single SSB document, 

“A Review of Space Research,” in 1962.36

The practice of conducting summer studies 

remained a staple of the SSB’s activities through 

the 1970s. During the period 1962 to 1978, the 

Board sponsored 15 summer studies, some of which 

ran concurrently and which covered topics ranging from biology and human physiology to solar 

system exploration to scientific uses of the Space 

Shuttle.37 The major summer study effort of the 

mid-1980s compared with or exceeded the scope 

of the original summer study in 1962. In early 

1984, NASA Administrator Beggs asked Donahue 

to undertake a long-range study to identify the 

major new scientific advances in space research, as 

well as necessary technology advances that could 

be expected during the period from about 1995 

to 2015.38 This study was subsequently organized 

34. Space Science Board, Space Telescope Science Issues: Letter Report (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1983).

35. See National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Space Studies Board Annual Report 2015 (The National 

Academies Press, Washington DC, 2016), pp. 83–85.

36. Space Science Board, A Review of Space Research (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 

1962).

37. SSB files, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.

38. Letter from Beggs to Donahue, 7 February 1984, NAS Archives, Washington, DC. The letter was quite possibly drafted by Frank 

McDonald after consultation with Donahue. It probably represented McDonald’s effort to ensure that space science received 

appropriate attention at a time when much of NASA’s attention was on completing development of the Space Shuttle and securing 

a go-ahead for the Space Station program.
26 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

for the summer of 1984, and work continued on it 

through 1986. The results were published in 1988 

in a seven-volume report, “Space Science in the 

Twenty-First Century: Imperatives for the Decades 

1995 to 2015.”39

Summer studies subsequently waned as a feature of SSB activities and products, partly due to 

the budget constraints of the SSB’s principal sponsor, NASA, and partly due to increasing time constraints being felt by many potential summer study 

participants. The latter limitation reflected an 

increasing demand for experts’ time for their own 

research, responsibilities at their home institutions, 

and increasing demand for service in other advisory functions (e.g., NASA in-house committees, 

proposal peer reviews, etc.) One might also suspect that the SSB members and staff were simply 

exhausted after the 1984–1988 effort.

International Activities

The original charge to the SSB included responsibility to follow international aspects of space 

research and “to represent the Academy-Research 

Council in our international relations in this field 

on behalf of American science and scientists.”40

When the International Council of Scientific 

Unions formed the Committee on Space Research 

(COSPAR) in 1958 to promote and exploit international opportunities for scientific activities in 

space, the SSB became the official U.S. National 

Committee to COSPAR. 

The Board’s studies on planetary protection 

had a unique international impact. NASA regularly 

forwarded SSB recommendations on planetary 

protection standards and protocols to COSPAR 

where they usually were adopted as international 

standards.

In addition to COSPAR, the Board also established other formal and informal international 

links. Its standing committees on solar and space 

physics and on planetary and lunar exploration 

often invited European liaison representatives 

to participate in committee meetings. After the 

European Science Foundation established the 

European Space Science Committee (ESSC) in 

1975 as the closest equivalent to the SSB in Europe, 

the SSB and the ESSC began a long-standing liaison relationship. There were also occasional joint 

projects, including a 1976 workshop on international views about space observatories41 and a 

1983 international workshop on solar and space 

physics.42 The former helped build the case, which 

was still somewhat controversial at the time, for 

the Large Space Telescope that eventually became 

the Hubble Space Telescope, and the latter helped 

develop momentum for what eventually became 

the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics program. 

The SSB and the ESSC followed up on the 1976 

workshop with a 1978 review (and endorsement) of 

the proposed focal plane instruments that NASA 

and the European Space Agency had selected for 

the Space Telescope.43

39. National Research Council, Space Science in the Twenty-First Century: Imperatives for the Decades 1995 to 2015, Overview (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1988).

40. Bronk letter to Berkner, 26 June 1958.

41. Space Science Board and European Science Foundation, An International Discussion of Space Observatories: Report of a Conference 

Held at Williamsburg, Virginia, 26–29 January 1976 (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington 

DC, 1976).

42. National Research Council, An International Discussion on Research in Solar and Space Physics (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1983).

43. Space Science Board and European Science Foundation, Space Telescope Instrument Review Committee: First Report (National 

Academy of Sciences, The National Academies Press, Washington DC, 1978).
Chapter 2 • The Space Science Board Goes to W

Report Peer Review

During the SSB’s early years, reports issued under 

SSB auspices were usually drafted by a few members and then reviewed by the full Board membership. When authoring committees completed a 

draft report, the draft was forwarded to the Board 

for members to read and comment upon. Reports 

that were to be issued by the Board itself were prepared during discussions at Board meetings, or by 

a small drafting group, or sometimes by the chair 

with NRC staff assistance. In each case, the whole 

membership had an opportunity to review the 

draft. This was an efficient process that was sometimes accomplished in a matter of a few weeks. On 

the other hand, the review process could be criticized for being insular, not sufficiently broad and 

independent, and potentially biased.44

By the early 1970s, the Board often permitted 

senior NASA officials to sit in on meetings where 

they would reach some agreement on items being 

discussed, after which the Board chair would send 

a letter to the NASA Administrator describing 

what they had agreed upon. None of these letters 

subsequently appeared in official listings of SSB 

reports. Richard Goody, who became SSB chair in 

1974, described provisions for independent review 

of informal board reports when he took office as 

“really weak at that time.”45

Some members of the National Academy of 

Sciences began to question the wisdom of such an 

unfettered approach to interacting with government agencies in an advisory capacity. In response 

to these kinds of concerns all across the institution, 

the National Research Council created a Report 

Review Committee (RRC) in 1972 to oversee independent, expert, peer review of all NRC reports. The 

first chair of the RRC was George Kistiakowsky, 

a Harvard physical chemistry professor who had 

served as President Eisenhower’s science advisor 

and who was vice president of the NAS.

At first, the new RRC process of report review 

may have had little impact other than to ensure 

that the boards could no longer operate totally 

independently. Goody recalled the approach to 

report review leading up to formation of the RRC:

It was my impression that the structure of 

report review was pretty chaotic at that time. 

Then the President of the Academy decided 

that it needed a stronger hand at the helm.... 

It was later that the Report Review Committee 

became what it is today.... But it is a fact that 

when we issued reports, we would review them 

ourselves...and often there wasn’t much in the 

way of review outside of that.46

Goody also noted that when he became SSB chair 

in 1974 the RRC chair warned him that the SSB 

was not to send letters to the NASA Administrator 

without approval.

The new RRC did establish guidelines and a 

process for report review that remained largely 

unchanged from that time forward. Those guidelines require that before a report can be delivered 

to a sponsor and released to the public on behalf 

of the authoring group and the NRC, it must 

be reviewed by experts who have had no role in 

the drafting of the report and who are asked to 

examine the report for quality, objectivity, evidentiary credibility, and adherence to the study 

charge. The authoring group must consider and 

provide some response to (but not necessarily 

comply with) all reviewers’ comments. A member 

of the RRC or a person selected to serve on the 

RRC’s behalf oversees the review process and is 

empowered to recommend approval of the report 

once the review is completed. Only then does the 

44. Goody interview, pp. 3–4. 

45. Goody interview, p. 3. 

46. Goody interview, p.4
28 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

RRC recommend that the report be given a final 

NRC approval.47

Astronomy Decadal Surveys

The SSB was the principal source of scientific 

advice to NASA, but one other advisory activity had a particularly important impact during 

NASA’s first few decades, and its impact grew even 

greater later. In 1962, the National Academy of 

Sciences Committee on Science and Public Policy 

(COSPUP) formed a panel on astronomical facilities to assess the status and future needs for new 

ground-based astronomical facilities in the United 

States. The committee’s 1964 report48 considered 

the state of observing facilities as well as trends 

in graduate student enrollment in astronomy 

and their implications for demand for astronomy 

facilities in the country. The panel confined its 

attention to needs and priorities for ground-based 

facilities even though it recognized the emerging 

opportunities for space astronomy in the U.S. 

space program. 

Five years later, COSPUP formed a new 

Astronomy Survey Committee that had a substantially broader and more ambitious charge—namely, 

to review the state of U.S. astronomy, identify the 

most important scientific problems in the field, 

and recommend priorities for both ground-based 

and space astronomy for the coming decade. The 

scope of the new study49—reviewing progress over 

the past decade and recommending priorities for 

the next decade—led to the study being popularly 

called a “decadal survey.” 

Subsequent astronomy and astrophysics decadal 

surveys were completed approximately every ten 

years through 2010 under joint leadership of the 

NRC Board on Physics and Astronomy and the 

SSB. The fact that the decadal surveys were developed with broad input from the astronomical 

community and that they recommended explicit 

priorities made them extraordinarily persuasive 

with government decision makers. Chapter 11 will 

discuss the evolution, expansion, and impacts of 

the decadal surveys in detail.

Aeronautics and Space 

Engineering Board 

In 1967, the NRC created an Aeronautics and Space 

Engineering Board (ASEB), both to cover the first 

“A” in NASA and to serve as a sister unit to the SSB 

covering space engineering and technology.50 The 

ASEB’s charter emphasized aerospace engineering 

topics such as space transportation and propulsion 

systems research, human spaceflight systems engineering and risk analysis, and the full panoply of 

technological areas that were not focused on fundamental science in and from space.51 As time went 

by, the ASEB and SSB conducted a few studies 

jointly, especially with respect to identifying needs 

for advanced technology development, but they 

largely worked independently though the 1970s 

and 1980s.52

47. See a description of the NRC study process, including report peer review, at http://www.nationalacademies.org/studyprocess/index.

html#st4.

48. Committee on Science and Public Policy, Ground-Based Astronomy: A Ten-Year Program (National Academy of Sciences-National 

Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1964) stated in the report’s Foreword.

49. Astronomy Survey Committee, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970s (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy Press, 

Washington, DC, 1972).

50. ASEB files, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.

51. A complete list of ASEB reports dating from 1977 to the present is available on the Board’s Web site: http://sites.nationalacademies.

org/deps/ASEB/index.htm.

52. In 2007, the NRC staffs of the two boards were merged under a single staff director. The arrangement promoted closer 

coordination between the two boards, but their roles and responsibilities remained unchanged.
Chapter 2 • The Space Science Board Goes to W

Space Applications Board

The SSB and the ASEB were not the only elements 

of the NRC to provide advice to the government on 

space research. There were early advocates for the 

practical applications of space as well as for basic 

scientific studies, and NASA began to explore such 

opportunities in parallel with its initial efforts to 

develop a scientific satellite program. The first 

meteorological satellite, TIROS-1,53 was launched 

in 1960, and several Advanced Technology 

Satellites were launched beginning in 1966 to 

develop and test technologies for space-borne communications and Earth-imaging systems. As interest in space applications grew, so did the need for 

NASA to seek outside expert advice about these 

opportunities.

In late 1966, Administrator Webb asked the 

NRC to study the useful applications of Earthoriented satellites, and that request led to a series 

of summer studies conducted under the auspices 

of the NRC Division of Engineering in 1967 and 

1968. The project was chaired by physicist, mathematician, and engineer Deming Lewis, who was 

President of Lehigh University. Deming’s central 

review committee drew on the work of 13 topical panels that were organized around particular application areas such as forestry, agriculture, 

and geography; oceanography; and point-to-point 

communications; as well as on cross-program 

topics such as economic factors and cost-benefit 

relationships. The study report appeared in two 

parts—first, a summary of the panel findings and 

recommendations, and, second, an overview report 

from the central review committee.54

The project had one interesting hiccup that 

illustrates the effects of the Cold War environment 

of the times. All of the study activities were conducted in an open, unclassified setting. One of 

the technical panels was organized around geodesy and cartography, and the panel produced its 

summer study report just like all the other panels. 

That report was sent to NASA in early 1968 as 

part of an interim report on the project, during 

which NASA conducted security clearance reviews 

of all the reports. To the NRC’s surprise, NASA 

requested that the geodesy and cartography panel 

report be given a Secret security classification, and 

so the NRC staff recalled all the existing copies 

and had them destroyed, albeit well after numerous copies had been circulated amongst the study 

participants. In the end, the name of the geodesy 

and cartography panel was included in the list of 

study panels, but its report was not mentioned and 

did not appear in the final reports. The NRC staff 

never learned why the panel report was classified, 

and participants were told that the only person at 

the NRC who had sufficient clearances to know 

the answer was NAS President Frederick Seitz.55

One can make a reasonable guess that the open 

discussion of advanced capabilities in those scientific areas might have been threatening to classified military intelligence gathering programs that 

depended on precise satellite orbit determination 

and camera pointing systems. 

Nevertheless, all the rest of the reports were 

released, and the principal conclusions were very 

positive about the prospects for space applications. 

They made useful recommendations about potential 

applications projects, needs for advanced technology 

R&D, and expectations for cost-benefit impacts, 

and they recommended that NASA increase its 

investments in the area by a factor of two or three 

above its $100 million annual level in 1969.

53. TIROS was an acronym for Television Infrared Observation Satellite.

54. Summer Study on Space Applications, Useful Applications of Earth-Oriented Satellites (National Research Council, National 

Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, 1969).

55. Letter from L. R. Daspit, study executive director, to John S. Coleman, NAS executive officer, regarding how to handle the geodesy 

and cartography report, 7 August 1968, NAS Archives, Washington, DC. The author is not aware of any classified SSB reports.
30 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

One consequence of the 1969 workshops was 

that in late 1971 NASA indicated its support for the 

formation of a space applications board to operate 

in parallel with the SSB, and the President of the 

National Academy of Engineering commissioned 

an organizing committee in 1972. The committee, chaired by Allen E. Puckett, who was executive vice president and assistant general manager 

of Hughes Aircraft Company, submitted its report 

recommending creation of the board in early 1973, 

and the Space Applications Board (SAB) was formally established in December 1973. The original 

areas covered by the SAB included the applications 

topics that had been covered by the earlier workshops—communication services, Earth resources 

services, and environmental services—and also 

one more that had not been covered in the 1967–

1968 workshops—manufacturing and materials 

processing in space.56 Puckett was appointed as the 

first SAB chair and amongst the initial members 

were Daniel J. Fink of General Electric Corporation 

and William A. Nierenberg of Scripps Institute of 

Oceanography, both of whom later served as chairs 

of the NASA Advisory Council. 

One of the SAB’s first actions was to organize a more broadly ranging 1974 successor to 

the prior summer studies. The report of that 

effort—“Practical Applications of Space Systems”57

—made recommendations about improving federal institutional arrangements to encourage and 

set policies and priorities for meeting non-military 

space applications needs, roles for the Space Shuttle 

in space applications programs, and important 

applications areas such as hazard monitoring and 

prediction and land-use management. 

In 1982, the SAB organized a new summer 

study in response to NASA’s request for advice 

on conducting applications research on the Space 

Station. As with the earlier summer studies, the 

SAB utilized several topical panels—for example, 

on Earth resources, environmental measurements, 

and materials science and engineering—to carry 

out the task. In addition to highlighting opportunities and technology development needs in each 

area, the final report58 made three interesting 

broader recommendations. First, it suggested that 

the Space Station program include a multi-instrument polar-orbiting platform for Earth remote 

sensing. This idea helped spawn the concept of a 

Space Station polar platform, but the concept eventually died as it became clear that any real connections with the low-orbit-inclination Space Station 

program were bogus. The second overarching conclusion was that NASA should expect to devote as 

much attention to developing equipment to use the 

Space Station as to constructing the Station itself. 

And finally, the report concluded that there were 

important opportunities for having people on the 

ground to operate systems on the Station via telepresence and without needing an on-orbit crew. 

One more report is notable as an example of 

the SAB’s activities. In 1983, the Board formed the 

Committee on Practical Applications of Remote 

Sensing from Space to examine the U.S. civil 

remote sensing program and determine why it was 

not prospering as it should. Ralph Bernstein, who 

was a digital image processing expert and senior 

technical leader at IBM, chaired the 22-person 

committee. After working for more than a year, the 

committee submitted its (largely technical) draft 

report to the SAB for review, but the Board declined 

to accept the report because SAB members believed 

the problems were due to policy and institutional 

issues, not technical ones. The Board wrote its own 

56. See report of the Organizing Committee for the Space Applications Board submitted to the President of the NAE, 5 February 

1973, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.

57. Space Applications Board, Practical Applications of Space Systems (National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences 

Press, Washington, DC, 1975).

58. Space Applications Board, Practical Applications of a Space Station (National Research Council, National Academy Press, 

Washington DC, 1984).
Chapter 2 • The Space Science Board Goes to W

report, drawing on material from the committee, 

but developing a long list of findings and recommendations that stemmed from the Board’s views 

of the policy problems.59 Thus, the report’s recommendations had to do with fixing an unacceptably 

incoherent and uncoordinated federal program, 

resolving rigid and divisive relationships between 

NOAA and NASA, and moving NOAA out of 

the Department of Commerce. Over the next two 

decades (not exactly an example of prompt government action), many of the NOAA-NASA roles and 

responsibilities issues were fixed, but as chapter 11 

will show, a major 2005 SSB study found that the 

U.S. program was still suffering from many of the 

ills that the SAB highlighted two decades earlier.

In September 1988, NASA Associate 

Administrator Lennard A. Fisk met with NAS 

President Frank Press and suggested that the 

NRC consider eliminating the SAB and consolidating the three space research boards into just 

two—one of which could be primarily science 

oriented and the other engineering oriented. Fisk 

was not reacting to the critical conclusions of the 

1985 SAB report above; rather, he had done a 

similar thing when he merged his three internal 

NASA advisory committees into a single committee for his office. Fisk also hoped that such a 

consolidation would reduce the overall costs to 

NASA of NRC advice.60

The idea was attractive to senior NRC officials, 

and David L. Bodde, who was executive director 

of the NRC Commission on Engineering and 

Technical Systems, was charged to develop a plan 

for the transition. Bodde’s plan provided for dissolving the SAB when its NASA contract expired 

in February 1989 and moving responsibilities for 

studies and advice on Earth remote sensing, materials sciences in microgravity, and data systems for 

space research and operations to the SSB. Other 

former SAB roles in the areas of space communications, microgravity manufacturing and materials processing, engineering technology, and space 

commercialization in general would be moved to 

the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board.61

When word got out about impending NRC 

plans to dissolve the SAB, there were not unexpected objections from some members and supporters of the space applications community. SAB 

chair, former DOD and aerospace industry executive Richard D. DeLauer, supported a change, 

but he appealed to Press to keep the SAB responsibilities all together and transfer them wholly to 

either the SSB or the ASEB so as to avoid subordination of applications. DeLauer also gave Press a 

sense of the community pushback when he quoted 

one anonymous correspondent who said, “This is 

an overt attempt by the science fraternity to deemphasize applications and thereby reduce the 

competition for the limited funds.”62

The NASA Advisory Council, which was 

NASA’s primary internal advisory body comprised 

of outside experts (see chapter 5), also raised a red 

flag about the NRC plans. Council chair John L. 

McLucas, a former Secretary of the Air Force and 

former president of the COMSAT Corporation, 

wrote to NASA Administrator Fletcher to say that 

at its 21 November 1988 meeting the Council was 

concerned that “the proposed termination of the 

Space Applications Board of the National Research 

Council may be seriously detrimental to the 

59. Space Applications Board, Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space: A Program in Crisis (National Research Council, National 

Academy Press, Washington DC, 1985).

60. E-mail message from NRC Executive Officer Phil Smith to Executive Director of the Commission on Engineering Systems and 

Technology David Bodde, “ASEB – SAB – SSB,” 9 September 1988, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.

61. E-mail from David Bodde to Frank Press, Phil Smith, and NAE President Robert White, “Game Plan for Space Applications 

Board,” 26 September 1988, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.

62. Letter from Richard DeLauer to Frank Press on transferring functions and responsibilities of the SAB to the SSB, 29 November 

1988, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.
32 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Nation’s programs of space applications.”63 Fletcher 

had already indicated his support for the change, 

but perhaps to mollify the Council, he wrote to 

Press urging the NRC to “assure that the realignment satisfies the total range of NASA programs 

receiving National Research Council advice” and 

also to “be sensitive to the views of other external 

bodies, including the Congress.”64

Press, however, was convinced that the reorganization was the right way to go. He had become 

concerned about the relatively low level of SAB 

activity in recent years, and he had full confidence 

that the new chair of the SSB, Louis Lanzerotti 

from AT&T Bell Laboratories, could deal effectively with a board having combined scientific and 

applications interests.65 Press may also have felt that 

the way to resolve the SAB’s occasional struggles to 

walk an appropriate line between providing advice 

on technological issues for space applications 

versus advocating on behalf of commercial space 

applications interests would be to put the SAB’s 

responsibilities in units that had clear scientific and 

technological charters. Press formally announced 

the realignments along the lines of Bodde’s plan in 

March 1989.

At about the same time as the NRC discussions of dissolution of the SAB, physicist Louis 

Lanzerotti succeeded Tom Donahue as SSB chair. 

He was a past SSB member and had chaired its 

Committee on Solar and Space Physics, and he 

also had served on key NASA science committees 

(see chapter 5). Upon taking office, Lanzerotti 

initiated a board self-assessment in which the SSB 

consulted widely with government agency and 

congressional representatives and members of the 

space research community about future directions 

for the Board and engaged in its own review of the 

structure and future priorities for the Board. This 

process facilitated a smooth integration of former 

SAB responsibilities into the SSB. The SAB’s 

work on Earth remote sensing was assimilated 

under the SSB’s Committee on Earth Sciences, 

and a new Committee on Microgravity Research 

was formed to cover the former SAB attention 

to materials processing and science in space. 

Recognizing that the SSB’s most recent science 

strategy reports were still timely and that NASA’s 

Office of Space Science and Applications had just 

created its own comprehensive strategic plan (see 

chapter 7), the Board decided to hold further science strategy studies in abeyance. Instead, the SSB 

would focus for the next five years on monitoring 

NASA’s progress in pursuing those strategies and 

also turn its attention to issues related to human 

spaceflight, cross-disciplinary priority-setting, 

and needs for technology development for future 

science missions.66

The SSB made one other change that might 

have appeared to be cosmetic but that communicated an important transition in the character of 

the Board. It changed its name from Space Science 

Board to Space Studies Board, thereby acknowledging its new, expanded roles after the SAB termination. Thus, as NASA marked the end of its first 

three decades, the Space Studies Board stood ready 

to continue to provide advice on the full range of 

NASA science activities. The next few chapters will 

examine some key concurrent developments that 

affected the overall climate for scientific advice in 

NASA’s first 30 years.

63. Letter from NAC chair John McLucas to NASA Administrator James Fletcher communicating the NAC statement on the 

“Proposed Termination of the Space Applications Board,” 19 December 1988, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.

64. Letter from NASA Administrator James Fletcher to NAS President Frank Press regarding “impending reassignment of the former 

functions of the SAB to the SSB and ASEB, 21 November 1988, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.

65. E-mail from Frank Press to National Academy of Engineering President Robert White, “Gameplan for Space Applications 

Board,” 6 October 1988, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.

66. SSB files, NAS Archives, Washington, DC.
33

CHAPTER 3

NASA’s Internal Advisory Committees

At the same time that the young NASA invited scientific advice from the Space Science 

Board, and even included the SSB on its formal 

organization charts, the Agency also formed its 

own internal advisory committees. These committees continued the long established practice of 

the NACA and the work of the rocket panel and 

its successors at the Naval Research Laboratory 

(NRL). This action also reflected, in part, the fact 

that while NASA inherited many aeronautical science experts from the NACA, its early in-house 

staff had relatively less expertise in the space and 

geophysical sciences. The latter scientists had come 

mainly from NRL’s rocket and Vanguard teams 

and had transferred to NASA Headquarters or to 

the new Beltsville Space Center (later to become 

the Goddard Space Flight Center) in Maryland. 

NASA’s formation of internal advisory committees involving outside scientists also served to promote more communication between NASA and 

the outside scientific community. In addition, it 

gave that community an added sense that NASA 

was open and sensitive to the views of the outside 

community. Homer Newell described a sometimes 

rocky relationship between NASA and its advisory 

committees, especially in the late 1960s and early 

1970s.1 Committee members often shared the concerns of much of the outside scientific community 

that NASA science would be subordinated to the 

larger and more costly Gemini and Apollo human 

spaceflight programs. There was also an undercurrent of concern that NASA officials would not 

always take the outside advice seriously.

The dual advisory structure, with both NASAinside and SSB-outside advisors, was obviously 

subject to some overlaps in the responsibilities of 

the two advisory entities. But the two approaches 

reached an approximate equilibrium. (See figure 

3.1 for an overview of some key advisory body 

milestones.) The NASA committees were often 

tasked to address issues that were more tactical in 

nature and that required relatively fast responses, 

and the SSB more often was tasked to address 

longer-term issues. However, as we shall see below, 

NASA’s own suite of internal committees grew into 

a tiered structure in which lower-level committees 

often reported to more senior committees that did, 

indeed, delve into advice for NASA about longrange goals, etc. And the previous chapter showed 

that the SSB was not especially shy about digging 

into implementation matters when that seemed to 

be required.

1. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science, (NASA History Office, Washington, DC, NASA SP-4211, 

1980), ch. 12.
34 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Early Ad Hoc Committees

Some of NASA’s first ad hoc advisory bodies were 

discipline-oriented subcommittees formed to assist 

the all-NASA-employee Space Science Steering 

Committee in planning future programs and in 

evaluating proposals and recommending selections of investigations for space flight missions.2

However, according to Newell, many of the outside scientists were concerned about whether they 

were able to have a broader impact on NASA’s 

overall space science program, how NASA dealt 

with conflicts of interest as it solicited advice, 

and generally how NASA should deal with universities and university scientists. In early 1966, 

NASA Administrator Webb invited Harvard professor Norman F. Ramsey to lead an ad hoc science 

advisory committee that would have a much 

broader mandate than experiment selection and 

that would examine a wide range of space science 

program implementation issues.3

Ramsey earned a doctorate in physics from 

Columbia University in 1940 after studying at the 

Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, 

where he met many of the leading figures in physics at the time. During World War II, Ramsey 

was intimately involved in operational aspects of 

the Manhattan Project. After the war, he returned 

to Columbia. In one of history’s many interesting turns, Ramsey’s first graduate student at 

Columbia, William A. Nierenberg, later became 

chair of the NASA Advisory Council under NASA 

Administrator Robert Frosch. Ramsey joined the 

Harvard University faculty in 1947. There his 

19461947194819491950195119521953195419551956195719581959196019611962196319641965196619671968196919701971

International 

Council of 

Scientific 

Unions creates 

IGY committee

NAS forms 

Vanguard 

Technical 

Panel on the 

Earth Satellite 

Program

US launches 

Explorer 1

James Webb 

forms NASA 

ad hoc 

Science 

Advisory 

Committee

Newell creates 

Space Program 

Advisory Council 

including a 

Physical Sciences 

Committee

NRC Astronomy 

and Astrophysics 

Decadal Survey International 

Geophysical 

Year 

conceived by 

Berkner et al.

NRL forms 

Rocket Panel

Congress 

Establishes 

NASA

USSR launches 

Sputnik

US Vanguard 

launch fails

USNC-IGY 

forms Special 

Committee for 

the IGY

NAS creates 

Space Science 

Board

NRL Rocket 

Panel disbands

SSB shown 

as advisor 

on NASA 

org chart

NAS forms 

US National 

Committee 

for IGY

First NRC 

Astronomy 

Decadal Survey

NASA forms Physics 

Advisory Committee, 

Lunar and Planetary 

Missions Board, 

and Astronomy 

Missions Board

First SSB 

Summer Study

SSB report 

“Space Research 

Directions for the 

Future”

SSB report 

“Priorities for 

Space Research: 

1971–1980”

FIGURE 3.1 Timeline of key advisory events, 1946 to 1971

2. See Naugle chapter 6 for a full discussion of this process, also Newell chapter 12.

3. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (NASA History Office, Washington, DC, NASA SP-4211, 

1980), pp. 217–218.
Chapter 3 • NASA’s Internal Advisory Committ

research focused on development of highly accurate atomic measurement standards, which led to 

the hydrogen maser and, subsequently for Ramsey, 

a Nobel Prize in Physics.4

The Ramsey committee provided recommendations on topics such as NASA’s relations with universities and university scientists, establishment of 

a lunar science institute, and even the character of 

NASA advisory committees. The latter recommendation created a stir in NASA when the Ramsey 

committee proposed to create a general advisory 

committee

for advice and counsel on the initiation of 

new programs, on the wisdom of continuing 

ongoing activities, on the quality of effort at 

laboratories and Centers, on the assignment 

of managerial responsibility, on allocation of 

resources, and on the best means for improving 

international cooperation in space programs.5

This idea did not sit well with senior NASA officials, who argued that the roles for the proposed 

committee were properly responsibilities of senior 

management and, therefore, not to be delegated 

to outsiders. Furthermore, while the committee 

was understood to be an advisory body, there was 

concern that under a weak administrator, sometime in the future the committee could become a 

governing board instead. Finally, NASA officials 

argued that the proposed committee roles had considerable overlap with those of the NRC SSB and 

ASEB. Consequently, NASA declined to accept the 

recommendation.6

The event did illustrate a significant characteristic of scientists as advisors. Namely, when given 

sufficient latitude, scientific committees will not 

hesitate to provide broad advice that can stretch the 

limits of their charters. The SSB displayed the same 

boldness (or brashness) early in its lifetime with the 

1961 letter to NASA Administrator Webb in which 

the Board offered its views on what should be the 

principal goal and message of the nation’s space 

program.7 (See discussion of SSB letter reports in 

chapter 2.)

The Missions Boards

Not long after declining to accept the Ramsey 

committee’s recommendation for a new general 

advisory committee, NASA did establish three 

broad science program advisory bodies—the 

Physics Advisory Committee (PAC), the Lunar 

and Planetary Missions Board (LPMB), and the 

Astronomy Missions Board (AMB).8 These bodies 

were charged with looking across the full range 

of topics within their respective fields and recommending integrated programs for their segments 

of space science. Hence, the missions boards had 

complementary, and probably sometimes competing, roles with respect to the science strategy studies of the SSB. For example, the SSB produced four 

science strategy reports related to planetary science 

in the same period. 

4. Daniel Kleppner, “Biographical Memoir of Norman F. Ramsey” (Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, 

Washington DC, 2015).

5. NASA Ad Hoc Science Advisory Committee, “Report to the Administrator,” mimeographed, 15 August 1966, Historical 

Reference Collection folder 18437, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

6. These points where outlined in NASA’s 7 June 1967 interim response to the Science Advisory Committee report of August 1966, 

Historical Reference Collection folder 18435, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

7. National Research Council, Policy Positions on (1) Man’s Role in the National Space Program and (2) Support of Basic Research for 

Space Science, (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 31 March 1961).

8. NASA Management Instruction 1156.10—“NASA Physics Advisory Committee,” 3 January 1967; NASA Management 

Instruction 1156.12A—“NASA Lunar and Planetary Missions Advisory Board,” 1 May 1967; and NASA Management 

Instruction 1156.16—“NASA Astronomy Missions Advisory Board,” 25 September 1967.
36 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Both NASA and the NRC encouraged good 

communications between their respective bodies 

by inviting and involving representatives in each 

other’s meetings. In fact, on at least one occasion 

the SSB and the LPMB organized a joint summer 

study on outer solar system research priorities,9 and 

the SSB and LPMB also co-authored a letter to the 

NASA Administrator regarding scientific options 

and preferences for the Apollo Program.10

While the three science bodies were clearly only 

chartered to provide advice and to operate under 

direction from the Associate Administrator for 

Space Science and Applications (Homer Newell), 

they enjoyed remarkable access to what would be 

called insider information today. For example, at 

the September 1968 meeting of the LPMB, NASA 

officials shared NASA’s interim operating plan (i.e., 

a budget document that was being negotiated with 

Congress) with the Board. Even more interesting, 

the minutes of the March 1969 LPMB meeting 

include the following gem:

[Henry J.] Smith distributed a memorandum from the Associate Administrator 

enclosing a copy of a memorandum from 

the Administrator to the White House to 

Board members, not including the Executive 

Director. The information was discussed in 

considerable detail. Board members were told 

that this was privileged information not to be 

discussed outside of the Board meeting.11

Such intimacies were examples of NASA’s efforts to 

work closely with the Board in those days, along the 

lines that Newell and Naugle hoped to nurture, but 

they would be seen as scandalous in NASA today.

The Physics Advisory Committee was established in January 1967 with astrophysicist William 

A. Fowler of Caltech as its first chair. “Willy” 

Fowler was typical of the kind of distinguished scientists that NASA sought as leaders of its advisory 

groups. He earned a doctorate degree in nuclear 

physics from Caltech in 1936, and he spent his 

entire career there until retiring in 1982. During a 

sabbatical year at Cambridge University in 1954–

1955, he began collaborating with British astrophysicists Fred Hoyle and Margaret and Geoffrey 

Burbidge, and that led to their groundbreaking 

1957 paper on atomic nucleosynthesis in stars. His 

continued work on this subject became the basis for 

the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics, which he shared 

with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.12 Fowler also 

served on the NSF National Science Board from 

1968 to 1974, and he became a member of the SSB 

on two occasions—1970–1973 and 1977–1980.

Fowler’s committee was charged to consider 

opportunities and problems across the broad spectrum of physics disciplines that might be relevant to 

space science and to recommend experiments that 

might be undertaken in these fields.13 The committee’s early efforts identified three such areas: 

a test of the special theory of relativity, potential 

methods to study gravitational radiation, and the 

9. Space Science Board The Outer Solar System: A Program for Exploration (National Research Council, The National Academies 

Press, Washington DC, 1969).

10. Charles H. Townes and John W. Findlay to Thomas O. Paine, 24 August 1970, cited in Barry Rutizer, “The Lunar and 

Planetary Missions Board,” 30 August 1976, NASA Historical Document Collection folder HHN-138, History Division, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC, p. 31–32. 

11. Summary minutes of the meeting of the Lunar and Planetary Missions Board, 11 and 12 March 1969, NASA Historical 

Reference Collection, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, digital record no. 31371.

12. William A. Fowler, “William A. Fowler – Biographical” Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 9 August 2016. http://www.nobelprize.org/

nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1983/fowler-bio.html.

13. See NASA Management Instruction 1156.10—“NASA Physics Advisory Committee,” 3 January 1967. 
Chapter 3 • NASA’s Internal Advisory Committ

study of extremely high-energy cosmic radiation. 

Notably, all three topics remained on NASA’s plate, 

and versions of two actually have been launched. 

The Gravity Probe B mission was developed over a 

period of more than 40 years and launched in 2004 

to test predictions of general relativity14 (see chapter 18). NASA has studied a Laser Interferometer 

Space Antenna mission and several alternative, 

potentially lower-cost, future gravitational wave 

detection flight missions; and NASA now collaborates with the European Space Agency as a junior 

partner in planning for a future space mission to 

search for gravity waves.15 In addition, an instrument (the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, see chapter 18) designed to search for antimatter and dark 

matter and to measure ultra-high-energy cosmic 

rays was developed with Department of Energy 

support and installed on the International Space 

Station in May 2011.16

NASA formed the Lunar and Planetary 

Missions Board in May 1967. Its first chair was 

John W. Findlay of the National Radio Astronomy 

Observatory. Findlay was a puzzling choice to chair 

the LPMB. He had earned a baccalaureate degree 

in physics from Cambridge University in 1937, 

and then after serving in the Royal Air Force to 

install radar systems during the war, he returned to 

Cambridge to complete his doctorate. His research 

efforts focused on use of radio-wave techniques 

for studies of the ionosphere, but there is scant 

evidence of his engagement in lunar or planetary 

research. However, his work in ionospheric research 

had introduced him to Lloyd Berkner, who shared 

the same interests, and Findlay visited the United 

States in the early 1950s for collaborations at the 

Carnegie Institution of Washington. Shortly 

afterward, Berkner, who was then the President of 

Associated Universities, Inc., and who was tasked 

by the NSF to study the feasibility of a national 

radio astronomy observatory, invited Findlay 

to come to the United States to join in building 

the observatory. Findlay was amongst the first 

few employees of the National Radio Astronomy 

Observatory, and he subsequently became a senior 

technical manager and a leader in the design and 

construction of some of its major telescopes.17 In 

addition to his service as chair of the LPMB from 

1967 to 1970, Findlay also served on the SSB from 

1961 to 1970. Altogether, there were five SSB members on the original LPMB. 

The LPMB’s charge covered scientific planning for all planetary and lunar missions.18 During 

its first few years of operation, the LPMB made 

recommendations for missions to Mars, Venus, 

Jupiter, and Mercury; developed a set of specific 

scientific questions for the study of Mercury; and 

addressed problems of lunar exploration, including 

recommending guidelines for continued Apollo 

program studies on the lunar surface. The Board 

devoted considerable attention to some very specific issues such as priorities and sequencing for 

Apollo lunar surface activities, draft proposal 

solicitations for science investigations on planetary missions, guidelines for creating a lunar 

science institute, and policy for release of photographs from early planetary missions. The Board 

maintained an unwavering position about the 

importance of a balanced solar system exploration 

program, including small missions that would protect against letting emphasis in one area sacrifice 

progress in other areas. This view led to their vigorous opposition to a class of large outer solar system 

14. See Stanford University’s Gravity Probe B project Web site at http://einstein.stanford.edu/index.html.

15. See http://pcos.gsfc.nasa.gov/studies/L3/ and http://sci.esa.int/lisa-pathfinder/.

16. See http://ams.nasa.gov/ or http://cyclo.mit.edu/ams/.

17. Interview with John W. Findlay (Papers of Woodruff T. Sullivan III: Tapes Series, National Radio Astronomy, 14 and 18 August 

1981), available at http://www.nrao.edu/archives/Sullivan/sullivan_transcript_findlay_1981_1.shtml.

18. See NASA Management Instruction 1156.12A,“NASA Lunar and Planetary Missions Advisory Board,” 1 May 1967.
38 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

missions that would use the Saturn-V rocket and 

nuclear propulsion systems and to abandonment 

of Apollo lunar missions in order to start a space 

station program.19

The latter position above ended with one of the 

panel’s most interesting, albeit unsuccessful, efforts. 

In August 1970, NASA Administrator Thomas 

Paine wrote to both the LPMB and the SSB to 

invite their input on how to shorten the Apollo 

program and reduce the number of missions to the 

Moon. Administration budget constraints called 

for reductions in Apollo flights in order to move 

forward with the Skylab space station program.20

The two advisory bodies met and sent a joint reply 

to Paine within a matter of weeks.21 Paine did not 

select either of the advisors’ two preferred options. 

Nevertheless, the episode illustrates an interesting 

difference about concerns over preserving an image 

of independence for the internal and external advisory bodies then and later. The LPMB and the SSB 

did not hesitate to collaborate directly in the face of 

an urgent, high-profile issue. 

The Astronomy Missions Board rounded out 

the suite of early program-oriented advisory bodies. 

Formed in September 1967, the AMB was initially 

chaired by Harvard astronomer Leo Goldberg, 

who was also a charter member of the SSB, on 

which he served through 1963. Goldberg was an 

expert in solar physics and astronomical spectroscopy, who held successive directorships at McMath 

Observatory in Michigan (1946 to 1960), Harvard 

College Observatory (1960 to 1971), and Kitt Peak 

National Observatory (1971 to 1977). He was also 

offered the directorship of the National Radio 

Astronomy Observatory in 1956 and the NASA 

Goddard Space Flight Center in 1965, but he 

declined both. Goldberg advocated establishment 

of an active space astronomy program at Michigan, 

but was rebuffed. He then helped build a highly 

successful one at Harvard. He was especially 

respected for his administrative and leadership 

skills, willingness to assist students, and diplomatic acumen when he negotiated the handling of 

International Astronomical Union membership for 

the Peoples Republic of China (already a member) 

and the Republic of China (Taiwan, seeking membership) in 1958.22

The AMB was charged to provide advice on 

objectives, strategies, and priorities for NASA’s 

astronomy program,23 and it undertook a particularly ambitious agenda. The Board prepared 

recommendations on a flight program rationale 

and long-range plan, suborbital sounding rockets 

for astronomy, flight instrument development, 

ground-based astronomy in support of the flight 

program, particles and fields research in the context of astrophysics, and even specific experiments 

to be flown. The AMB devoted nearly two years 

to developing a long-range plan for space astronomy, and the effort involved more than 50 scientists spread amongst the board and nine panels and 

working groups. The plan presented both a “minimum balanced program” and an “optimum program.” Both described a set of spaceflight missions 

and launch schedules for astronomical research 

across the full electromagnetic spectrum (including 

X- and gamma-rays and infrared and radio wavelengths), and both included planetary and solar 

19. The activities of the LPMB are summarized nicely in Barry Rutizer, “The Lunar and Planetary Missions Board,” 30 August 1976, 

NASA Historical Reference Collection, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, document HHN-138.

20. Rutizer, p. 31.

21. Charles H. Townes and John W. Findlay to Thomas O. Paine, 24 August 1970, cited in Barry Rutizer, “The Lunar and 

Planetary Missions Board,” 30 August 1976, NASA Historical Document Collection folder HHN-138, History Division, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC, pp. 31–32.

22. Lawrence H. Aller, “Biographical Memoir of Leo Goldberg” (Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, 

DC, 1997).

23. See NASA Management Instruction 1156.16—“NASA Astronomy Missions Advisory Board,” 25 September 1967.
Chapter 3 • NASA’s Internal Advisory Committ

astronomy and atomic particles and fields measurements of relevance to astrophysics.24 While the 

AMB recommended a space astronomy program 

for the period from 1971 through the mid-1980s, 

many of the mission concepts actually came to fruition only decades later, and some of the recommended missions never materialized.

As Newell’s book discusses, relationships 

between NASA and the two mission boards were 

not always smooth and simple,25 but NASA officials were remarkably sensitive to the science advisors’ concerns. For example, Goldberg had written 

to Newell in March 1968 expressing the concerns 

of the AMB over the robustness of NASA’s space 

astronomy program. Newell directed NASA’s 

Associate Administrator for Space Science, John 

Naugle, to find ways to address those concerns and 

to prepare a reply to Goldberg. Newell was committed to building a program that was responsive 

to the astronomers’ advice. Thus, he ended his 

note to Naugle quite explicitly, saying “We must 

find a number of means to make better use of our 

resources and to provide more astronomers more 

opportunities to carry out investigations in space.”26

Nevertheless, members of the boards sometimes doubted that NASA took their advice seriously. Over time, the LPMB became increasingly 

concerned and vocal about NASA’s emphasis on 

engineering programs at the expense of science 

and about what was seen to be indifference to 

LPMB views on the part of the office responsible 

for the Apollo program. One particularly difficult 

situation arose after President Nixon had charged 

Vice President Agnew in February 1969 to lead a 

small group—the Space Task Group—to recommend directions for the U.S. space program after 

Apollo. The group—consisting of Secretary of 

the Air Force Robert C. Seamans, Acting NASA 

Administrator Thomas O. Paine, and Science 

Advisor to the President Lee A. DuBridge—delivered its report in September 1969. The task group 

outlined several options, including either parallel 

or sequential development of a space shuttle and 

a large space station followed by a human Mars 

mission. Upon seeing the report, members of the 

LPMB felt that NASA’s input to the effort had 

ignored or significantly strayed from recommendations of the LPMB, particularly regarding the 

board’s recommendations for sustaining a balanced program that included small missions as 

well as large missions.27 In October, John Findlay 

sent a letter to Paine saying that some members of 

the Board were beginning to feel that “their intelligence, experience, and efforts are in fact being 

wasted, or perhaps—even worse—being used as 

a screen or cover for plans they do not approve.”28

24. “A Long-range Program in Space Astronomy, Position Paper of the Astronomy Missions Board,” NASA, edited by Robert O. 

Boyle, Harvard College Observatory, July 1969, NASA SP-213, reproduced in Logsdon, John M., ed., with Amy Paige Snyder, 

Roger D. Launius, Stephen J. Garber, and Regan Anne Newport. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the 

U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume V, Exploring the Cosmos. (NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, NASA 

SP-4407, 2001), p. 602.

25. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science, (NASA SP-4211, NASA History Office, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC, 1980), pp. 218–219.

26. Memorandum from Homer Newell to John Naugle, dated 9 April 1968, on “Response to letter dated March 22, 1968 from 

Dr. Leo Goldberg, Chairman, Astronomy Missions Board,” Historical Reference Collection folder 4490, History Division, 

NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

27. Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science, (NASA SP-4211, NASA History Office, Washington, DC, 

1980), pp. 218–219.

28. Letter from Findlay to Paine, 20 October 1969, NASA Historical Document Collection, folder 13052, NASA History Office, 

NASA Headquarters, Washington DC. For a more complete discussion of these events, see Barry Rutizer, “The Lunar and 

Planetary Missions Board,” NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters, Washington, 

DC, document HHN-138, August 1976.
40 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

As further evidence of the stress between outside advisors and NASA, AMB chair Leo Goldberg 

telephoned Homer Newell in late 1969 “to express 

concerns about...the role of the Astronomy 

Missions Board and about the possible danger 

that...the Astronomy Missions Board is going 

to fold up.”29 The issue involved an AMB discussion of mission priorities for consideration in 

NASA’s fiscal year 1971 budget—namely, continuation of the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 

(OAO) series of missions via development of 

OAO-D versus initiation of a new High-Energy 

Astrophysics Observatory (HEAO) mission for 

X- and gamma-ray astronomy and cosmic ray 

measurements. On the basis of preliminary assessments of the budget environment, NASA officials 

had led the AMB to believe that OAO-D was 

likely to go ahead and that board members were 

only being asked whether they endorsed HEAO 

as the next astronomy mission start. After endorsing HEAO as the top AMB priority, the budget 

outlook turned much worse, and there were fears 

that the White House Office of Management and 

Budget would terminate OAO to make room for 

HEAO. This, according to Goldberg, was not 

the AMB’s intention. Board members were up in 

arms over being ill-informed and misdirected, and 

Goldberg was hearing talk in parts of the scientific community that “AMB is getting credit for 

killing OAO.”30

In the end, OAO-D did go forward to be 

launched in 1972, and the first HEAO was eventually launched in 1977. But the damage was done. 

As Goldberg put it to Newell, 

[I]t is all very well to advise the group to 

tighten their belts and go on with long-range 

planning in the expectation that things will 

get better, but when [a] whole major part of a 

program gets cut out involving a considerable 

number of people who have been associated 

with the program ever since NASA began in 

1958, and have a stake in it—well it is pretty 

hard to avoid bitterness on their part.31

In September 1968, NASA replaced the ad hoc 

Science Advisory Committee that had been chaired 

by Ramsey with a more formal Science Advisory 

Committee, chaired by University of California at 

Berkeley Chancellor Roger Heynes.32 The PAC, 

LPMB, and AMB nominally reported to the 

Science Advisory Committee, but they delivered 

most of their advice through letters to the Associate 

Administrator for Space Science and through faceto-face discussions with NASA science officials. 

The 1970 Reorganization

By the spring of 1970, officials in NASA’s Office 

of Space Science and Applications (OSSA) were 

becoming concerned about a need to reorganize 

the internal advisory structure to streamline it and 

to reduce duplication of effort. OSSA Associate 

Administrator John Naugle played a key role in 

this assessment, along with Homer Newell (see 

chapter 1). Naugle had an enormous impact on 

framing and preserving NASA’s policies towards 

science and science management. He had earned 

a Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of 

29. “Notes on telephone call” from Leo Goldberg to Homer Newell, 10 December 1969, NASA Historical Reference Collection, 

History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. 

30. “Notes on telephone call” from Leo Goldberg to Homer Newell, 10 December 1969, Historical Reference Collection, Alexander 

folder, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

31. “Notes on telephone call” from Leo Goldberg to Homer Newell, 10 December 1969, NASA Historical Reference Collection, 

History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. 

32. See NASA Management Instruction 1156.18—“Science Advisory Committee,” 12 September 1968.
Chapter 3 • NASA’s Internal Advisory Committ

Minnesota in 1953, after having served in the U.S. 

Army during World War II, during which he was 

a German prisoner of war and later participated in 

the cleanup of Dresden after the end of the war. 

Naugle carried out research on the upper atmosphere and high energy magnetospheric particles, 

using high altitude balloons and sounding rockets. 

After working a few years at the Convair Scientific 

Research Laboratory, he joined NASA in 1959. 

He became director of physics and astronomy in 

1960 and then science Associate Administrator 

in 1967. In 1971, Naugle succeeded Newell as 

NASA Associate Administrator; later, he was chief 

scientist before retiring to become chairman of 

Fairchild Space Co.33 As a senior manager, Naugle 

was respected because he had been a working scientist, he understood scientists’ motivations, and he 

was trusted to be fair in weighing the competing 

interests of different groups and institutions.

Naugle and his headquarters staff were certainly 

convinced of the importance of an advisory process, 

noting that outside advisors were needed to ensure 

that NASA had a national program and not just 

a NASA program. Furthermore, they emphasized 

that an important role of an advisory structure 

was to strengthen education and communications 

between NASA and the outside technical communities by providing for outside participation in project and program development, selection of specific 

scientific investigations, and solutions to technical 

problems in projects.34 Given that commitment to 

an advisory process, Naugle proposed that NASA’s 

science programs rely on five entities:

1. An internal,35 senior-level Planning Advisory 

Committee that would report to and advise top 

Agency management;

2. A set of seven internal program-oriented advisory committees that would report to the PAC 

and provide program planning advice to the 

OSSA Associate Administrator and program 

directors; and

3. The internal Space Science and Applications 

Steering Committee and its discipline-oriented 

panels that would continue to advise the OSSA 

Associate Administrator on individual investigation selections; as well as

4. The SSB that would provide external advice on 

national program goals and priorities between 

disciplines and conduct major studies and overviews of NASA programs and goals; and 

5. The ASEB that would serve as an external 

source of NASA’s major studies in civil aeronautics, provide advice on technology needs for the 

Space Shuttle, provide advice on civil aeronautical R&D policy, and provide ad hoc advice to 

the Department of Transportation.36

NASA officials began to describe the ideas 

for a reorganization of the advisory structure in 

the late spring and summer of 1970, but they did 

not receive particularly enthusiastic endorsement. 

33. Interview of John E. Naugle by David DeVorkin on 20 August 1980, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of 

Physics, College Park, MD, available at http://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4793, accessed 18 

October 2016.

34. Unsigned and undated briefing charts from Office of Space Science and Applications staff discussion, Historical Reference 

Collection file 7481, NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. Handwritten annotations on the charts 

by Margaret B. Beach, secretary to the Space Science and Applications Steering Committee dated 15 May 1970, suggest that they 

were from that general period.

35. “Internal” meaning a committee organized and managed by NASA but with members from outside NASA.

36. Unsigned and undated briefing charts from Office of Space Science and Applications staff discussion, Historical Reference 

Collection folder 7481, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. Handwritten annotations on the charts by 

Margaret B. Beach, secretary to the Space Science and Applications Steering Committee, dated 15 May 1970, suggest that they 

were from that general period.
42 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

For example, AMB Chair Goldberg wrote to 

Administrator Paine37 to object strenuously to what 

he saw as treating all disciplines as if they were the 

same and neglecting the unique needs of astronomy. 

He also objected to whether the purported cost savings of the reorganization were credible, whether 

the reorganization would inappropriately distance 

astronomers from access to the Administrator’s 

level in NASA, and whether it would reduce the 

effectiveness of advice. Concluding that he felt 

the proposal represented “a down-grading of the 

importance of astronomy in the NASA program,” 

Goldberg proposed to resign as AMB Chair.38

Members of the LPMB were no less upset. Board 

member George Pimentel described the change as 

a “rather shabby dismissal of LPMB and the misguided plans for recasting NASA’s advisory structure.”39 The resistance from the astronomers and 

planetary scientists illustrates a common trait that 

is shared by most scientific communities. Namely, 

no one wants to give up multiple seats at the table 

or yield his advantage to other, potentially competing, points of view. 

One aspect of the proposal that drew considerable opposition was that NASA employees would 

be considered for membership on the program-oriented advisory committees or panels that would 

report to the PAC. Both Newell and Naugle had 

long sought to build the in-house scientific competence of the NASA field centers so that the Centers 

could better cooperate with outside scientists in 

conducting space missions. Therefore, Center scientists would be able to participate in the same 

ways as scientists from academia. Members of the 

LPMB and AMB, among others, argued against 

having NASA employees (especially Headquarters 

officials or field center managers) on the panels, 

because that would constitute a clear conflict 

of interest in which NASA staff members would 

be advising themselves. There was an underlying 

attitude that even NASA scientists who were not 

managers would have an unfair competitive advantage over outside scientists and that the NASA 

scientists probably also were not of the same caliber as those academic scientists who served on the 

advisory bodies.40

In September 1970, NASA Associate Administrator Newell largely implemented the reorganization of OSSA advisory bodies. In doing so he 

cited the successful history of the NACA advisory 

structure before NASA, reaffirmed the Agency’s 

commitment to advisory committees, and noted 

the need to have a process that was responsive to 

the increasingly cross-disciplinary character of 

NASA programs. Newell announced creation of 

a Space Program Advisory Council (SPAC—a 

change in name from the proposed PAC) that 

would take an interdisciplinary view and integrate 

across NASA’s science and applications activities. 

Four committees were to report to the SPAC: 

one each for physical sciences, life sciences, space 

applications, and space systems. The discipline 

committees could have NASA members, who 

would be working scientists, up to a maximum of 

25 percent of the membership. This arrangement 

helped recognize in-house scientists as competent members of the scientific community while 

also ensuring that NASA employees would not 

37. Leo Goldberg to Thomas O. Paine, 5 June 1970, NASA Historical Reference Collection, Alexander folder, History Division, 

NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. 

38. Leo Goldberg to Thomas O. Paine, 5 June 1970, Historical Reference Collection, Alexander folder, History Division, NASA 

Headquarters, Washington, DC.

39. Letter from George C. Pimentel to Findlay dated 13 July 1970, quoted in Barry Rutizer, The Lunar and Planetary Missions Board

(NASA Historical Reference Collection, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, document HHN-138, August 

1976), p. 33.

40. For example, see memo from F.B. Smith to Naugle, “Notes on 23 March 1967 STAR meeting at Newark Airport,” 27 March 

1967, Historical Reference Collection folder 009993, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
Chapter 3 • NASA’s Internal Advisory Committ

dominate the advisory process. The old SAC, PAC, 

LPMB, and AMB were to be dissolved. In parallel with the SPAC, Newell retained a Research 

and Technology Advisory Council (RTAC) and 

its committees that had been addressing NASA’s 

aeronautical program and some aspects of spaceflight technology. 41

Thus, when it was formally established in 

1971, the SPAC had an even broader mandate 

than its predecessors. The Council was charged 

with looking across all NASA programs, including technology development, engineering, and the 

human spaceflight program, as well as space science. Consequently, the SPAC became the forerunner of the NASA Advisory Council.42 The Lunar 

and Planetary Missions Board and the Astronomy 

Missions Board were folded into the new SPAC 

Physical Sciences Committee (PSC), thereby consolidating NASA’s advisory structure into a slightly 

smaller number of entities. 

In December 1971, Newell prepared a memo 

for NASA Administrator James Fletcher in which 

he cogently outlined the issues over NASA’s relations with the scientific community and in which 

he advised the Administrator about working effectively with the SSB. Newell offered three basic conclusions about the environment at the time. First, 

he noted that NASA’s Space Task Group had proposed such ambitious future missions as to make 

recommendations by the LPMB and AMB no 

longer affordable within NASA’s overall resources 

or even consistent with scientific priorities. Newell 

reported that “our Lunar and Planetary Missions 

Board threatened to resign en masse” and that 

“this kind of concern...was also expressed by the 

Astronomy Missions Board.”43

Newell also emphasized the need to help 

improve communications between NASA and 

both its own advisory bodies and the SSB, especially since many new members were not well-informed about the real-world budgetary, political, 

and technical issues that NASA managers had to 

confront day-in and day-out. He noted that if and 

when NASA’s adversaries became familiar with 

NASA’s problems, they would be more likely to 

become NASA’s partners.

Then Newell made seven recommendations to 

the Administrator:

1. Provide “more exposure on both sides to the 

give and take of problems and alternatives being 

considered on the other side”44—more insight, 

more openness, less retreat into one-sided closed 

discussions.

2. Involve the SSB chair, and maybe some committee chairs, in off-the-record discussions with 

senior NASA officials during the last weeks of 

budget decisions to detect whether decisions 

might be going off the tracks.

3. Provide better support for SSB studies to help 

the Board carry out its responsibilities.

4. Work with the SSB to help ensure that longrange plans considered by the SSB and NASA 

have staying power and that commitments can 

survive over the long haul.

5. Be sensitive to and supportive of the SSB’s 

urging that NASA’s program be balanced both 

in terms of project size and disciplinary mix.

6. Ensure that there are adequate numbers of small 

projects to sustain a robust research community 

during the parallel development courses of longer-term large projects.

41. Homer E. Newell, “NASA Advisory Structure,” memo for the record, 4 September 1970, Historical Reference Collection folder 

17481, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

42. See chapter 5 about formation of the NAC.

43. “Relations with the Scientific Community and the Space Science Board,” Homer E. Newell memo to James C. Fletcher, 3 

December 1971, Historical Reference Collection folder 4247, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

44. “Relations with the Scientific Community and the Space Science Board,” Homer E. Newell memo to James C. Fletcher, 3 

December 1971, Historical Reference Collection folder 4247, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
44 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

7. Restore an environment in which the scientific community is urging NASA to do things 

rather than to not do things. Build on emerging community enthusiasm for new initiatives 

rather than outrunning support before it has 

materialized.

Newell’s memo to Fletcher was remarkably 

perceptive and constructive. His support of more 

openness, attention to staying power and commitments, and attention to programmatic balance and 

robustness very directly reflected concerns of the 

scientific community. His advice to involve the SSB 

chair in off-the-record conversations about budgets 

and budget decisions may have been realistic in the 

1970s, but it became problematic from the perspectives of both the government and the NRC in later 

years. Nevertheless, his advice rings true today. 

Whether it is, or can be, heeded in today’s climate, 

in which disclosure of ongoing budget decisions 

and non-public discussions with advisory groups is 

strongly prohibited, is another question.

The 1973 Reorganization

In 1973, yet another assessment of the advisory 

structure played out. In a memorandum for the 

record, Newell again summarized senior management views about advisory committees, reaffirmed 

NASA’s satisfaction with the SSB, and continued 

to keep the SPAC and RTAC as separate entities.45 Newell also noted some Agency dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of the SPAC, and his 

memo prescribed efforts that needed to be made 

to improve SPAC’s attention to Agency-level issues 

that were raised by its committees and to maintain 

closer contact with the SSB and ASEB.

Newell’s memo also presented NASA’s views 

about the explicit roles of each body. For the SSB, 

the list was as follows:

1. To serve as an independent source, clearly 

not under the control of NASA, of advice 

and criticism on the nation’s space science 

program. 

2. Advise on space science goals and 

objectives.

3. Advise on programs, missions, and 

priorities, to meet space science goals and 

objectives.

4. Advise on needs of scientists and institutions engaged in the space program.

5. Advise on international aspects of the 

space science program.

6. Advise on persons to work on space science and to serve on advisory committee 

and working groups.

7. Assist in generating an understanding of 

and support for the space science program 

in the scientific and other communities.46

Newell indicated that the SPAC was expected to 

“go more in depth than the Space Science Board on 

matters of programing and NASA in-house planning and studies.”47 His list of roles for the SPAC 

was as follows:

1. Advise on goals and objectives of the 

space program.

2. Advise on programs, missions, technologies, and capabilities, and on priorities 

among these, to meet the space program 

goals and objectives.

45. Homer E. Newell, “Advisory Committees,” memo for the record, 30 May 1973, Historical Reference Collection folder 17481, 

History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

46. Homer E. Newell, “Advisory Committees,” memo for the record, 30 May 1973, Historical Reference Collection folder 17481, 

History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

47. Homer E. Newell, “Advisory Committees,” memo for the record, 30 May 1973, Historical Reference Collection folder 17481, 

History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
Chapter 3 • NASA’s Internal Advisory Committ

3. Serve as a forum through which the 

chairmen of the committees of SPAC can 

develop the total perspective for guiding 

their respective committees.

4. Advise on the needs of persons and institutions engaged in the space program.

5. Advise on relations with other agencies 

and institutions.

6. Advise on persons to work on space programs and to serve on advisory committees and working groups, particularly on 

memberships of the SPAC committees.

7. Assist in generating an understanding of 

and support for the space program, and 

serve as one channel of communication 

between outside communities and NASA.

8. Facilitate appropriate interaction with the 

Space Science Board, Aeronautics and 

Space Engineering Board, and Scientific 

Advisory Board.48

There were some differences in the details of 

the roles for the SPAC compared to the SSB’s and 

considerable overlap as well. The major difference 

was reflected in the statements about the SSB’s 

independence from NASA and the SPAC’s charge 

to go “more in depth,”49 as well as the by-now 

familiar sense that the SSB would focus on strategic perspectives and NASA’s committees would 

be more attentive to shorter-term, tactical issues. 

Nevertheless, the extent to which the document 

stopped short of drawing sharper role distinctions 

is a puzzle.

While Newell’s memo focused on the roles of 

NASA’s advisory committees (i.e., what they should 

do), the Federal Advisory Committee Act that had 

been enacted in 1972 laid out a process for how 

they should do it. The next chapter summarizes 

the origins, main elements, and NASA’s response 

to that legislation.

48. Homer E. Newell, “Advisory Committees,” memo for the record, 30 May 1973, Historical Reference Collection folder 17481, 

History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

49. Homer E. Newell, “NASA Advisory Structure,” memo for the record, 30 May 1973, Historical Reference Collection, History 

Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

47

CHAPTER 4

Congress Weighs in on Advice—

The Federal Advisory Committee Act

The passage of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) was a major milestone in the 

evolution of how the government obtained and 

used outside advice. The Act responded to wideranging interests in making the process more 

orderly, more uniform, more cost-effective, and 

more open and balanced. The end result was 

largely successful, and it had a significant impact 

across the federal government, including NASA. 

Presidents and congresses before and after the 1972 

enactment of FACA have refined the advisory process, but the passage of the original FACA legislation was a seminal event.

Legislative Origins

While NASA was assessing and reorganizing its 

advisory committee structure in the late 1960s 

and early 1970s, both Congress and the Nixon 

administration were looking at broader aspects 

of government advisory committees. There was 

general agreement that an advisory process was 

valuable and needed. However, congressional 

attention reflected wide concerns over proliferation 

of advisory bodies that were duplicative, costly, 

and often ignored; that continued to operate long 

after they had fulfilled the need for which they 

were formed; that conducted their business out of 

public view and with no means for public insight 

or input; and that operated with little or no oversight.1

 In opening a November 1971 House of 

Representatives hearing to consider new legislation 

to address these concerns, Rep. John S. Monagan 

of Connecticut, Chair of the Legal and Monetary 

Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on 

Government Operations, said

To point to problems in the advisory committee system is certainly not to suggest that 

all advisory committees should be abolished. 

There are many advisory committees performing useful and even necessary roles in our 

government, and we seek to increase their usefulness and effectiveness. At the same time we 

must seek to eliminate those advisory bodies 

which serve no useful function and in their 

ineffectuality demean the functions of the 

useful advisory committees.2

1. Wendy R. Ginsberg, “Federal Advisory Committees: An Overview” (Congressional Research Service, Washington DC, CRS 

report R40520, 16 April 2009), p. 2. In his book, The Advisors: Scientists in the Policy Process (The Brookings Institution, 

Washington, DC, 1992, p. 24), Bruce L. R. Smith provides a detailed account of how controversy of USDA and EPA handling of 

reviews of the herbicide 2,4,5-T may have been a tipping point regarding the openness of advisory committee activities.

2. Committee on Government Operations’ Subcommittee on Legal and Monetary Affairs, Advisory Committees, Hearings, 92nd 

Cong, 1st sess., 4 November 1971, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
48 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

NASA advisory committees were not singled 

out by Congress other than to acknowledge that 

NASA and other agencies that issue research grants 

needed to exempt peer review panel discussions of 

individuals’ competence and character from public 

disclosure. In what may have been a rare reference 

to the space program in the more than two years of 

congressional reviews of advisory committees, Rep. 

Monagan summarized his concerns (and perhaps 

his understanding of space technology) by saying,

Advisory committees seem to me sort of like 

satellites. They go out into outer space but 

they keep circling around and no one really 

knows how many there are or what direction 

they are going or what duplication there is.3

The House Committee on Government 

Operations initiated a survey of advisory committees across all federal agencies in 1969 to collect 

information about the establishment, charters, lifetimes, membership, accomplishments, costs, and 

staffing levels of more than 1,500 advisory bodies. 

The committee held hearings in 1970 and 1971 to 

support the drafting of the House version of the 

Federal Advisory Committee Standards Act (HR 

4383). The bill, which was introduced by Rep. 

Monagan, was approved by the full House on 9 

May 1972 by a vote of 357 to 9.4 The vote count 

clearly illustrates that the effort drew strong bipartisan support.

By that time, congressional frustration with 

executive branch attention to the advisory committee process had become palpable. This was particularly evident in the following passage in the April 

1972 House report on HR 4383:

On March 17, 1970, the Assistant Director 

of OMB, Mr. Dwight Ink, testified before the 

Special Studies Subcommittee. He recognized 

the need for a permanent office having responsibility for the control of advisory committees. 

He also stated that OMB had developed a draft 

revised OMB Circular A-63, which would be 

released soon.

Nearly 15 months later, on June 10, 1971, 

OMB Associate Director Arnold Weber, 

responding to the committee’s request for views 

on H.R. 4383, stated that a plan to improve 

Federal committee oversight had been developed and a directive implementing that plan 

would be ready for issuance in three weeks.

On November 4, 1971, nearly 4 months 

later, the promised directive had not yet been 

issued. Mr. [Frank] Carlucci, who had replaced 

Mr. Weber as Associate Director of OMB, 

stated that OMB hoped to have the directive 

out within 60 days. 

Over 5 months later the directive had not 

been issued. Thus, nearly 25 months after 

OMB first promised a new directive regarding 

the use of advisory committees, no directive 

has been forthcoming.

Even if OMB does produce a directive 

soon, the need for H.R. 4383 will not be 

mitigated. In spite of continued congressional pressure OMB has been unable to assign 

more than one man to the task of managing 

advisory committees and coordinating their 

use by Federal agencies. There is not even any 

assurance that this one OMB staff man will be 

assigned to this function on a full-time basis.5

3. Ibid.

4. Wendy R. Ginsberg, “Federal Advisory Committees: An Overview” (Congressional Research Service, Washington DC, CRS 

report R40520, 16 April 2009), pp. 5–7.

5. Excerpt from House Report (Government Operations Committee) No. 92-1027, 25 April 1972 [To accompany H.R. 4383].
Chapter 4 • Congress Weighs in on Advice—The Federal Advisory Committee 

The White House had tasked all department 

and agency heads, in the spring of 1969, to review 

and evaluate the roughly 3,000 public advisory 

boards and commissions.6 In June 1972, the 

President issued the promised executive order that 

required advisory committees to hold meetings 

open to the public so as to allow for public participation.7

 Thus, the executive order trailed behind 

passage of the House bill by one month.

The prevailing view of members of Congress 

was that the White House executive order was a 

case of too-little-too-late. The executive order 

did provide for public access to advisory committee meetings, and so congressional concerns 

about openness were at least partially addressed. 

However, other congressional priorities such as 

provisions for coverage of Presidential committees 

as well as agency committees, congressional oversight, comprehensive review by OMB, opportunities for public submission of views (more than just 

attendance) at advisory committee meetings, and 

availability of meeting transcripts were not covered 

in the executive order.

The Subcommittee on Intergovernmental 

Relations of the Senate Committee on Government 

Operations held its own hearings in 1970 and 1971 

(including a long 12-day series of hearings in 1971). 

While the House drew heavily on the results of its 

survey of a large number of advisory committees, 

the Senate delved more deeply into case studies of 

a handful of specific examples of advisory committees. Three versions of a bill were introduced 

in 1971—one each from Democrat Sen. Lee W. 

Metcalf of Montana and from Republicans William 

V. Roth of Delaware and Charles H. Percy of 

Illinois—and the final Senate version (S. 3529) was 

a consolidation of the three bills. The Committee 

on Government Operations unanimously approved 

the bill, and the full Senate passed its version of the 

Act by a voice vote on 12 September 1972, about 

three months after President Nixon issued his executive order.8

A conference committee resolved differences 

between the House and Senate versions of the 

bill within a few days after Senate passage, and 

President Nixon signed the Federal Advisory 

Committee Act on 6 October 1972.9

Legislative Provisions

The law defined an advisory committee as “any 

committee...or similar group...which is established or utilized by the President, or...one or more 

agencies in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations for the President or one or more agencies.”10 The bill exempted from coverage under the 

law any committees composed entirely of officers 

or employees of the federal government and committees formed or used by the Central Intelligence 

Agency or the Federal Reserve System. According to 

the House-Senate conference report, the law would 

“not apply to persons or organizations which have 

contractual relationships with Federal agencies nor 

to advisory committees not directly established by 

or for such agencies.”11 The bill also did not apply to 

committees having operational rather than advisory 

6. Peter M. Flanigan, Assistant to the President, “Review of Boards and Commissions,” memo to NASA Administrator and other 

agency heads, 4 June 1969, and John C. Whitaker, Secretary to the Cabinet, memo to department heads, same subject, 21 May 

1969, Historical Reference Collection folder 17481, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

7. Richard M. Nixon, “Committee Management,” Executive Order 11671, The White House, 5 June 1972.

8. Wendy R. Ginsberg, “Federal Advisory Committees: An Overview” (Congressional Research Service, Washington DC, CRS 

report R40520, 16 April 2009), pp. 5–7.

9. Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA); 5 U.S.C. Appendix—Federal Advisory Act; 86 Stat. 770, as amended.

10. Ibid.

11. “Federal Advisory Committee Act, P.L. 92-463,” House Conference Report No. 1403, 18 September 1972 [To accompany H.R. 

4383]
50 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

responsibilities and this became an important distinction later at NASA.

The new law specified both executive branch 

and legislative branch responsibilities and provisions for establishing, managing, and evaluating 

advisory committees. These included continuing 

review in which congressional committees were 

charged to examine whether each advisory committee under their jurisdiction had a clearly defined 

purpose that could not be served by another existing committee, had fairly balanced membership in 

terms of the advisory committee members’ points 

of view, and had provisions to prevent inappropriate influence that would compromise the committee’s independence. The law also authorized 

the President to delegate responsibility for evaluating and acting on recommendations of presidential advisory committees and provided for an 

annual report to Congress, and it called for a new 

Committee Management Secretariat in the Office 

of Management and Budget (OMB)12 to establish 

uniform committee management procedures and 

to conduct a comprehensive annual review of each 

advisory committee. The law required each agency 

to establish uniform guidelines and management 

controls for its advisory committees. With respect 

to the operation of advisory committees, the law 

prescribed procedures for establishing committees, 

provided for termination of all committees two 

years after their formation unless they were formally renewed, required that meetings be open to 

the public (except where material to be discussed, 

such as personnel matters, is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act), 

required that meeting agendas include opportunities for public comments, and required that any 

meeting transcripts or minutes be made available 

to the public. 

NASA’s Response

In February 1974 President Nixon issued an executive order that rescinded the June 1972 order and 

directed all departments and agencies to comply 

with the FACA legislation,13 and the next month 

OMB issued a revised version of guidance that provided more detailed instructions. NASA formally 

incorporated the requirements of the law into its set 

of Agency management instructions in June 1974.14

The NASA directive incorporated all the provisions of the law for advisory committee establishment, management, and operations. It noted that 

the requirements did not apply to “the National 

Academy of Sciences and its various committees,” 

because they fell in the category of “organizations 

which have contractual relations with NASA.”15

The directive also indicated that “no advisory 

committee shall be used for functions which are 

not solely advisory,” thus making it clear that 

government officials had the discretion to accept 

or decline the advice and also setting up an argument for keeping operational committees out from 

under FACA.

Among the explicit provisions regarding committee membership, the management instruction 

made two important points:

Non-Government members of advisory committees will be selected on the basis of professional competence and not as representatives 

of the organization with which they are affiliated, [and]

The membership of an advisory committee 

shall, to the extent practicable, be fairly balanced in terms of the professional perspectives 

represented and the committee’s functions. In 

selecting members, an effort should be made 

12. This responsibility was transferred to the General Services Administration in a 1977 amendment to FACA.

13. Richard M. Nixon, “Advisory Committee Management,” Executive Order 11769, The White House, 21 February 1974.

14. “Establishment, Operation, and Duration of NASA Advisory Committees,” NASA Management Instruction 1150.2C, 19 June 1974.

15. Ibid.
Chapter 4 • Congress Weighs in on Advice—The Federal Advisory Committee 

to include individuals representing different 

points of view and types of employment—e.g., 

university, industry, etc., and without discrimination on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, or national origin.16

The NASA management guidance was also 

quite explicit about openness of the committee’s 

activities, with provisions including the following:

• “Committee meetings shall be open to 

members of the public,” except when 

agenda items were determined to fall 

under exemptions listed in the Freedom of 

Information Act.

• Except when “public notice of a committee meeting would be inconsistent with 

national security,” a notice of each meeting 

should be published in advance.

• “Any member of the public who wishes 

to do so shall be permitted to file a written statement with the committee, before 

or after the meeting” and “to present oral 

statements at the meeting,” within certain 

constraints that could be set by the committee chair. However, “Questioning of 

committee members will not be permitted except in accordance with procedures 

established by the chairman.”

• “Detailed minutes shall be kept of each 

advisory committee meeting,” and “Subject to the provisions of [the Freedom of 

Information Act], committee records 

shall be available for public inspection 

and copying.”17

An aspect of the advisory process that loomed 

large, both in terms of practicality and legality, 

was the use of committees whose roles were more 

operational and practical than strategic and advisory. As the previous chapter notes, NASA had 

often assembled a tiered array of advisory bodies 

with major committees that spawned and utilized 

subordinate layers of subcommittees and more discipline-specific panels. As one went down the advisory food chain, each lower layer tended to delve 

into increasingly more detailed aspects of program 

or mission operations and to assist NASA managers in making more detailed technical decisions. 

The structured and sometimes bureaucratic process that governed advisory committees could be 

an impediment, even a deal breaker, to the effectiveness of the lower-level operational committees. 

Therefore, NASA and other agencies having 

similar needs made a case for distinguishing 

between advisory committees that functioned 

at a strategic level and groups that dug into the 

nitty-gritty of a program or project manager’s operational trade-offs. In NASA, the term for the latter 

entity was a Management Operations Working 

Group (MOWG), and such bodies were deemed to 

be outside the constraints of FACA.

In November 1973, John Naugle, Associate 

Administrator for Space Science and Applications, 

provided his own guidance regarding how to distinguish between FACA-relevant advisory committees and other more operational entities.18 Naugle 

defined an advisory committee as

A committee composed of persons other than 

full-time officers or employees of the Federal 

Government whose function is to provide 

advice or make recommendations on goals, 

16. Ibid.

17. “Establishment, Operation, and Duration of NASA Advisory Committees,” NASA Management Instruction 1150.2C, 19 June 1974.

18. John Naugle to staff, “Implementation of Federal Advisory Committee Act, Public Law 92-463 and Related Activities,” 

15 November 1973, Historical Reference Collection folder 17481, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
52 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

objectives, program or mission content, or 

policy matters.19

In contrast, Naugle drew on guidance from 

NASA’s lawyers to define a MOWG as

A committee whose primary function is to 

assist NASA management in working out 

program or mission parameters or otherwise 

participate in carrying out what has been 

decided upon.

Naugle’s definition of an operational committee 

emphasized attention on “current work and assistance with operational aspects of programs, projects, and missions.”20 That distinction has largely 

persisted to the present day, although the use of 

MOWGs has varied over the years. As chapter 12 

will show, NASA’s lawyers employed an increasingly stringent interpretation of the leeway available to MOWGs and their successors in the 2000s, 

and so their utility and flexibility began to shrink.

Nevertheless, after 1972 FACA largely ruled 

agencies’ formation and use of advisory committees. 

The law put structure in the process and ensured 

that committees operated in ways that were open to 

public view. For many years, the process was generally invisible to committee members except for an 

obligatory annual ethics briefing. And as the next 

chapter will show, NASA’s FACA committees had 

significant impacts on the progress of Earth and 

space science over the next few decades.

19. John Naugle to staff, “Implementation of Federal Advisory Committee Act, Public Law 92-463 and Related Activities,” 

15 November 1973, Historical Reference Collection folder 17481, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

20. Ibid.
53

CHAPTER 5

The NASA Advisory Council and Its Committees

Government-wide or Agency-wide re-evaluations of advisory committee structure remind 

one of a brood of cicadas; they re-emerge every few 

years, create a fuss for a few months, and then disappear until the next time they are due to surface. 

Such was the case in 1977, when President Carter 

introduced his zero-base approach to government 

management and budgeting. In February, the 

president called for “a government-wide, zero-base 

review of all advisory committees, with the presumption that committees not created expressly 

by statute should be abolished except those (1) for 

which there is a compelling need; (2) which will 

have truly balanced membership; and (3) which 

conduct their business as openly as possible, consistent with the law and their mandate.1

In November 1977, after prolonged internal 

NASA discussions, the Space Program Advisory 

Council and its companion body, the Research and 

Technology Advisory Council, were abolished to 

be replaced in 1978 by a new Agency-wide NASA 

Advisory Council (NAC). Thus, the Ramsey 

committee’s 1966 recommendations for a general 

advisory committee (see chapter 3) were finally 

implemented, albeit with clear guidance under 

FACA that the NAC’s role was to be advisory and 

not managerial. NASA Administrator Robert A. 

Frosch also established subordinate NAC standing 

committees in each of the following areas:2

• aeronautics, 

• history,

• life sciences, 

• space and terrestrial applications, 

• space sciences and technology, and 

• space systems.

1. From “Zero-Base Review of Advisory Committees,” John E. Naugle memo to Distribution, 22 March 1977, NASA Historical 

Reference Collection folder 17481, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. 

2. “Establishment of NASA Advisory Committees,” Robert A. Frosch memo to Acting Associate Administrator for External 

Relations, 9 November 1977, NASA Historical Reference Collection folder 17481, History Division, NASA Headquarters, 

Washington, DC. 

Frosch recalled that NASA’s response to the 

Carter administration’s directive to reduce the 

number of advisory committees was straightforward but creative:

[W]hen I came in there were a bunch of 

in-house committees and non-academy committees and Academy committees. And as far 

as I could tell from sampling what I could hear 

and see, they were being useful, there weren’t 

many of them, nobody was complaining about 

it, everybody was saying we get lots of good 

advice and some of it we take.... [I]t seemed to 
54 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

me to be a functional system.... So it was just 

fine with me, and I left it alone.

Then somebody in the office of mumbling bumblers (OMB) got it into his head, 

for reasons of some other department, “We 

are wasting a lot of money on the outside 

committees.” So they made a policy rule—no

agency could have more than two committees. This didn’t apply in the Academy committees, because you could contract for that. 

But in terms of direct advice, you could only 

have two committees.... I don’t know how 

many we had, but it was a lot more than 

two.... And then we read the policy directive 

and said, “Okay we’re going to have only one 

committee. We are going to have, which we 

didn’t have at the time, the Administrator’s 

own outside advisory committee, which by 

the way would have a lot of subcommittees, 

but they don’t count.”

So we reorganized it that way. And essentially after we had the structure in place we slid 

the committees we wanted in under it...as the 

NASA Advisory Council.4

The new NAC was chaired by physicist and 

director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography 

William A. Nierenberg, and its members included 

University of Arizona planetary scientist Donald 

M. Hunten (chair of the NAC Space Science 

Advisory Committee) and solar physicist John W. 

Firor from the National Center for Atmospheric 

Research (chair of the NAC Space and Terrestrial 

Applications Advisory Committee), plus at-large 

science members Harvard astronomer A.G.W. 

Cameron (then the SSB chair) and Harvard astrophysicist George B. Field. Figure 5.1 shows the 

organizational structure of the NAC in 1983, 

which was typical of that period.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the Space Science 

Advisory Committee’s (SSAC’s) meetings followed 

a familiar pattern that reflected NASA’s difficult 

budget times. Budgets tightened at the end of the 

Carter administration in 1980, but they got even 

more so at the beginning of the Reagan administration in 1981. The Office of Space Science, 

which had been aiming to start a major new flight 

mission each year from 1981 through 1985, found 

itself facing a best-case possibility of no new starts 

NASA Advisory 

Council

Solar System 

Exploration 

Committee

Aeronautics

Effective Shuttle 

Utilization

Space 

Commercialization

Earth System 

Science 

Committee

Space and Earth 

Sciences Space Applications History

Private Citizens on 

the Space Shuttle

Life Sciences

Mission of NASA

Space Systems and 

Technology

Ad Hoc Task Forces

Ad Hoc Committees

Standing Committees

FIGURE 5.1 NASA Advisory Council and committees in 19833

3. From “NASA Advisory Council and Related Committees,” NMI 1156.34D, 30 September 1983, NASA Historical Document 

Collection folder 16712 and “NASA Advisory Council Recommendations and Actions,” 1 August 1983, NASA Historical 

Document Collection folder 16710, NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

4. Frosch interview, pp. 3–4.
Chapter 5 • The NASA Advisory Council and Its Committ

until 1983 and then only one in 1983 and another 

in 1984, corresponding to a four-year hiatus since 

the Hubble Space Telescope and Galileo mission to 

Jupiter were initiated in 1978. At each SSAC meeting, the Associate Administrator for Space Science 

summarized the status of the program, noted ongoing budget and mission schedule problems and 

threats, and described the glum (administration 

and congressional) outlook for initiating new flight 

missions in the near future. SSAC then discussed 

needs for protecting program balance, coping with 

the new-start logjam, and setting priorities and 

making hard decisions. Finally, they prepared statements deploring the budget impacts on the space 

science program and reviewed and recommended 

priorities for new starts in the coming year.5

In December 1981, NASA reorganized to 

create the Office of Space Science and Applications 

(OSSA), and SSAC became the Space and Earth 

Science Advisory Committee (SESAC). NASA’s 

executive secretary for SESAC, OSSA Assistant 

Associate Administrator Jeffrey D. Rosendhal, had 

become concerned over the scientific community’s 

increasingly adversarial relationships with NASA. 

He worked with SESAC chair, planetary geophysicist Lawrence A. Soderblom, to try to focus the 

committee’s attention towards constructive and 

actionable directions. That effort continued under 

the leadership of Soderblom’s successor as chair, 

Louis J. Lanzerotti. SESAC undertook several 

internal projects, including a review of the health 

of the research and analysis grants programs and an 

assessment of scientific opportunities on the Space 

Station. Beginning in 1983, SESAC identified 

review of new-start candidates as a regular agenda 

item for every June meeting.6

 Two of the committee’s most important efforts were the formation of 

the Earth System Science Committee and a study 

leading to the SESAC Crisis report, both of which 

are described below. See figure 5.2 for a timeline of 

key advisory activities from 1978 to 1988.

While the committee meetings were mostly serious and steeped in NASA technology and jargon, 

they were not without their revealing moments of 

19721973197419751976197719781979198019811982198319841985198619871988

NASA establishes 

NASA Advisory 

Council (NAC) 

and committees 

including Space 

Science Advisory 

Committee (SSAC)

Congress 

passes Federal 

Advisory 

Committee Act

NAC creates 

Solar System 

Exploration 

Committee 

(SSEC)

NAC creates 

Earth System 

Science 

Committee 

(ESSC)

SSAC becomes 

Space and 

Earth Science 

Advisory 

Committee 

(SESAC)

First ESSC 

report

SESAC 

Crisis report

First SSEC 

report

NRC 

Astronomy and 

Astrophysics 

Decadal Survey

SSB report 

collection, “Space 

Science in the 

21st Century”

FIGURE 5.2 Timeline for key advisory events, 1972 to 1988

5. Alexander document files from SSAC meetings, NASA HRC.

6. List of initiatives for the early 1980s is derived from the Alexander document files of SESAC meetings in 1982 and 1983.
56 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

misguided policy, candor, and levity. During 1981 

SSAC meetings, NASA officials admonished the 

committee that “Programs that avoid use of the 

Space Shuttle will be in jeopardy.”7 And a White 

House Office of Science and Technology Policy 

official added that “The Shuttle is here to stay,”8

and that projects that use it will have an advantage. 

Five years later, NASA would be completely revising its policy after responding to the impacts of the 

Challenger accident. 

As for candor, at a November 1982 SESAC 

meeting, OSSA Associate Administrator Burton I. 

Edelson exposed the ambiguity between his own 

authority and that of NASA Chief Scientist Frank 

B. McDonald when he advised SESAC, “If you are 

going to write letters about supporting your program, don’t send them to me, send them to Frank 

McDonald.”9 The humor surfaced in a later comment not related to Edelson’s at the same meeting when McDonald characterized the rosy views 

espoused by NASA’s leadership by describing the 

Administrator’s suite at NASA headquarters as “a 

hospice for the incurably optimistic.”10

The same meeting provided evidence that at 

least some decision makers in Congress were attentive to the committee’s activities. While speaking 

with the committee, House of Representatives 

Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications 

staff member Radford Byerly inquired as to 

whether SESAC members felt free to make comments or whether they were constrained by NASA 

to follow the Agency’s agenda. Byerly went on to 

ask whether SESAC would prefer to have statutory 

support for its work. He apparently received satisfactory answers to his questions, because there 

was no effort to create specific legislative authority 

for SESAC.11

SESAC Crisis Report 

The early-to-mid 1980s were a trying time for 

space science. Reagan administration cancellations 

or indefinite deferrals of Carter administration 

space science mission initiatives (see below) were 

alarming developments that foretold the possibility 

of a long dry spell between the last major mission 

new starts in the late 1970s and any prospects for 

new missions until the mid-to-late 1980s. To make 

matters more challenging, missions that had been 

started—notably Space Telescope and the Galileo 

Jupiter orbiter—and proposed future missions 

such as the Cassini Saturn orbiter and other Great 

Observatories to follow the Space Telescope collectively required a very different long-term budget 

profile. The fact that all these missions would 

require significant budget commitments to cover 

their operation and data analysis for a decade or 

longer meant that there could be no funds left in 

NASA’s coffers to permit new missions. 

In spite of these challenges to the size and shape 

of the budget, OSSA managers and many in the scientific community continued to hope for and push 

for ambitious new mission starts. For example, 

in a May 1983 SESAC meeting, OSSA Associate 

Administrator Edelson presented NASA’s “best 

internal thinking” for fiscal years 1985 to 1989 newstart goals corresponding to a rate of two to three 

new starts per year.12 Edelson acknowledged that 

would probably oversubscribe the budget annually 

by 50 percent, but he apparently considered it to 

7. Alexander document files on the 29 June 1981 meeting of the Space Science Advisory Committee, NASA HRC.

8. Alexander document files on the 19 November 1981 meeting of the Space Science Advisory Committee, NASA HRC.

9. Alexander document files on the 18 November 1982 meeting of the Space and Earth Science Committee, NASA HRC.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Alexander document files from the 24 May 1983 meeting of the Space and Earth Sciences Advisory Committee, NASA HRC.
Chapter 5 • The NASA Advisory Council and Its Committ

be an appropriately aggressive strategy. SESAC 

members expressed growing frustration over the 

annual new-start logjams, unproductive annual 

competitions, and unclear decision-making process. They also declined to endorse Edelson’s set 

of new-start priorities.

On top of these daunting prospects for the 

future, SESAC members continued to worry about 

the overall health of the research and analysis program that provided the basic scientific and technological underpinnings of the space sciences and 

about declines in the launch rate of small, principal-investigator-led Explorer missions that kept 

a portion of the research community involved in 

space investigations even when there were no new 

major flight missions. They also grappled with the 

broadened and commensurately more complex 

content of the program after the space and Earth 

sciences offices had been merged.

On top of all the explicit programmatic challenges that confronted OSSA, there was an undercurrent of concern about OSSA’s leadership. Edelson 

was an expert in satellite communications and a 

former director of Comsat Laboratories, but he 

came to NASA with scant familiarity with space science or the space research community. Those were 

obstacles that he never completely overcame, and 

they bred a lack of confidence amongst the community of scientists who depended on NASA support 

and who were the program’s advocates and advisors. 

Louis Lanzerotti, who succeeded Larry 

Soderblom as SESAC chair in 1984, was an 

expert in space plasma physics and geophysics at 

Bell Laboratories. He had served earlier on the 

Physical Sciences Committee when Noel Hinners 

was Associate Administrator for Space Science and 

Applications, and he later served as chair of the 

SSB and chair or member of many important NRC 

and other advisory bodies. He and Rosendhal led 

SESAC in undertaking a broad-based evaluation 

of the problems confronting the space and Earth 

science programs. The committee’s two-year effort 

culminated in a final report that was provocatively 

titled, “The Crisis in Space and Earth Science: A 

Time for a New Commitment.”13

The Challenger Space Shuttle accident occurred 

while the committee was completing its study, and 

the impacts of launch delays and budget uncertainties following the accident only heightened the 

sense of urgency. The committee’s report outlined 

the principal concerns about stresses to NASA’s 

program and made a compelling argument for why 

SESAC felt that the vitality of U.S. space and Earth 

science was threatened. Then the report described 

SESAC’s views about what should be the key elements of a healthy program, thereby outlining metrics by which remedies could be evaluated, and it 

analyzed trends that had contributed to stresses. 

Finally, the report presented and explained a set 

of recommendations to NASA to restore program 

vitality, including (1) continuing program diversity 

and breadth, (2) ensuring that space mission decisions be driven by scientific requirements, (3) using 

orderly and realistic planning to underpin program 

plans and budgets, and (4) applying “clear and 

specific criteria” to setting priorities and making 

research project and mission decisions.14

Lanzerotti’s successor as SESAC chair was 

MIT astrophysicist Claude R. Canizares, who 

was a member of SESAC when the Crisis report 

was prepared. Canizares recalled that the report 

had impacts both with its intended policy-making 

audience and with the space science community:

But I think one value of those kinds of reports 

is actually what it does for the community. It 

really brings the community together around 

the common sense of being able to send their 

13. Space and Earth Science Advisory Committee, The Crisis in Space and Earth Science: A Time for a New Commitment, (NASA 

Advisory Council, Washington, DC, November 1986).

14. Ibid.
58 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

message. I guess my sense is that people paid 

attention—people on the [Capitol] Hill and 

others. Whether it really changed the course 

of events, one can’t know.... I think one of 

the challenges with these committees is that 

they’re in some sense sort of representing the 

community. But they’re also where the factions 

all meet around the table and arm-wrestle with 

each other. Starting to bring in more of a strategic planning mindset helped to alleviate that.15

The report was generally well received when it 

was released in late 1986. Certainly SESAC used 

its own report as guidance as it advised OSSA over 

the next few years. When Lanzerotti completed 

his tenure as SESAC chair in 1989, he moved to 

become chair of the Space Science Board, and so 

the principles and approaches outlined in the Crisis 

report very likely influenced Lanzerotti’s approach 

to leading the SSB. 

Shortly after the report was released, Lennard 

A. Fisk succeeded Edelson as OSSA Associate 

Administrator. Fisk quickly took actions to address 

the issues of program balance, diversity, planning, 

priority-setting, and decision-making that were 

consistent with the SESAC report (See chapter 7.).

Solar System Exploration 

Committee

In addition to its standing committees, the NAC 

occasionally established ad hoc committees for 

special tasks. The Solar System Exploration 

Committee (SSEC) was a notable example.16 At the 

time, NASA’s planetary science program was reeling from two major threats to its very existence. 

After a relatively robust period of activity in the 

1970s, with launches of the Viking missions to 

Mars, Pioneer missions to Venus and Jupiter, and 

two Voyager outer solar system missions, there 

was only a single new start for solar system science 

slated for the 1980s—the Galileo orbiter mission 

to Jupiter. A proposed mission to intercept Halley’s 

Comet failed to gain sufficient political traction, 

and a mission to send a radar imaging spacecraft 

to Venus was approved late in the Carter administration but then cancelled by the incoming Reagan 

administration. Reagan’s budget director David 

A. Stockman also proposed to cancel either the 

Hubble Space Telescope, Galileo, or the U.S. part 

of the ESA17—NASA International Solar Polar 

Mission (ISPM). Indeed, Stockman made a serious 

proposal to terminate the entire planetary exploration program, and Administrator Beggs put this 

idea forward during negotiations over the NASA 

fiscal year 1983 budget. In the end, ISPM fell but 

Galileo survived.

The planetary program’s near-death experience 

led NASA to create the SSEC to formulate an overall strategy for solar system exploration. The SSB 

had recommended separate science strategies for 

the inner planets and for primitive bodies (asteroids, comets, and meteoroids), and it had published 

a short treatise on the science and goals of planetary exploration. But what NASA lacked was a 

coherent, integrated, programmatic strategy for a 

sustained, but affordable, program. John Naugle, 

then having left NASA to become an executive at 

Fairchild Space Company, served as the SSEC’s 

first chair from 1980 to 1981, to be followed by 

Noel Hinners (Director of the National Air and 

Space Museum at the time) from 1981 to 1982, 

and subsequently University of Hawaii astronomer 

David Morrison in 1983.

15. Canizares interview, p. 2. Canizares also served as Chair of the Space Studies Board from 1994 to 2000.

16. See “The Survival Crisis of the U.S. Solar System Exploration Program” by John M. Logsdon in Exploring the Solar System: 

The History and Science of Planetary Exploration, edited by Roger D. Launius (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 45–76) for a 

comprehensive discussion of the origins of the SSEC.

17. ESA is the European Space Agency.
Chapter 5 • The NASA Advisory Council and Its Committ

The SSEC’s report, “Planetary Exploration 

Through Year 2000: Part One: A Core Program,”18

appeared in 1983. The report embraced and drew 

on the scientific goals developed earlier by the 

SSB and its Committee on Planetary and Lunar 

Exploration.19 The NASA committee outlined a 

specific sequence of core missions to Venus, Mars, a 

comet, and Saturn’s satellite Titan. But perhaps more 

importantly, the report recommended a new strategy based on modest-scale missions—Planetary 

Observers modeled after the Explorer program in 

space physics and astronomy—and a new larger-scale class of missions that would utilize a standard modular spacecraft design concept—the 

Mariner Mark II. The strategy emphasized principles of affordability and program stability. Finally, 

the committee recommended an augmented program that would go beyond the core program “as 

soon as national priorities permit,” and part II of 

the committee’s report, issued in 1986,20 outlined 

recommendations for the expanded program.

The SSEC report had a significant positive 

impact and helped NASA gain support to put 

the planetary exploration program back on track, 

in spite of the fact that the specific recommendations for new classes of missions never completely 

materialized. The idea for a Planetary Observer 

class of missions translated into a Venus Radar 

Mapper (later to be called Magellan), but the 

second mission in the proposed series—Mars 

Geoscience/Climate Orbiter (later called Mars 

Observer)—experienced serious cost growth and 

schedule delays. The Planetary Observer spacecraft 

were expected to be derived from commercially 

manufactured busses developed for operation in 

Earth orbit, but the concept proved to be flawed 

because adapting a commercial spacecraft for 

use in one-of-a-kind planetary science missions 

was costly and complex. More tragically, Mars 

Observer suffered a catastrophic failure during its 

entry into Mars orbit and never collected any scientific data. The first two Mariner Mark II missions 

were slated to be the Cassini Saturn orbiter and 

the Comet Rendezvous/Asteroid Flyby (CRAF) 

mission. Cassini was launched, along with its piggybacked ESA Huygens Titan probe, in 1997 and 

went on to become a roaring success in its observations of the Saturn system. However, CRAF was 

terminated due to NASA budget problems in 1993, 

thereby marking the end of a real Mariner Mark II 

program. The SSEC idea of developing a standard 

spacecraft design and re-flying it for a variety of 

large planetary missions was not realistic.

In spite of the fact that the specific programmatic ideas espoused by the SSEC failed to be fully 

implemented, the committee’s efforts to right the 

ship and outline a more realistic approach to planetary exploration saved the day by outlining an 

approach that, at the time, appeared to be fresh and 

pragmatic. Thus, it bought NASA managers time 

and provided a foundation on which NASA could 

build going into the late 1980s.

Earth System Science Committee

Another NAC committee, the Earth Systems 

Science Committee (ESSC), played a critical role 

in the formulation of NASA’s Mission to Planet 

Earth program and the U.S Global Change 

Research Program. The committee’s origins go at 

18. Solar System Exploration Committee, Planetary Exploration Through Year 2000: Part One: A Core Program (NASA Advisory 

Council, Washington, DC, 1983).

19. National Research Council, Opportunities and Choices in Space Science (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1975), 

pp. 115–146; National Research Council, Strategy for Exploration of the Inner Planets: 1977–1987 (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1978); and National Research Council, Strategy for the Exploration of Primitive Solar-System Bodies—Asteroids, 

Comets, and Meteoroids: 1980–1990 (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1980).

20. Solar System Exploration Committee, Planetary exploration through year 2000: an augmented program: part two of a report by the 

Solar System Exploration Committee of the NASA Advisory Council, (NASA Advisory Council, Washington, DC, 1986). 
60 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

least as far back as 1982, when Harvard scientist 

Richard Goody led a NASA-sponsored workshop 

to address “long-term global changes that can 

affect the habitability of the Earth.”21 Following 

on Goody’s influential, but politically sensitive, 

report, the NRC convened a workshop led by 

physicist Herbert Friedman that led to a proposal 

for a broadly based, interdisciplinary International 

Geosphere-Biosphere Program.22

NASA Associate Administrator Edelson wanted 

to translate those ideas into a comprehensive 

NASA program—which became NASA’s Mission 

to Planet Earth—and so, at SESAC’s urging, he 

arranged for formation of the ESSC in 1983 under 

the auspices of the NAC. His idea was to repeat 

the success that the Solar System Exploration 

Committee was enjoying at the time, and the 

ESSC surpassed that success. 

The committee was chaired by theoretical meteorologist Francis P. Bretherton, who was director of 

the National Center for Atmospheric Research from 

1974 until 1980, when he moved to the University 

of Wisconsin. The committee met over a period of 

five years. The seminal aspect of its first report23

was a diagram that illustrated the complex web of 

interactions between natural physical climate and 

biogeochemical components and processes, external forces, and human activities. The diagram, and 

the committee’s accompanying discussion, became 

a classic tool for illustrating the concept of how 

Earth and all the components of its global environment—atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, biosphere, 

and lithosphere—comprise an integrated, highly 

interactive system (the Earth system). The report 

also made a compelling case for how the Earth 

system, and all its components, needed to be studied together in an integrated fashion.

The committee argued for using space observations to tackle this ambitious challenge, outlined 

specific missions spanning a period of more than a 

decade to accomplish the recommended research, 

and called for an advanced information system 

to facilitate use of the new data. The ESSC also 

recommended that NASA take the lead in the 

space-based observing program, proposed roles for 

NOAA and NSF, and discussed opportunities for 

international participation. 

The ESSC report gained widespread attention 

in the scientific community, and scientists largely 

embraced the committee’s scientific arguments in 

spite of the ambitious scale of the proposed program. A catalyst for building support in Congress 

came from another report, which was primarily 

driven by a single NASA employee.24 In late 1986, 

NASA astronaut Sally K. Ride volunteered to NASA 

Administrator James Fletcher to come to Washington 

and lead an in-house NASA effort to articulate new 

directions for the Agency to help get it back on track 

after the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. Her 

report, “NASA Leadership and America’s Future in 

Space,” 25 outlined four possible central goals:

1. Mission to Planet Earth

2. Exploration of the solar system

3. Permanent lunar outpost

4. Humans to Mars

21. Richard Goody, Global Change: Impacts on Habitability—A Scientific Basis for Assessment (Jet Propulsion Laboratory document 

JPL D-95, NASA Contractor report CR-169174, Pasadena CA, 7 July 1982). 

22. National Research Council, Toward an International Geosphere-Biosphere Program: A Study of Global Change (National Academy 

Press, Washington, DC, 1983).

23. Earth System Sciences Committee, Earth System Science: Overview, A Program for Global Change, (NASA Advisory Council, 

NASA, Washington DC, 1986). 

24. Author’s interview with former Congressional Research Service staff member Marcia Smith highlighted the impact of the Ride 

report in stimulating congressional interest in Mission to Planet Earth.

25. Sally K. Ride, NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space: A Report to the NASA Administrator, NASA, Washington, DC, 

August 1987.
Chapter 5 • The NASA Advisory Council and Its Committ

Ride’s report did not propose that NASA single 

out one of them, but rather that the Agency pursue 

several or even all of them together or sequentially. 

Like so many post-Apollo planning efforts, senior 

NASA managers and government space-policy 

makers proved unable or unwilling to pick up the 

ball and run with it. The report received plaudits 

but no substantive follow-up attention. An exception was that the cachet of Ride’s having highlighted 

Mission to Planet Earth as one potential major goal 

for the civil space program helped build support 

for that program in Congress.26 Thus, it helped 

advance the ideas presented in the ESSC report.

NASA’s interest in Mission to Planet Earth 

benefitted from another boost beyond those 

derived from the ESSC and Ride reports. Senior 

OSSA managers understood, through OMB, that 

President George H. W. Bush supported the program. For example, the chief of the OMB Science 

and Space Programs Branch Jack Fellows commented to SESAC’s successor, the Space Science 

and Applications Advisory Committee, in February 

1989 that the newly inaugurated President wished 

to pursue a strong emphasis on global change 

and environmental issues, including support for 

Mission to Planet Earth.27 Consequently, the program enjoyed a favored position until the conflict 

between NASA ambitions and the political reality 

of federal budgets intervened. 

The Mission to Planet Earth concept envisioned by the ESSC and proposed by NASA was 

the subject of multiple reviews, restructurings, and 

downsizings in subsequent years, all stimulated 

or guided by science and engineering advisory 

panels.28 Many of the reviews were commissioned 

by NASA and conducted either by NASA committees or NRC committees; one was organized by the 

NRC at the request of Congress. 

One such review was established by NASA 

at Administrator Daniel S. Goldin’s request, and 

it had a notable impact on NASA’s plans and on 

congressional views about the program’s progress 

and cost. The EOS (Earth Observing System) 

Engineering Review Committee was chaired by 

physicist Edward A. Frieman, who was director 

of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the 

time. Frieman’s report recommended reducing 

the scope of the program, focusing more on climate change, and shifting to multiple small-tomoderate-size satellite platforms instead of large, 

heavy, and heavily instrumented platforms, as had 

been previously planned.29 Advisory committee 

recommendations are relatively rarely incorporated in presidential orders and directives, but a 

1992 National Space Policy Directive signed by 

President Bush assigned lead agency responsibilities to NASA for Space-Based Global Change 

Observation System activities, including Mission 

to Planet Earth, and directed NASA to carry out 

the EOS program according to the recommendations of the Frieman committee.30 The program 

survived, and much of the impetus for the program that did emerge, beginning with launch of 

the Terra satellite in December 1999, can be traced 

back to the work of NASA’s ESSC and to subsequent advisory body reviews. 

26. The idea of a global study of planet Earth also emerged in the Paine Commission report (National Commission on Space, 

Pioneering the Space Frontier, Bantam Books, 1986), but it failed to get traction then. A member of the Office of Space Science 

and Applications staff, Dixon M. Butler served on Ride’s committee and played a big role in developing the Mission to Planet 

Earth ideas in the Ride report.

27. Alexander document files from the February 1989 SSAC meeting, NASA HRC.

28. For a comprehensive treatment of the advisory origins and assessments of NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth Program, see National 

Research Council, Earth Observations From Space: History, Promise, and Reality, (The National Academies Press, Washington, 

DC, 1995).

29. EOS Engineering Review Committee, Report of the Earth Observing System (EOS) Engineering Review Committee, Edward 

Frieman, Chair, (NASA, Washington, DC, 1991).

30. “Space-Based Global Change Observation,” NSPD-7, The White House, Washington, DC, 28 May 1992.

63

CHAPTER 6

The Advisory Environment in the 1980s: 

A Critical Assessment

Concluding Ideas

The work of advisory bodies during NASA’s first three decades played an important role in the 

Agency’s development and in the content and successes of its scientific programs. By the mid-1980s, 

NASA was drawing on a well-established system 

of both internal and external advisory bodies that 

utilized scientists and technologists from academia, 

industry, and federal laboratories to recommend 

scientific priorities and program plans and to assist 

NASA managers in decision making about the 

Agency’s space and Earth science program. This 

sometimes complex and often hierarchical network of providers and users of advice (see figure 

6.1) comprised an advisory ecosystem in which 

the various components interacted, sometimes cordially and sometimes under stress. Nevertheless, 

the process was a positive one, and through it, the 

scientific community that the advisors represented, 

NASA, and the nation’s space program were all 

well served. In this chapter, we look back at some 

key factors that contributed to the advisory ecosystem as NASA approached its 30th anniversary.

NASA BEGAN WITH A CULTURE THAT 

ACCEPTED OUTSIDE SCIENTIFIC ADVICE.

When NASA was established in 1958, it inherited 

a structure that accepted and incorporated input 

from outside technical advisors. Use of advisory 

committees was part of the NACA’s culture. When 

the NACA Director Hugh Dryden became NASA’s 

first Deputy Administrator, it was natural for him 

to see value in integrating outside advisory bodies 

into NASA’s operations. Homer Newell brought 

the same approach to research planning when he 

moved from NRL, where he had served on and 

chaired the rocket panel and key International 

Geophysical Year (IGY) committees, to take 

on leadership roles in NASA’s science program. 

NASA’s early leaders also recognized that in a field 

as broad and diversified as space science, there was 

relatively little in-house expertise compared to the 

vaster pool of expertise outside the Agency. 

THE EARLY SPACE SCIENCE BOARD DREW 

STRENGTH FROM THE STATURE OF THE 

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND 

INDEPENDENCE FROM ITS RELATIVE 

FREEDOM FROM BUREAUCRATIC OR 

PROCEDURAL CONSTRAINTS.

The advisory tradition influenced by the NACA 

history and IGY-era committees, plus the fact that 

the SSB was in place before NASA was established, 

meant that the SSB was running when the infant 

NASA was just taking its first steps. Consequently, 

the SSB did not hesitate to interpret its charter very 

broadly. It asserted initiative to provide advice on 

the most fundamental issues (e.g., its view of the 

basic purpose of the U.S. civil space program) and 

to direct that advice to the very top of the Agency. 

The Board initiated studies on topics that it deemed 

important and did not always wait for NASA to 

come seeking advice. It developed a product mix 
64 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

National Academies committees: Strategic advice

NASA committees: Tactical advice

Research support and infrastructure

Research program management

Policy and budget direction

Oversight

Federal Advisory Committee Act

Program reports

Advocacy

Policy advice

Scientific Community:

Academia, industry, and 

national laboratories

• Research

• Technology development

• Training

Decision Makers:

White House and Congress

• Executive management

• Legislation

NASA

• Program management, 

planning, development, 

operations

FIGURE 6.1 Elements of the advisory ecosystem

 

that included long-range science strategies, technical studies, and program assessments based on 

in-depth analyses. The Board also delivered short 

letter reports that were prepared and delivered 

quickly and that were based on Board or committee members’ existing experience and expertise. 

The Board and its committees interacted 

often with NASA officials and with NASA’s 

internal committees. Indeed, on a few occasions 

in the 1960s and early 1970s, NASA committees 

and the SSB conducted joint studies for NASA. 

Movement of individual scientists between serving on SSB entities and NASA committees was 

not unusual, thereby contributing to cross communications and continuity at the expense of total 

independence of perspective between the two sets 

of advisors. 

An interesting test of the independence 

of NASA’s Space and Earth Science Advisory 

Committee and the SSB from each other occurred 

while SESAC was completing its Crisis report. 

SSB members shared the concerns that had driven 

SESAC to undertake its study, and the impacts of 

the Challenger accident greatly increased the sense 

of urgency at the SSB, just as they had with SESAC. 

Consequently, SESAC chair Lou Lanzerotti had 

discussions with SSB chair Tom Donahue about 

the possibility of the two bodies issuing a joint statement outlining their concerns, and a draft of such a 

statement had been prepared. However, at an April 

1986 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, 

Lanzerotti reported that National Academy of 

Sciences president Frank Press would not permit 

the issuance of a joint statement.1

 Press’s refusal 

to go along with the idea was, presumably, not 

because he disagreed with the points to be raised, 

but because he would not sanction any actions that 

could be interpreted as evidence that the SSB was 

1. Alexander document files on the 29 April 1986 NAC meeting, NASA HRC.
Chapter 6 • The Advisory Environment in the 1980s: A Critical Assessm

not acting independently and on its own. Soon 

afterwards, the SSB did send two of its own letter 

reports to the NASA Administrator citing SSB 

concerns, especially regarding the need to restore 

a mixed fleet of launch vehicles that would reverse 

NASA’s heavy dependence on the Space Shuttle.

NASA’S INTERNAL ADVISORY COMMITTEES 

EVOLVED IN PARALLEL WITH THE INDEPENDENT SSB. 

The Agency’s first scientific committees with external members were the discipline-specific subcommittees and panels serving under the Space Science 

Steering Committee. But these were more operational than strategic, because they assisted NASA 

managers in making selections amongst competing 

experiment proposals for flight missions. Hence, 

their primary purpose was to assist NASA in the 

procurement process rather than to establish goals 

and objectives or mission and program priorities. 

Beginning with the formation of the Physics 

Advisory Committee and the Lunar and Planetary 

Missions Board and Astronomy Missions Board 

there was always a set of advisory committees organized around certain scientific disciplines to advise 

senior managers in NASA’s science office. The disciplinary breadth of their portfolios would change 

over time, but the internal committees became a 

fixture operating in parallel with the SSB. Their 

operating style was often more informal and somewhat more person-to-person than that of the SSB. 

Hence, the internal committees capitalized on 

strengths of accessibility and quickness of response 

to complement the SSB’s strengths of stature and 

greater independence.

NASA program managers often developed close 

working relationships with the internal advisory 

committees and relied heavily on them. Former 

senior NASA executive Noel Hinners noted that 

when he became Associate Administrator for Space 

Science in 1974, he viewed the Physical Sciences 

Committee (PSC) as “my committee.”2

 In comparing the PSC with the SSB, Hinners found the 

former to be more useful because the members were 

inclined to be more responsive to issues that concerned the Agency. The SSB, in contrast, tended to 

act as a group of purists who had their own agenda 

and who were not as likely to be cognizant of constraints under which NASA was operating. 

The internal advisory structure also grew into a 

hierarchical network in which lower-level, more narrowly focused panels—Management Operations 

Working Groups (MOWGs)—provided advice 

across the science organization. The MOWGs at 

the lower end of the food chain advised program 

or project managers; the next level up advised discipline division directors; and each level of advisory 

group reported to the level above. A key attribute of 

the MOWGs was the fact that they could provide 

increasingly more specific advice about operational 

questions as one went down the food chain. NASA 

discipline managers were especially appreciative of 

the capacity of the MOWG system to help them 

stay keenly aware of the interests and views of their 

research communities.3

 Former OSSA Associate 

Administrator Lennard Fisk described MOWGs 

as follows:

I thought that was one of the great constructs of 

all time, because it really created paths of information internal to NASA for internal people. 

Suppose you are a branch head, and you don’t 

think your division chief is listening to you. 

So you talked to your advisory committee, and 

usually someone on those MOWGs served on 

the division director’s committee. So we really 

2. Hinners interview, 11 December 2013.

3. Science Definition Teams (SDTs) worked in a fashion that was similar to MOWGs. SDTs would be formed for the specific 

purpose of advising a program manager about recommended scientific goals and instrument payloads during the early study 

phase of a new flight project.
66 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

had this wonderful flow of information [to 

NASA] and to the community.4 

Former NASA Director of Astrophysics Charles 

Pellerin, who became a management consultant 

after leaving NASA, put it this way: “I don’t think 

there’s any system anywhere to get as close to this 

aspect of customers in any business I’ve ever seen.”5

THE NRC HAD BECOME THE PRINCIPAL 

SOURCE OF ADVICE ABOUT MAJOR SCIENTIFIC STRATEGIES, AND INTERNAL COMMITTEES WERE THE MAJOR SOURCE OF 

PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES.

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing into the 

1980s, the SSB prepared a series of major science 

strategy reports that covered all subfields of space 

science and also Earth science from space. These 

studies concentrated on long-range scientific goals 

and priorities, and they were usually supported by 

extensive, and often scholarly, discussions of the 

scientific basis for the study conclusions. NASA 

managers and internal advisory committees could, 

and often did, use the SSB reports as starting 

points or reference points from which to develop 

program strategies and priorities for specific missions or mission sets. For example, between 1969 

and 1980 the SSB’s Committee on Planetary and 

Lunar Exploration completed science strategy 

studies for the outer planets, the inner planets, and 

primitive solar system bodies.6 The NASA Advisory 

Council’s Solar System Exploration Committee 

used those reports as a scientific basis for its recommendations for the planetary exploration program 

through year 2000.7 Similarly, the NAC Earth 

System Science Committee drew on reports that 

were prepared by the SSB’s Committee on Earth 

Studies8 and on the results of Herbert Friedman’s 

International Geosphere Biosphere Program workshop9

 as the ESSC developed its reports in 1986 

and 1988.10

In addition, the SSB filled at least two unique 

roles. First, in its capacity as the U.S. National 

Committee for COSPAR, the SSB was the principal representative of the United States in international discussions between scientists about space 

research. Second, the SSB was the source of expert 

advice to NASA and to COSPAR on standards 

and approaches for planetary protection (i.e., prevention of biological contamination of solar system 

bodies by terrestrial microbes or terrestrial biological contamination by extraterrestrial organisms). 

For all these reasons, the SSB had become 

established as a major source of scientific advice for 

NASA and the rest of the U.S. space community.

4. Fisk interview, p. 5. Fisk also served as SSB Chair from 2003 to 2008.

5. Pellerin interview, p. 4.

6. National Research Council, Outer Planets Exploration: 1972–1985 (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1971); 

National Research Council, Strategy for Exploration of the Inner Planets: 1977–1987 (The National Academies Press, Washington, 

DC, 1978); and National Research Council, Strategy for the Exploration of Primitive Solar-System—Asteroids, Comets, and 

Meteoroids: 1980–1990 (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1980).

7. Solar System Exploration Committee, Planetary Exploration Through Year 2000, Part One: A Core Program (NASA Advisory 

Council, Washington, DC, 1983).

8. National Research Council, A Strategy for Earth Science from Space in the 1980s—Part I: Solid Earth and Oceans, (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1982), and A Strategy for Earth Science from Space in the 1980s and 1990s—Part II: 

Atmosphere and Interactions with the Solid Earth, Oceans, and Biota (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1985). 

9. National Research Council, Toward an International Geosphere-Biosphere Program: A Study of Global Change (National Academy 

Press, Washington, DC, 1983).

10. Earth System Sciences Committee, Earth System Science: Overview, A Program for Global Change (NASA Advisory Council, 

NASA, Washington DC, 1986).
Chapter 6 • The Advisory Environment in the 1980s: A Critical Assessm

FACA CREATED AN ORDERLY ADVISORY 

SYSTEM MANAGEMENT PROCESS AND 

ENSURED PUBLIC ACCESS.

Enactment of the Federal Advisory Committee Act 

in 1972 provided a layer of order, standardization, 

rigor, and oversight to advisory activities across the 

government. Perhaps most importantly, it provided 

for more substantive public information about and 

access to advisory activities. From all accounts, 

NASA made its advisory committee members more 

aware of the requirements, but FACA did not otherwise especially constrain the advisory process. 

It was largely invisible to most participants in the 

1970s and 1980s.

And importantly, both NASA’s MOWGs and the 

boards and committees of the National Academies 

were not required to operate under FACA requirements and constraints. MOWGs were exempted 

because their work was viewed as directed at the 

operational implementation of policy decisions 

that had already been made. National Academies’ 

advisory studies were exempted because the law did 

not apply to government contractors.

AN ENVIRONMENT OF CONSTRUCTIVE 

TENSION REMAINED.

NASA’s relationship with its outside advisors, 

regardless of whether they were serving on NASA’s 

internal committees or bodies under the National 

Academies, were always characterized by some level 

of constructive tension. Members of the scientific 

community believed that the U.S. space and Earth 

science program was their program and that NASA 

was charged to organize and conduct it on behalf of 

the scientific community. Consequently, the scientific community did not hesitate to view the advisory process as a means to give NASA direction and 

to take the Agency to task when it did not appear 

to be responsive or able to meet outside expectations. Everyone on both sides of the conversation 

understood that advisory bodies’ statements were 

only recommendations and that NASA still had 

the final authority to make and execute decisions. 

But that did not make advisors any more bashful.

This cultural tradition began at the time of 

NASA’s birth when the SSB sought to assume full 

responsibility for planning space research missions 

and selecting the experiments to be flown and the 

investigators to conduct them. The SSB ambitions 

were put to rest when NASA made it clear that the 

Board’s role was to be confined to advising on broad 

objectives and was not to involve detailed program 

formulation (See chapter 1). Nevertheless, the SSB 

never hesitated to advise the NASA Administrator 

and other NASA officials about the Board’s views 

on topics as disparate as the fundamental purpose 

of the U.S. space program or what the recommended mix of launch vehicles for scientific missions was to be. 

Likewise, NASA’s internal advisory committees 

rarely hesitated to engage their NASA sponsors in 

vigorous debate and to voice concerns about the 

content, pace, or direction of NASA’s science programs. At times the tension could become palpable, 

as was the case when conflicts about the direction of the program pushed both the Astronomy 

Missions Board and the Lunar and Planetary 

Missions Board to threaten to resign en masse in 

1969 and 1971, respectively (See chapter 3).

For their part, NASA science officials considered the advisory process essential and mostly took 

the flak philosophically. They recognized that the 

process was a key means to promote communication between NASA and the research community 

and that, in the long run, a strong advisory process 

helped foster a stronger program. More to the point, 

advisory committees often helped Agency managers find real solutions to real problems. NASA’s 

commitment to this point of view was clear as the 

Office of Space Science and Applications planned 

to reorganize its advisory committees in 1970 and 

as NASA Associate Administrator Homer Newell 

advised Fletcher about relations with the SSB in 

1971 (See chapter 3). 
68 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

NASA officials generally accepted, and often 

encouraged, vigorous debate and constructive 

criticism from their advisory bodies. For example, former OSSA director of astrophysics Charles 

Pellerin recalled his experience with the astrophysics subcommittee of SESAC:

“That was where almost all the advice that I 

personally received came from.... I liked putting the program out there and debating issues 

with them, because I liked the people. I liked 

working with them. Riccardo [Giacconi, then 

Space Telescope Science Institute Director] 

and I would go nose to nose, so nothing short 

of fisticuffs, but at the end of the day we liked 

each other.... We just both like to argue points 

vigorously.”11

While debates were vigorous and criticisms 

could be sharp, the process was usually constructive and civil. On the other hand, when times were 

tough, for example when budgets were shrinking, 

relationships could develop sharp edges and combative tones. Former SSAC and SESAC executive 

secretary Jeffrey Rosendhal recalled that his first 

exposure to the advisory community in the 1970s 

evidenced a particularly adversarial tone in which 

the attitude of the advisory committee was one 

of coming to meet at NASA so as to dump on 

the Agency.12

The tension was not always drawn between 

advisory committees and NASA. Rather, there 

were often natural tensions between committee members or blocs of members. For example, 

Claude Canizares described the environment in the 

early 1980s thusly:

“I think one of the challenges with these committees is that they’re in some sense representing the community. But they’re also basically 

where the factions all meet around the table 

and arm-wrestle with each other.... So the 

committee itself was hardly a unified committee. It was an assemblage like the loya jirga;

it was all the tribes were getting together.... 

There were attempts to get people to think 

big and think agency-wide. But it was a place 

where these tensions between the different 

parts of the community as well as between the 

community and NASA were inevitable. We 

would unify around how are we going to try 

to get space science high in the NASA agenda 

but then would struggle over who was going to 

get the new start.”13 

The challenge of getting the members of the 

scientific community to reach shared positions 

and present united views was put most succinctly 

by former NASA Associate Administrator Noel 

Hinners when he said, “There’s no one mind of the 

infamous science community. It’s only a community when an enemy shows up.”14

A Need for Leadership

As NASA turned thirty, one could describe the 

advisory ecosystem as steeped in history, thoroughly woven into the fabric of space and Earth 

sciences, largely open and visible to all stakeholders, and energized by constructive tension between 

NASA and the scientific community. The environment was also increasingly stressed for a number 

of reasons. Austere budgets during the end of the 

11. Pellerin interview, p. 8.

12. Rosendhal interview.

13. Canizares interview, p. 2.

14. Hinners interview, 18 August 2010, p. 19, NASA Headquarters Oral History Project, http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/

NASA_HQ/Administrators/HinnersNW/HinnersNW_8-18-10.pdf.
Chapter 6 • The Advisory Environment in the 1980s: A Critical Assessm

Carter administration and the beginning of the 

Reagan administration put pressure on the program as a whole. The near-death experience of the 

planetary science program, which was an extreme 

example of the budget stresses, led to formation of the Solar System Exploration Committee. 

Apprehension over threats to the vitality of the program overall and frustration with an unpredictable 

NASA decision-making process for priorities subsequently led to SESAC’s report on the Crisis in 

Space and Earth Sciences. And on top of all those 

issues, the Challenger accident had the potential to 

make matters worse across all of NASA.

Thus, the situation urgently called for leadership that could help reinforce the strengths of what 

had been a remarkably successful science program 

for three decades, restore the program, and provide 

some stability going forward. Over the ensuing 

two and a half decades, three key players—NASA, 

Congress, and the advisory community—all took 

actions that were relevant to this need. The chapters that follow in Part II will examine how each 

player dealt with the need for leadership.

PART II.

Advice in NASA’s Second

Three Decades

73

CHAPTER 7

NASA Creates Its Own Strategic Plan

Confronting a Crisis

As chapter 5 explains, the mid-1980s were a 

time of multiple stresses for NASA. Budget 

cuts in the early years of the Reagan administration had severely constrained the space and Earth 

science programs. Then the impacts of the January 

1986 Space Shuttle Challenger accident spread 

across the entire Agency. All launches planned 

for the Shuttle, which at the time reflected the 

Agency’s policy to make the Shuttle the primary 

launch vehicle, were grounded and indefinitely 

deferred. Launches of the Space Telescope and the 

Galileo Jupiter orbiter were put on hold, as were the 

launches of the planned European Space Agency 

Ulysses mission to pass over high-latitude regions 

of the Sun and the NASA Cosmic Background 

Explorer (COBE). COBE was subsequently modified to move to a Delta expendable rocket launch. 

Plans for a Shuttle-based Solar Optical Telescope 

mission were canceled. 

To make matters worse, the United States experienced Titan rocket launch failures in August 

1985 and April 1986, a failure of the tried-and-true 

Delta rocket in May 1986, and an Atlas Centaur 

launch failure due to a lightning strike in March 

1987. For all practical purposes, the U.S. space program was completely grounded in 1987.1

The dismal state of the U.S. space launch 

fleet exacerbated broader threats to the space and 

Earth science program that had been laid out in 

the SESAC Crisis report. And in a rather more 

profound sense, the combined effect of the U.S. 

launch stand-down and the fact that NASA had 

not launched or started a major new space science 

mission since the late 1970s left room to argue that 

the United States was no longer an international 

power in space exploration. 

A Change in Leadership

In April 1987, Lennard Fisk succeeded Burton 

Edelson as Associate Administrator for Space 

Science and Applications. Fisk had been an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center from 

1969 until 1977, when he joined the physics department faculty at the University of New Hampshire 

(UNH). At UNH he rose through the academic 

ranks and then undertook administrative assignments to become director of the Space Science 

Center, then director of research, and finally vice 

president for research and financial affairs until 

he moved to NASA Headquarters.2

 He was well 

1. James Gleick, “Errant U.S. Rocket Destroyed by Ground Control,” New York Times, 28 August 1986, available at http://www.

nytimes.com/1986/08/28/us/errant-us-rocket-destroyed-by-ground-control.html (accessed 11 August 2016).

2. Interview of Lennard A. Fisk by Rebecca Wright, NASA Oral History Program, 8 September 2010.
74 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

known as a working scientist, but his professorial 

demeanor concealed unusual skills at dealing with 

both the management and political environments 

of NASA Headquarters. 

Fisk’s first exposure to the political side of science came when he led efforts in the United States 

to gain support for a U.S.-European mission to 

send a pair of spacecraft over high-latitude regions 

of the Sun—the International Solar Polar Mission. 

The initial campaign succeeded in securing a 

budget new start during the Carter administration, 

but then the U.S. component fell victim to budget 

cuts during the near-death experience for planetary 

science early in the Reagan administration.3 While 

that experience was no doubt painful, Fisk applied 

what he learned to serve as chair of the steering 

committee of the Space Science Working Group, 

which was a lobbying activity organized through 

the American Association of Universities on behalf 

of space science in the United States. In the 1980s, 

Fisk also served on SESAC and its predecessor, 

SSAC, as well as on the Earth System Science 

Committee and the SSB. Thus, when Fisk assumed 

his new role at NASA, he was able to bring firsthand scientific, institutional management, and 

political experience and insight to the job. 

At his first meeting with SESAC, only one month 

after taking office, Fisk outlined four priorities:

1. providing for an orderly progression of 

new mission starts,

2. supporting an orderly buildup of Space 

Station laboratory science investigations,

3. securing necessary advanced technology 

funding to enable the start of the Earth 

Observing System in fiscal year 1991, and

4. ensuring the health of the scientific community, including the succession of the 

current generation of researchers, via a 

strong program of research and analysis 

and small missions and the like.4

Among Fisk’s first actions to pursue these priorities was the commissioning of an Office of Space 

Science and Applications strategic plan. He argued 

that, based on his experience at UNH, the need for 

real-life strategic planning was a given: “How do 

I know whether I succeed, if I don’t know what I 

am supposed to be doing?”5 The new OSSA strategic plan ended up changing relationships between 

NASA’s science office and its advisory committees, 

the research community, and decision makers in 

Congress and the administration.

Elements of a New Strategy

Fisk had several objectives as he set out to formulate a strategic plan. He wanted a clear and wellunderstood process for setting priorities and making 

decisions. He expected to replace the annual newstart shoot-outs that had clouded OSSA planning 

and been a source of frustrations highlighted in 

SESAC’s Crisis report. He also wanted to instill a 

sense of stability and dependability about the directions of the program so that the scientific community, students preparing to enter the community, 

and aerospace industry could be more confident 

about what were, and were not, likely prospects for 

future years. 

The way in which the principal elements of the 

new strategic plan came into focus sounds almost 

too quaint to be true. Early in his time as Associate 

Administrator, Fisk traveled to Japan for a meeting 

on international space program cooperation. While 

there, he took advantage of some free time to sit 

contemplatively with a pen and notepad in a quiet 

Japanese garden. There, he jotted down the framework for the strategy. 

3. Ibid.

4. Alexander document files from May 1987 SESAC meeting, NASA HRC.

5. Fisk interview, p. 8.
Chapter 7 • NASA Creates Its Own Strategic P

One of the beauties of the strategy was its simplicity. It could be explained in a way that lent itself 

to the one-hand rule—that is, the strategy involved 

three key elements, each of which could be outlined 

by enumerating points on the fingers of one hand.

The strategy itself would consist of five actions:

1. Establish a set of programmatic themes.

2. Establish a set of decision rules.

3. Establish a set of priorities for missions and 

programs within each theme.

4. Demonstrate that the strategy can yield a 

viable program.

5. Check the strategy for technology readiness 

and resource realism.6

Action number one produced five themes or 

structural elements:

1. the ongoing program,

2. leadership through major and moderate 

missions,

3. increased opportunity with small missions,

4. the transition to Space Station (when and 

where it offered unique opportunities), and

5. the research base.

Action number two produced five decision 

rules by which mission priorities and sequencing 

would be determined:7

1. complete the ongoing program,

2. initiate a major or moderate mission each 

year,

3. initiate small missions in addition to major 

and moderate missions, 

4. move aggressively, but sensibly, to build science instruments for the Space Station, and

5. seek research base augmentations whenever 

they are warranted.

Each annual update of the strategic plan then 

presented specific initiatives for the coming year as 

well as an explicit five-year queue for missions and 

facilities planned for the near-term future.

When the strategic plan was introduced in the 

late 1980s, NASA had escaped the budget doldrums of the early 1980s and was enjoying annual 

budget growth. In 1984, NASA Administrator 

James Beggs made a commitment to SSB chair 

Thomas Donahue that NASA would budget “at 

least 20 percent of NASA R&D funds for space 

science and applications, and [would] protect these 

funds from the demands resulting from Space 

Station development.”8,9 With NASA’s budget 

growing to support the Space Station development, 

plus the costs of returning the Space Shuttle to 

flight after the Challenger accident, science could 

count on growing in proportion to the total budget. 

The Fisk plan took note of that and was predicated 

on such continuing growth. However, the strategy 

also was meant to provide flexibility to adjust priorities within and among the five programmatic 

themes in response to changing budgetary, and 

other, circumstances.

An aspect of the strategy that was somewhat 

controversial was the fact that the second highest priority decision rule was to start a major or 

6. This list of actions and the two lists below (themes and decision rules) are from the Office of Space Science and Applications, 

Strategic Plan 1988 (NASA, Washington, DC, 1988).

7. Decadal surveys prepared in 2010 (and later) used their own versions of decision rules, not to outline how overall mission 

priorities and sequencing would be determined, but to recommend how NASA should deal with unforeseen implementation 

problems. See chapter 11.

8. James M. Beggs to Thomas M. Donahue, 9 May 1984, Space Studies Board Archives, National Research Council, Washington, DC.

9. When Beggs made his 20 percent commitment, the science budget did not include launch vehicle costs, which were carried 

elsewhere in NASA’s budget. After adding the costs of science mission launches, the fraction allocated for science was more in the 

neighborhood of 30 percent of the Agency budget.
76 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

moderate mission every year, so long as resources 

permitted. Given that the NASA and OSSA budgets were recovering from the lean times of a few 

years earlier, Fisk was convinced that this was an 

important way for the United States to recover from 

the interruptions caused by the Challenger accident 

and other launch system incidents and to demonstrate the robustness of the civil space program:

I felt because we were getting decent support 

from the government—from the Congress 

and administration and the agency—that 

we had to make a bold statement. We had to 

demonstrate that the space program was alive 

and well and was coming back rapidly. And 

one of the ways to do that was show that we 

were going to start major new programs. So I 

viewed this in a much more global, national, 

strategic context than just dealing with backlogs of missions or things like that. It was 

simply a matter of trying to make as bold a 

statement as quickly as we could that the space 

program was back on its feet.10 

Executing the Strategy

The strategic plan drew its scientific priorities from 

relevant SSB science strategy reports, and thus it 

was rooted in a foundation of National Academies 

scientific advice. But the development of the implementation strategies and priorities was very much 

a NASA effort. Fisk had a clear sense of where the 

SSB should hand off responsibility to NASA:

I mean we basically said, “Okay you have 

given the advice on what we should be doing, 

and this is our plan for how we are doing 

it. That’s our business; that’s our side of the 

equation.”... It wasn’t as if we sort of made up 

our own priorities. We didn’t ask them to say 

which goes first—AXAF or CRAF/Cassini or 

EOS—but each one of them had some blessing by an Academy committee someplace. And 

it was our job to see how to make a budget out 

of this thing, and I think that’s a reasonable 

division of labor.11

Once the plan was drafted, OSSA did present 

it to its internal advisory committees and invite 

comments and suggestions for improvements. But 

NASA never sought formal feedback from the SSB 

or its committees on the plan. When the draft 

strategy was first introduced to OSSA’s own division directors, there was some pushback over concerns that they had not been sufficiently involved 

in formulation of the basic elements of the strategy. 

Fisk acknowledged this and avowed that while the 

themes would not change, the decision rules could 

be evaluated annually to determine whether the 

environment mandated an adjustment.12 After the 

plan began to take hold, OSSA’s discipline divisions 

embraced the strategy and engaged their discipline 

sub-committees of SESAC and their MOWGs in 

refining discipline strategies that provided input to 

the plan. 

Fisk made it clear to the OSSA staff and advisory committees that the plan would be the guiding 

policy for the program and that it would, indeed, be 

utilized. At the first OSSA budget review after the 

plan was issued—a review of division proposals for 

the NASA fiscal year 1990 budget request in the 

summer of 1988—he arranged for a placard that 

sat in front of the meeting room saying that proposals for new initiatives that were not in the plan 

would not be in the budget. The message couldn’t 

be simpler or more to the point, and the actual 

budget preparation was true to that directive.

10. Fisk interview, p. 14. 

11. Fisk interview, pp. 21–22.

12. Alexander document files, NASA HRC.
Chapter 7 • NASA Creates Its Own Strategic P

The new strategic plan was a quick success. 

OSSA’s advisory committees lauded the plan, 

although there were some reservations about its 

success-oriented approach that relied on a growing 

resource envelope to support a succession of robust 

new program starts. The broader research community embraced the plan, because it put a sense 

of order in the new-start process and let advocates of new mission candidates know where they 

stood in the queue. Fisk often noted that, “They 

understood for the most part that they couldn’t 

jump the queue, and therefore, they were going to 

help sell the mission in front of them, so they got 

their shot.”13 Aerospace industry firms liked the 

plan because they could invest more confidently 

in preparing to compete for new mission development contracts. Budget planning relations with 

OMB were substantially improved. In a February 

1989 conversation with the Space Science and 

Applications Advisory Committee (SSAAC),14

the chief of OMB’s Science and Space Branch, 

Jack Fellows, told the committee that the strategic plan had “made OMB’s job much easier.”15

Likewise, OSSA enjoyed good relations with key 

members of Congress and their staffs, because the 

plan provided a clear, and stable, articulation of 

program priorities.

The 1991 astronomy and astrophysics decadal 

survey committee (see chapter 11) said, “In contrast to the fruitful 1970s, ...leadership in areas the 

United States had pioneered, such as x-ray astronomy, moved to Europe, the Soviet Union, and 

Japan. The currently planned program in space 

astronomy, described in the Strategic Plan (NASA, 

1988, 1989) for NASA’s Office of Space Science 

and Applications, can reverse this trend.”16

Indeed, the plan’s top priorities did remain 

largely stable and unchanged from 1988 through 

1991. All three top-priority major missions—the 

Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, the Comet 

Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby and Cassini Saturn 

orbiter pair of missions, and the Earth Observing 

System—were successful in securing budget starts 

in 1989, 1990, and 1991, respectively. However 

all three underwent significant restructuring and 

downsizing in later years as OSSA’s budget prospects tightened. The plan’s top priority small missions—a low-cost, principal-investigator-managed 

line of Explorer missions (called Scout-class missions or SMEXs for “small explorers”) and a similar 

line of low-cost Earth science missions called Earth 

Probes—received budget starts in 1989 and 1991, 

respectively.

At the November 1988 inaugural meeting of 

the newly established SSAAC, Fisk reported on the 

success and broad acceptance of the strategic plan 

to date. And he reported that OSSA could look forward to 35 flight mission launches over the next 

five years and a steady-state launch rate stemming 

from the strategic plan of as much as eight launches 

per year. Committee member Jeffrey Cuzzi noted 

that the upcoming 35 launches represented recovery from the earlier launch stand-down and that 

policy makers needed to appreciate that this was 

“a flood from a broken dam over a parched landscape” rather than a sign that all was well.17

13. Fisk interview, p. 9.

14. The three former OSSA NAC advisory committees were merged into a single Space Science and Applications Advisory 

Committee in late 1988.

15. Alexander document files on the 1 February 1989 SSAAC meeting, NASA HRC.

16. National Research Council, The Decade of Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics (The National Academies Press, Washington, 

DC, 1991), p. 63.

17. Alexander document files from the 3 November 1988 meeting of the Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee, 

NASA HRC.
78 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

The Strategy Faces a Changing 

Environment

Fisk had emphasized that the plan would be a living 

document that could adapt to changes in budgetary or other situations, and the challenges were not 

long in coming. While the fiscal year 1991 budget 

included a new start for the Earth Observing 

System, the prospects for more new mission starts 

in subsequent years were bleak. Thus, as early as 

the October 1990 meeting of SSAAC, Fisk warned 

of a constrained growth scenario. NASA Deputy 

Administrator J. R. Thompson worried that scientists were inclined to stack “too many bricks on 

the wagon,” and he added, “If you can throw them 

off when you get in trouble, you can throw them 

off now.”18

Then Fisk introduced the option of a significant 

change in the strategy: Should the priority order of 

the themes be changed to lead with small missions 

rather than major and moderate size missions? 

The SSAAC agreed to hold a strategic planning 

workshop in the summer of 1991, and planning 

for the effort began at the committee’s meeting 

in February 1991. Fisk explained that there were 

no major or moderate mission new starts in the 

administration’s fiscal year 1992 budget proposal 

to Congress. He challenged the committee to think 

about whether the time had come to reevaluate the 

entire mission queue, particularly if fiscal year 1993 

shaped up to be worse than 1992. The committee 

met again in June 1991 to prepare for its summer 

workshop. At that meeting, Fisk again cautioned 

about a tightening budget climate and said that 

the idea of making a major mission new start a big 

event in the budget needed to be changed and that 

the time had come to “think small.”19

The July 1991 SSAAC strategic planning 

workshop in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, represented an important rethinking of the OSSA 

strategy. Reflecting, in part, the vigorous debates 

that comprised the meeting and the fact that there 

were inevitably winners and losers, the meeting 

also gained fame (or infamy, if you felt that you 

were on the losing end of the priority order) as the 

“Woods Hole shoot-out.”20 Led by SSAAC chair 

and University of New Hampshire global change 

expert Berrien Moore, the participants included 

members of SSAAC, some former advisory committee members, representatives from the SSB, and 

OSSA division directors and other senior staff. Fisk 

opened the meeting by emphasizing that the time 

had come for a different, bolder plan, because the 

tide was no longer rising; he added that growth 

rates would be less than half of what OSSA had 

been enjoying.21

Over a five-day period, participants assessed 

current plans, reviewed the latest SSB strategies, 

vigorously debated strategic themes and decision 

rules, and grappled with alternative new-start 

queues. The Woods Hole strategy represented a 

new direction, particularly regarding the idea of 

combining intermediate, moderate, and majorscale missions into a single queue. In the end, the 

workshop reached consensus on four new decision rules (others were considered but not widely 

agreed to):

1. Complete the ongoing program.

2. Establish a mission queue by consensus. 

SSAAC subsequently defined priorities for 

missions in the queue to be (1) small innovative missions, (2) intermediate or moderateprofile missions, and (3) flagship missions.

18. Alexander document files from the 1 November 1990 meeting of the Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee.

19. Alexander document files from the 5 June 1991 meeting of the Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee.

20. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, NASA’s Office of Space Science and Applications Process, Priorities, and Goals (An 

OTA Background Paper, NTIS order #PB92-152503, Washington, DC, January 1992), p. 20.

21. Alexander document files on the 29 July 1991 SSAAC strategic planning workshop.
Chapter 7 • NASA Creates Its Own Strategic P

3. Implement the queue following the by-year 

sequence.

4. Initiate all missions on a given year’s line 

before proceeding to the next year’s line.22

In January 1992 the congressional Office of 

Technology Assessment (OTA) held a one-day 

workshop (convened at the request of Representative 

George Brown, chair of the House Committee 

on Science, Space, and Technology) to evaluate 

OSSA’s strategic planning process. The fifteen 

distinguished participants included University 

of Texas at Arlington Dean of Engineering John 

McElroy (chair), Princeton astrophysics professor 

and former astronomy and astrophysics decadal 

survey chair John Bahcall, oceanographer and 

former Bretherton committee member D. James 

Baker, MIT astrophysicist and future SSAAC 

chair Claude Canizares, former NASA Associate 

Administrator Noel Hinners, Bell Laboratories 

physicist and SSB chair Louis Lanzerotti, and 

George Washington University Space Policy 

Institute head John Logsdon.23

The OTA workshop participants concluded that 

OSSA’s strategic planning process had been notably 

successful in helping secure funding for NASA’s 

science programs, which had doubled between 

fiscal years 1982 and 1992. They applauded the 

planning process for the breadth of its outreach 

to the scientific community and the explicitness 

of its priority-setting decision rules, calling them 

“exemplary.” However, the workshop also raised 

questions about the strategy’s realism, noting 

that a strategy that always assumes rising funding 

lacks flexibility and resilience in the event that the 

success-oriented expectations can’t be met. Even 

after recognizing changes to the strategy that 

emerged from NASA’s 1991 Woods Hole workshop, 

participants in the OTA workshop were concerned 

that the revised plan might require more resources 

than what might be realistically available.24 In a 

way, the OTA workshop was remarkably prescient. 

OSSA did prepare a 1992 version of the strategic plan that incorporated the new directions recommended by SSAAC’s Woods Hole workshop. 

The new plan was never released, owing to other 

events at NASA, but it was used as a guiding document for the office’s operations during the year. 

On 1 April 1992, Daniel Goldin became 

NASA Administrator, succeeding Richard Truly. 

Goldin had been a senior executive at TRW Space 

and Technology Group, where he had responsibility for two of NASA’s Great Observatories 

(the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility and 

the Gamma-Ray Observatory) and a number of 

classified Department of Defense space missions 

(including the space segments of the Brilliant 

Pebbles and Brilliant Eyes projects under the 

Strategic Defense Initiative). Early in his tenure at 

NASA, he emphasized his interests in improving 

program efficiency, applying the principles of Total 

Quality Management, increasing adoption of new 

technologies in flight missions, and most notably, 

transitioning to a “faster-better-cheaper” approach 

to space missions. To incorporate his concept 

of faster-better-cheaper into the NASA culture, 

Goldin pressed hard on the Agency to find ways 

to reduce the cost of ongoing big projects by 30 

percent25 and to substantially increase the number 

of small, short-development-time missions. When 

reminded, for example at a November 1992 SSAAC 

meeting, that the revised OSSA strategic plan had 

22. Alexander document files, NASA HRC.

23. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, NASA’s Office of Space Science and Applications Process, Priorities, and Goals, An 

OTA Background Paper, NTIS order #PB92-152503, Washington, DC, January 1992.

24. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, NASA’s Office of Space Science and Applications Process, Priorities, and Goals, An 

OTA Background Paper, NTIS order #PB92-152503, Washington, DC, January 1992.

25. Alexander document files from 18 May 1992 Office of Space Science and Applications senior staff meeting.
80 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

already anticipated the need to move in that direction, Goldin argued that the shift was not being 

applied sufficiently broadly across all space and 

Earth science disciplines and that there was still 

an imbalance between planning for major missions 

and small mission concepts.26

In October 1992, Goldin announced his intention to break OSSA into three pieces that would 

place space sciences (astrophysics, planetary science, and solar and space physics), Mission to 

Planet Earth, and micro-gravity life and physical 

sciences under three separate management offices. 

He explained to SSAAC during the November 

1992 meeting that OSSA was too big and that 

Mission to Planet Earth was not able to get adequate public visibility inside OSSA. SSAAC voiced 

concerns about potential threats from the reorganization to the OSSA strategic planning process and 

urged that the process remain in place to provide 

an integrated approach to planning NASA science programs and that NASA embrace the results 

of SSAAC’s Woods Hole planning workshop.27

The reorganization was formally implemented in 

April 1993. 

Goldin named Fisk NASA Chief Scientist with 

responsibilities for integrating scientific program 

quality control, planning, and community outreach across the Agency and for communicating 

about NASA science both to an interested public 

and to potential international partners. Goldin cultivated an image of being a visionary leader, but 

his brusque demeanor, aggressive and often chaotic 

management style, and explosive temper frequently 

neutralized the positives that he espoused. When 

an SSAAC member suggested that making Fisk 

a “roving ambassador without authority” was not 

likely to be accepted by the scientific community, 

Goldin replied, “I’ve said all I need to say.”28

The main elements of the 1992 OSSA strategic 

plan remained in place during the transition to the 

new organizational structure and leadership, but 

each of the new offices was left to develop its own 

strategic plan in future years. Fisk left NASA in 

July of 1993 to become chair of the Department of 

Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences at the 

University of Michigan. In 2003, he became chair 

of the Space Studies Board and was also selected to 

hold an endowed professorship at Michigan named 

in honor of Thomas M. Donahue, who had served 

as SSB chair in the 1980s.

Assessing the Impact of the

1988 Strategy

Daniel Goldin’s reorganization of OSSA brought 

an end to the approach to strategic planning that 

had been in place since 1988, but the process had 

enduring impacts. First, the strategy was a key 

factor in realizing Fisk’s goal of restoring a vigorous NASA space and Earth science program and 

reestablishing U.S. international leadership in 

space research. Second, it introduced an orderly 

process for making decisions about priorities and 

communicating those priorities to the outside 

world. Third, the strategy helped build a significant degree of shared ownership, coherence, and 

mutual support across a diverse scientific community that could otherwise easily resort to the behavior of warring factions. The net result of all these 

impacts was that NASA’s overseers elsewhere in the 

executive branch and in Congress were more easily 

persuaded to be supportive of the Agency’s science 

program proposals. In short, they believed that 

NASA’s science office had its act together. 

The process served the Agency and the space 

research community well during a period of 

26. Alexander document files from the 5 November 1992 meeting of the Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee.

27. Alexander document files from the 5 November 1992 meeting of the Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee.

28. Alexander document files from the 5 November 1992 meeting of the Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee.
Chapter 7 • NASA Creates Its Own Strategic P

healthy budget growth. However, it proved to be 

more challenging, but not irrelevant, when a period 

of constrained resources returned.

The 1988 OSSA strategic planning process had 

another, arguably more profound, impact. Prior to 

that time, there had been no coherent internal strategic planning process that spanned the full range 

of NASA science programs. Agency managers 

relied, instead, on discipline-oriented science strategies that were usually developed by the SSB and 

its committees and/or program strategies recommended by the Agency’s internal advisory committees. The approach often led to long-range plans 

that were not especially strategic, science priorities 

that were not necessarily translated into program 

priorities, and reliance on the SSB as the principal 

long-range player in the process. With the advent 

of the new OSSA strategic plan, the division of 

roles between NASA and the SSB changed significantly. NASA still relied on programmatic advice 

from its internal committees such as SESAC and 

on long-term scientific advice from the SSB, but 

NASA exercised more control over its future direction. This change did not diminish the importance 

of the SSB, as chapter 11 will show, but it did influence the overall division of responsibilities.

83

CHAPTER 8

Congress Issues a Mandate—

The Government Performance and Results Act

I

n 1993, Congress passed legislation that mandated the use of certain planning and performance evaluation processes in all federal 

departments and agencies.1

 One might not expect 

that a set of bureaucratic requirements imposed 

on NASA (and all other agencies) would have an 

impact on NASA’s use of outside science advice, 

but it did. This chapter tells that story.

In the late 1970s, the California city of 

Sunnyvale began to use a performance-based 

planning and management system that integrated 

long-range planning, results-oriented budgeting, 

and performance measurement to run the city government and provide services to its citizens. One 

can imagine how the aerospace industry’s project 

management culture in the area might well have 

spilled over into local government. As the system 

evolved, its successes won attention and plaudits 

from scholars studying municipal and regional 

government management, as well as from the 

Clinton administration Office of Management 

and Budget (OMB). Former Sunnyvale Mayor and 

City Council member John Mercer was serving as 

Republican counsel to the Senate Governmental 

Affairs Committee in 1990 when he interested 

Senator William Roth of Delaware in applying 

Sunnyvale’s process to performance-based management in the federal government. Roth, who 

was also author of one of the three bills that were 

merged in the Senate to form the FACA legislation, subsequently introduced legislation to adopt 

Mercer’s ideas. Roth’s bill ultimately received broad 

bipartisan congressional and Clinton White House 

support, and the Government Performance and 

Results Act (GPRA) was enacted in August 1993.2

GPRA applied to every federal department and 

independent agency. The law required agencies 

to prepare a five-year strategic plan that would be 

revised or updated every three years. It required 

annual performance plans that involved goals that 

were linked to the agency’s strategic plan. The act 

also called for an annual report that provided a 

publicly available assessment of the agency’s performance as measured against its goals.3

1. Government Performance and Results Act, Public Law No. 103-62, enacted 3 August 1993, https://www.congress.gov/bill/

103rd-congress/senate-bill/20/text.

2. See Homer A. Neal, Tobin L. Smith, and Jennifer B. McCormick, Beyond Sputnik: U.S. Science Policy in the Twenty-First Century

(University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 2008), p. 76. Also John Mercer, “The Government Performance and Results Act,” 

Strategisys.com, 2016, at http://strategisys.com/gpra; William Matthews, “Giving life to GPRA” (Federal Computer Week, 9 December 

2001) at https://fcw.com/articles/2001/12/09/giving-life-to-gpra.aspx?m=1; and Florence Olsen “Interview: John Mercer, government 

reformer” GCN.com, 27 July 1998, at https://gcn.com/articles/1998/07/27/interview-john-mercer-government-reformer.aspx.

3. Government Performance and Results Act, Public Law No. 103-62, enacted 3 August 1993, https://www.congress.gov/bill/

103rd-congress/senate-bill/20/text.
84 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

From the perspective of NASA’s use of external 

scientific advice, GPRA had at least two significant 

implications. First, the mandate to develop regular 

strategic and performance plans created a continuing opportunity for NASA to utilize its advisory 

bodies in helping to translate scientific priorities 

recommended by the scientific community into 

Agency plans. Second, there was an opportunity 

to enlist the assistance of advisory bodies in evaluation of agency performance as measured against 

those plans. The former process—scientific planning—was already a relatively well-established 

practice in NASA’s science office. The latter process—short-term performance evaluation—posed 

a perilous challenge in the sense that scientific 

research is fundamentally a long-term, and often 

unpredictable, endeavor.

After GPRA had been in place for more than 

a decade, Congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas, 

along with Senators Tom Carper of Delaware and 

Mark Warner of Virginia, led an effort to update 

the legislation to reflect what had been learned 

during its first decade or more. That effort culminated in enactment of the GPRA Modernization 

Act (GPRAMA) of 2010,4 which put those lessons 

into practice. 

Among the most significant changes was a 

provision to require that agency strategic plans 

be prepared at four-year intervals (instead of 

three) and aligned with the dates of presidential 

administrations, thereby ensuring that the strategic plans would be less likely to become irrelevant when administrations changed during an 

interval between plan due dates and more likely 

to reflect administration policies. The new legislation also changed the interval covered by annual 

performance plans so that they spanned two-year 

intervals rather than only one year, and it required 

that the performance plans show how they relate to 

agency strategic goals and objectives.5

NASA’s Response to GPRA 

To comply with GPRA requirements, NASA 

established a strategic management system that set 

out Agency policies and procedures for formulating the required strategic plans and performance 

plans and reports and that defined the linkages 

between the Agency’s annual planning, budgeting, and performance evaluation schedules.6

 Every 

NASA program office was expected to engage in 

strategic planning to support the requirement for 

triennial Agency strategic plans. Therefore, while 

NASA’s science offices did not need to produce 

annual strategic plan updates as OSSA had done 

through 1991, they were expected to produce an 

up-to-date plan every three years. In view of the 

fact that the goals and objectives outlined in the 

strategic plan were often long-term, NASA established a process by which major program offices 

would also prepare program-element roadmaps that 

were intended to span the gap between long-range 

goals and annual GPRA performance plans and to 

provide more specific implementation details that 

would not be included in a strategic plan. In space 

and Earth science, discipline-level subcommittees 

of the NASA Advisory Council assisted in the 

road-mapping process.

For many years, the SSB had produced occasional assessments of NASA’s responses to SSB scientific strategies. In 1997, Associate Administrator 

Wesley Huntress and strategic planning lead Carl 

4. U.S. Congress, GPRA Modernization Act of 2010, Public Law 111-352, enacted 4 January 2011; available at https://www.gpo.gov/

fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ352/pdf/PLAW-111publ352.pdf. 

5. For a thorough summary of the provisions in GPRAMA and differences from GRPA, see John M. Kamansky, “GPRA 

Modernization Act of 2010 Explained,” IBM Center for The Business of Government, Washington DC, http://www.

businessofgovernment.org/sites/default/files/GPRA%20Modernization%20Act%20of%202010.pdf.

6. For example, see “NASA Strategic Management Handbook,” (NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, NPG 1000.2) at http://

www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codez/plans/2000Handbook.pdf.
Chapter 8 • Congress Issues a Mandate—The Government Performance and Results 

Pilcher in NASA’s Office of Space Science asked the 

SSB to conduct a formal review of the office’s draft 

triennial strategic plan, and that review process 

was repeated through 2003. The Board organized 

a similar review for the Office of Earth Science in 

2000 and 2003. After the two offices were recombined, the SSB also reviewed the draft 2006 and 

2014 Science Mission Directorate science plans. 

All of the SSB reviews of Agency science plans 

shared certain common findings and conclusions. 

They all reported that the NASA plans presented 

appropriate scientific goals and objectives that were 

generally consistent with science priorities and 

strategies recommended in earlier NRC reports. 

The reviews often raised some concerns about 

whether the NASA drafts provided adequate attention to balance between spaceflight missions and 

supporting investments in research, data analysis, 

and advanced technology development and also 

whether they addressed Agency responsibilities for 

helping to nurture future members of the aerospace 

research workforce. 

However, the most notable conclusion that 

every SSB review highlighted involved concerns 

about the extent to which the NASA documents 

were genuinely strategic. For example, the Board’s 

review of the 1997 Office of Space Science Plan, 

which was arguably the most favorable of all of the 

reviews, concluded that

[T]he document’s utility as a strategic plan 

could be augmented by broadly strengthening its presentation of key strategic processes 

[including] a discussion of budget and schedules for accomplishing the science goals [that] 

would help demonstrate their realism, balance, 

and feasibility.7

The most scathing of all the reviews was the 

“Assessment of NASA’s Draft 2003 Earth Science 

Enterprise Strategy,” which found that, “The 

ESE draft document does not clearly and compellingly articulate the Earth Science Enterprise’s 

rationale, scope, relationships, and programmatic 

approaches.”8 Consequently, the report recommended that NASA’s plan be revised to address 

the following:

missing elements of a strategic plan, including information on schedules, milestones, and 

evaluation criteria and approaches. In particular, the ESE [Earth Science Enterprise] draft 

document should discuss the methodology 

and the criteria that will be used in establishing 

relative program priorities.9

If one fast-forwards to 2013, that SSB review 

went to considerable lengths over the need for NASA 

to clearly and directly communicate the basis for a 

realistic strategy in the face of tough times:

NASA finds itself faced with a number of challenges in the near and more distant future. 

One of the most fundamental challenges 

is the uncertain and apparently decreasing 

level of available funding for space science 

in real terms.... This fiscal reality makes it 

more important than ever for NASA to have 

a clearly articulated and consistently applied 

method for prioritizing why and how its 

scarce fiscal resources will be apportioned with 

respect to the science program in general and 

on a more granular level among component 

scientific disciplines. The rationale behind 

this apportionment needs to be transparently 

7. Space Studies Board, On NASA’s Office of Space Science Draft Strategic Plan, letter report from SSB Chair Claude Canizares to 

OSS Associate Administrator Wesley Huntress, 27 August 1997, p. 5.

8. Space Studies Board, Assessment of NASA’s Draft Earth Science Enterprise Strategy (National Research Council, National 

Academies Press, Washington DC, 2003), p. 1.

9. Space Studies Board, Assessment of NASA’s Draft Earth Science Enterprise Strategy (National Research Council, National 

Academies Press, Washington DC, 2003), p. 1.
86 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

communicated, both internally and externally.... Decisions that will cause a failure to 

achieve previously declared goals, or a loss of 

national capability and capacity, ought to be a 

deliberate and clearly communicated choice.10

In this case at least, NASA took heed of the 

thrust of the 2013 review. Marc Allen, who was 

then the Science Mission Directorate’s Deputy 

Associate Administrator for Research, noted that 

some of the shortcomings reflected the fact that the 

draft NASA plan had been sent out for review prematurely. Nevertheless, he found that the review 

was still helpful: 

[T]he review was really valuable for several reasons. I mean, it showed us some things we need 

to fix up in a fundamental way and also kind 

of woke us up a little bit and made us realize 

that we really had to focus more on it. But you 

know, NASA manages the science program 

budget on behalf of the research community. 

And it’s one of those things Harry Truman 

said, “In Washington, if you want a friend get 

a dog.” It’s not quite the same situation, but 

the funding agency that can’t stand up in front 

of its constituencies and hear what they’ve got 

to say is no longer viable. You really have to 

be ready to make the decisions and then take 

the medicine.11

In its final version of the 2014 science plan,12

NASA did add expanded discussions of the different kinds of challenges that confronted each of the 

Science Mission Directorate’s discipline divisions. 

The revised document also added material that 

responded to SSB calls for expanded discussions 

of needs for advanced technologies for future missions and explicit mapping of how the SMD program would respond to priorities recommended 

by the SSB’s decadal survey reports (see chapter 

11). However, the plan probably stopped short of 

what the SSB reviewers wanted to see in terms of 

presenting explicit decision rules for coping with 

budgets that would be too lean to let the Agency 

meet its long-term science goals. NASA’s hesitance 

to be more definitive probably reflected the fact 

that the science plan had to be developed in consultation with, and approved by, OMB officials 

who were rarely willing to tie the administration’s 

hands about how future budget problems might 

be handled. 

Although the SSB had conducted periodic 

assessments of NASA’s programmatic progress as 

measured against SSB science strategies, the whole 

idea of GPRA-mandated short-term assessments 

of results or outcomes was a new concept. In the 

late 1990s, Office of Space Science representatives inquired informally about whether the Board 

would organize a process for evaluating and grading NASA’s annual GPRA performance reports. 

The SSB was skeptical about the feasibility and 

meaningfulness of annual evaluations of research 

outcomes and declined to take on this role. 

Consequently, GPRA created significant new 

opportunities for NASA’s internal advisory committees. The cycle of producing strategic plans at 

three-year intervals and performing performance 

reviews every year presented a ready match for 

engaging internal advisory committees such as 

SSAC and its successors. Once GPRA processes 

were phased in, NASA did put its in-house advisory committees to work in reviewing the Agency’s 

annual performance reports. 

10. Space Studies Board, Review of the Draft 2014 Science Mission Directorate Science Plan (National Research Council, National 

Academies Press, Washington DC, 2013), p. 6.

11. Allen interview, 7 May 2014, p. 11.

12. NASA tried an experiment with the NASA 2014 Science Plan, by not producing printed copies and only posting the document 

on the Internet and also making it available for download. See http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2014/05/02/2014_

Science_Plan-0501_tagged.pdf.
Chapter 8 • Congress Issues a Mandate—The Government Performance and Results 

Monitoring the performance of spaceflight 

mission development and operations can be relatively straightforward, because performance measures can be derived from key project milestones 

such as hardware deliveries and tests and spacecraft 

design and flight readiness reviews. To tackle the 

more complex job of measuring research program 

performance, NASA science discipline divisions 

(e.g., astrophysics or planetary science) frame their 

evaluations around key science questions that are 

linked to higher-order science goals in the office’s 

strategic plan. The divisions prepare annual 

self-evaluations and then have those reviewed by 

the respective science discipline subcommittees of 

the science office’s NAC committee. Through this 

process, the advisory committees play a direct role 

in development of the accountability reports that 

NASA submits to Congress.

NASA’s Allen voiced his surprise that at least 

some advisory committee members found this to 

be an enjoyable exercise:

They would basically have a conversation about 

events that had happened scientifically during 

the year and decide whether it was about what 

you’d expect for the amount of money that 

got spent or if there were disappointments 

or calamities.... And they go through these 

things and then grade them. It struck me as 

something that must be incredibly tedious, but 

I had more than one subcommittee member 

say it was the most enjoyable thing that they 

did, because it was the only time when they 

came to subcommittee meetings that they 

actually got to talk about scientific results.13

National Academies Views on GPRA

In 1998, the National Academies Committee 

on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy 

(COSEPUP) examined the GPRA process from 

the perspective of evaluating research activities. 

The committee reported two major conclusions:

• The useful outcomes of basic research 

cannot be measured directly on an annual 

basis, because the usefulness of new basic 

knowledge is inherently too unpredictable; 

so the usefulness of basic research must be 

measured by historical reviews based on a 

much longer timeframe. 

• That does not mean that there are no 

meaningful measures of performance of 

basic research while the research is in progress; in fact, the committee believes that 

there are meaningful measures of quality, 

relevance, and leadership that are good 

predictors of eventual usefulness, that 

these measures can be reported regularly, 

and that they represent a sound way to 

ensure that the country is getting a good 

return on its basic research investment.14

The COSEPUP report made several recommendations that were particularly relevant to the 

advisory process:

• For basic research programs, agencies 

should measure quality, relevance, and 

leadership.... The use of measurements 

needs to recognize what can and cannot 

be measured. Misuse of measurement can 

lead to strongly negative results; for example, measuring basic research on the basis 

13. Allen interview, 7 May 2014, p. 10.

14. Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, Evaluating Federal Research Programs: Research and the Government 

Performance and Results Act (National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1999), p. 2.
88 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

of short-term relevance would be extremely 

destructive to quality work. 

• Federal agencies should use expert review 

(i.e., peer review) to assess the quality of 

research they support, the relevance of that 

research to their mission, and the leadership of the research. Expert review must 

strive for balance between having the most 

knowledgeable and the most independent 

individuals serve as members.

• Both research and mission agencies should 

describe in their strategic and performance plans the goal of developing and 

maintaining adequate human resources in 

fields critical to their missions both at the 

national level and in their agencies.

• The science and engineering community 

can and should play an important role in 

GPRA implementation. As a first step, 

they should become familiar with agency 

strategic and performance plans.15

In 2001, the National Research Council 

(NRC) followed up on its earlier study with a 

more in-depth look at government research agencies’ implementation of GPRA, focusing on how 

five agencies—NSF, NIH, DOD, DOE, and 

NASA—operated under the law. The study report 

reemphasized the fact that evaluating research 

progress is difficult because one cannot easily measure the generation of knowledge. Nevertheless, 

it concluded that the five agencies had “made a 

good-faith effort” to comply with GPRA and that 

GPRA was having a positive effect on “some agencies,” albeit at the expense of added workload.16

The NRC report also repeated earlier advice that 

“federally supported programs of basic and applied 

research should be evaluated regularly through 

expert review, using the performance indicators 

of quality, relevance, and, where appropriate, 

leadership.”17

When the NRC looked explicitly at NASA, 

the committee found that meeting the requirements for program evaluation posed particular 

challenges. While proposal peer review provided a 

proven mechanism for evaluating the merit of individual principal-investigator-level research projects, 

it could not be directly adapted to broader projects and programs. Consequently, the NRC report 

noted that NASA had decided to institute a new 

level of reviews of clusters of research programs 

called senior reviews.18 Although NASA had other 

reasons beyond GPRA for conducting the space 

mission senior reviews, it did represent an important step in the Agency’s use of outside advisors in 

managing the science program.

Impacts of NASA GPRA Plans

The process of developing strategic and performance plans is often mentioned as being more 

valuable than the documents that emerge from 

the process. For example, former Office of Space 

Science Associate Administrator Wes Huntress 

described the NASA strategic planning process 

as follows:

The planning process was key...because what 

you had to do was create a consensus in the 

community that what NASA was strategically 

15. Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, Evaluating Federal Research Programs: Research and the Government 

Performance and Results Act (National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1999), pp. 38–40.

16. Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, Implementing the Government Performance and Results Act for Research: A 

Status Report (National Academy Press, Washington DC, 2001), p. 2.

17. Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, Implementing the Government Performance and Results Act for Research: A 

Status Report (National Academy Press, Washington DC, 2001), p. 5.

18. Chapter 10 explains in detail how senior reviews used panels of outside experts to assess the post-launch scientific effectiveness 

and productivity of groups of spaceflight missions in particular scientific disciplines.
Chapter 8 • Congress Issues a Mandate—The Government Performance and Results 

planning to do they could support. That when 

they talked to their representatives in Congress 

they would talk positively about it. And so the 

process was very, very important and involved 

getting out to the community and at their 

meetings, using key community members in 

the planning process. So the process was absolutely key.19

Seasoned NASA science managers have not 

always been as enthusiastic about the clout of the 

planning documents outside NASA. Former Science 

Mission Directorate Associate Administrator Ed 

Weiler was skeptical about the persuasiveness of the 

NASA plans compared to the externally developed 

strategies from the NRC:

You have to ask yourself a question. Have you 

ever gone back 10 years and looked at the 

roadmap for OSS and asked yourself where we 

are today, or go back 5 years and ask? I mean, 

they are interesting exercises, but with the 

vagaries of Congress, the vagaries of funding, 

the bigger picture with decadals [NRC decadal 

surveys] coming out, roadmaps tend always to 

be superseded by events. To be brutally honest, 

I found the decadals to be a better roadmap of 

what we should be doing than any other roadmaps...because they had more cachet. I mean, 

go use the NASA roadmap or the NASA strategic plan as a justification to Congress and see 

how far that will get you.20

Marc Allen took a pragmatic view of the role of 

NASA strategic plans:

If you look at the strategic plans that the science office has turned out under its various 

names, the programs are described basically 

carefully segregated from one another, and the 

assumption is that their budgets are as well. In 

fact, a lot of the strategic planning gets done 

based on budgets and programmatics in the 

budget formulation process, and the strategic 

plan basically documents it...It’s sort of like 

going to buy a car. You get a brochure with 

colored pictures. You have a section on the 

engines, and one on the luxury features, and 

one on the trim options, and so on. But the 

car is manufactured someplace else, so it’s not 

manufactured using that brochure. It sort of 

explains what it has, why it has it, and why it’s 

a good thing. I think of those strategic plans as 

being more or less like that.21

Marcia Smith, who was the primary expert on 

NASA in the Congressional Research Service for 

many years, summarized her assessment of the 

importance of the NASA plans as follows, although 

like Weiler’s comment above, she did not entirely 

fault NASA:

[T]hey were not very useful or relevant. A lot 

of it is because it was just a bunch of words 

on paper. They are very nice thoughts, but 

the reality of implementing any of those never 

seemed to work out. And a lot of that was factors that NASA itself couldn’t control. I think 

NASA’s budget has been up and down and up 

and down and up and down so much. Doing 

any of those kinds of strategic planning exercises is really no more than checking a box— 

somebody requires you to do a strategic plan.22

But like Huntress, Smith acknowledged that 

the process alone had its own benefits:

19. Huntress interview, p. 9.

20. Weiler interview, p. 4.

21. Allen interview, 9 September 2013, p. 7.

22. Smith interview, p. 14. Smith also served as director of the SSB from 2006 until 2009.
90 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

My own view is that the product is not very 

worthwhile, but the process is. Getting people 

to sit down around a table and actually talk 

about “What are you trying to accomplish, 

how you are trying to accomplish it, what do 

you want to do?” I think that is a good thing 

to be doing all the time. And if they want to 

spit out a report every three years or four years, 

that’s fine; maybe it’s useful to have a product. 

But I have never found any of those products 

particularly useful.23

Not everyone inside NASA was happy with 

GPRAMA, because implementation of the new 

version of the legislation, at least as prescribed by 

the Office of Management and Budget, turned 

out to be quite a task. When NASA officials who 

were responsible for NASA’s strategic plan briefed 

the NAC Science Committee about the process in 

July 2013, they reported that new requirements for 

performance plans and evaluations after the enactment of GPRAMA had led to “monstrous growth” 

in effort by the planning staff, which led to about 

five times as much work, but no additional planning budget compared to the past.24

GPRA in Context

It’s interesting to look back at Sunnyvale, California, 

where it arguably all began more than thirty years 

ago. Sunnyvale still uses performance-based principles in preparing its 20-year financial plan, but 

the system has evolved just as federal agencies’ 

application of GPRA has evolved. An early change 

was to shift from output-based measures to outcome-based measures, just as the federal government has. And Sunnyvale managers realized that 

they needed to avoid “world peace” metrics and 

become more practical and more nuanced in selecting metrics that reflected the diversity of kinds of 

city operations and services, much in the same 

way that federal R&D agencies needed metrics 

that reflect the distinctions between operations 

and research. So while Sunnyvale’s contemporary 

approach to long-range budget planning still uses 

performance-based metrics to help instill financial 

discipline and the city government still takes a datadriven approach to its job, the performance-based 

system has become less of a driving force than it 

may have been decades ago.25

As Marcia Smith and others have noted, GPRA 

and GPRAMA have become relatively invisible 

or inconsequential to most people outside federal 

agencies. Furthermore, both government and outside assessments of the impacts of the legislation 

have produced rather lukewarm conclusions about 

how significantly GPRA improves agency performance.26 And some federal staff members have 

felt that the law exacerbated an already heavily 

burdened culture that lived via paperwork rather 

than measurable results. GPRA did push agencies 

to be more organized and more transparent in their 

planning and more explicit in their performance 

measurement, but whether or how performance 

23. Smith interview, p. 15.

24. Minutes of the NASA Advisory Council Science Committee meeting of 29 July 2013, p. 4.

25. Sunnyvale update based on the author’s 14 August 2014 interview with Sunnyvale Director of Finance, Grace Leung.

26. For example, see “Managing for Results: Implementation of GPRA Modernization Act Has Yielded Mixed Progress in Addressing 

Pressing Governance Challenges,” Government Accountability Office, Washington, DC, GAO report 15-819, 30 September 

2015; Donald Moynihan, “The New Federal Performance System: Implementing the GPRA Modernization Act,” IBM Center for 

the Business of Government, Washington DC, 2013, http://businessofgovernment.org/sites/default/files/The%20New%20Federal%20

Performance%20System.pdf; and Beryl A. Radin,“The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) and the Tradition of 

Federal Management Reform: Square Pegs in Round Holes?,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, January 2000, 

10, pp. 111–135.
Chapter 8 • Congress Issues a Mandate—The Government Performance and Results 

assessment is used to manage is unclear. One can 

debate whether the mandated procedures achieved 

the goals of openness and performance-based management, but nevertheless both FACA and GPRA 

did press agencies to adhere to an explicit standard 

and to assess progress.

However, as the next chapter will show, the 

push to expand the principle of openness and 

accountability also spun off approaches that threatened to compromise, or even neuter, the attributes 

of flexibility, responsiveness, and agility that agencies often needed.

93

CHAPTER 9

Congress Drops Another Shoe—

The NRC Gets Its Own FACA Section

An institution should never become overconfident or complacent about its standing or 

its clout. In the 1990s, the National Academy 

of Sciences and its operating arm and affiliated 

entities (the National Research Council [NRC], 

the National Academy of Engineering [NAE], 

and the Institute of Medicine [IOM]) were wellestablished and respected sources of independent, 

expert, science, and technology advice for the federal government. The institution had a long record, 

a reputation of impeccable stature, and remarkable freedom to operate as an independent, nongovernment entity. Following the creation of 

the NRC under an executive order by President 

Woodrow Wilson in 1916, Presidents Dwight 

Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush formally reaffirmed the importance of the NRC in their own 

executive orders in 1956 and 1993, respectively.1

While the institution’s reputation and stature 

remained untarnished, the independence of the 

NRC and its sister organizations came under special scrutiny in the mid-1990s. The NRC had been 

exempt from procedures and constraints imposed 

by FACA, because the law was not interpreted to 

apply to committees established by government 

contractors or committees not established by the 

government itself. The NRC usually did business 

as a government contractor and formed its study 

committees independent of any government control, so NRC studies were considered FACA-free. 

Furthermore, the NRC had long-established policies and procedures for dealing with such issues as 

potential committee member conflicts of interest, 

closed meetings for committee deliberations, and 

independent peer reviews of draft study reports. 

But those aspects of a study were conducted internally at the NRC and were not routinely shared 

with the outside world. That was about to change.

In 1994, the Animal Defense Legal Fund, 

joined by Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment 

of Animals and the Association of Veterinarians for 

Animal Rights, sued in Federal Court to require 

that the NRC be required to comply with FACA. 

The NRC had been contracted by the National 

Institutes of Health to revise the NRC’s widely 

used “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory 

Animals,”2

 and the plaintiffs objected to how committee members were chosen. The plaintiffs also 

sought to require that all the committee’s meetings 

be open to the public so that the public could have 

access to the committee’s deliberations. The defendants in the suit were the Department of Health 

1. Wilson signed Executive Order No. 2859 on 11 May 1918; Eisenhower amended it with Executive Order No. 10668 on 10 May 

1956; and Bush further amended it via Executive Order 12832 on 19 January 1993.

2. The revised document did appear as National Research Council, Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1996).
94 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

and Human Services and the National Institutes of 

Health; the National Academy of Sciences joined 

in the defense. After an initial finding in favor of 

the defendants and a series of appeals court decisions, the last of which was in favor of the plaintiffs, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reverse the 

appeals court decision against the government and 

let it stand. Consequently, the Supreme Court’s 

action (or decision not to act) on 3 November 1997 

put the NRC squarely under FACA.3

While the case was moving through the courts, 

officials at the National Academies had been working with members of Congress to provide a remedy 

to what was viewed as a potentially lethal threat to 

the institution’s independence. Once the Supreme 

Court ruled, congressional action proceeded at a 

breathtaking pace. Amendments to FACA were 

introduced in the House of Representatives on 9 

November; they were passed in the House by voice 

vote on 10 November and in the Senate by unanimous consent on 11 November; and they were 

signed by President Clinton on 17 December. The 

amendments were integrated into the Act as section 15—“Requirements relating to the National 

Academy of Sciences and the National Academy 

of Public Administration”—and became known 

familiarly as “FACA section 15.”4

The FACA amendments had two key provisions. First, “any committee that is created by 

the National Academy of Sciences or the National 

Academy of Public Administration” was explicitly excluded from FACA requirements other 

than those in section 15. Second, federal agencies 

were forbidden from accepting advice from the 

National Academies unless they complied with the 

provisions of section 15. Notably, the NRC was 

required to 

• post the names of proposed study committee members for public comment before 

appointments were finalized, 

• publicly announce open meetings of committee meetings in advance, 

• make material submitted to a committee by 

outside parties available to the public, and 

• provide brief summaries of closed meetings 

to the public.5

On the other hand, the NRC was able to preserve its ability to hold closed committee deliberation meetings and to preserve the confidentiality 

of report peer reviews. Consequently, portions of 

the NRC study process became more open to the 

public, but key aspects that defined the NRC’s 

independence were preserved. Nevertheless, the 

NRC’s narrow escape from potentially devastating 

restrictions under FACA made the institution particularly gun-shy about ever getting into a situation 

that might take the matter back to Congress for 

another look.

3. The final appeals court decision and accompanying background details are presented in United States Court of Appeals, 

District of Columbia Circuit, “ANIMAL LEGAL DEFENSE FUND, INC., et al., Appellants, v. Donna E. SHALALA, et 

al., Appellees,” No. 96-5011, Decided: 10 January 1997. That decision is available at FindLaw for Legal Professionals, “Animal 

Legal Defense Fund v. Shala,” http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-dc-circuit/1054924.html (accessed 3 August 2016). A summary of 

subsequent Supreme Court and Congressional actions is available at Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, “Congress 

exempts two public bodies from advisory committee act,” 1 December 1997, http://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/

congress-exempts-two-public-bodies-advisory-committee-act (accessed 16 November 2016). The organization Psychologists for the 

Ethical Treatment of Animals subsequently changed its name to the Society & Animals Forum, Inc.; it is not the same as People 

for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). 

4. Federal Advisory Committee Act Amendments of 1997, Pub. L. 92–463, §15, as added Pub. L. 105–153, §2(b), 17 December 

1997, 111 Stat. 2689.

5. Federal Advisory Committee Act Amendments of 1997, Pub. L. 92–463, §15, as added Pub. L. 105–153, §2(b), 17 December 

1997, 111 Stat. 2689.
Chapter 9 • Congress Drops Another Shoe—The NRC Gets Its Own FACA Sect

The NRC’s Response

The NRC’s response to the new legislation was 

sweeping. Immediately after enactment of section 15 in December 1997, there was a 29-page 

formal policy and checklist for complying with 

the law. The institution was both genuinely concerned about reinforcing the attributes of National 

Academies studies that had underpinned their 

stature and credibility and obsessively concerned 

about the risk of running afoul of Congress 

and losing the FACA exemptions. The checklist 

included items on the committee appointment 

process, open committee meetings, public access 

to materials used by committees, report review, 

and release of reports, all of which dealt with 

transparency in NRC activities. Responsibility 

for compliance was placed on the shoulders of the 

individual NRC study staff directors, accompanied by stern warnings: 

You will be required to file a certificate of substantial compliance for each report (including 

letter reports) issued in connection with the 

study. Noncompliance with this law could 

result in the study’s sponsoring agency not 

being able to use your committee’s report. In 

addition, you could face serious legal consequences as an individual, and the Academies 

could be subject to lawsuits as an institution, if 

your committee fails to comply.6

The principal impacts of the NRC’s new procedures were to codify most processes already in 

place, to make some more rigorous, and to apply 

them more broadly and uniformly across most of 

the institution’s activities. 

However, one change had a particularly big 

impact on the way the SSB operated and on its 

relationships with its sponsors, especially NASA. 

Throughout its history, the SSB occasionally prepared its own advisory reports, for which the 

members of the Board itself gathered relevant information, either in response to an Agency request or 

at their own initiative. The Board members debated 

the issues at hand, reached consensus on conclusions and recommendations to be forwarded to 

the government, and authored the report. In doing 

so, the Board drew on the considerable breadth of 

expertise and experience of its members to prepare 

a report that was respected for its legitimacy. Most 

major policy-oriented SSB reports, especially letter 

reports, were reports on studies undertaken by the 

Board and authored by the Board. Also from the 

very beginning, the Board’s discipline-oriented, 

standing committees regularly wrote their own 

reports. (See chapter 2.) Most science strategy 

reports and assessment reports came from the 

standing committees. Like the membership of the 

Board, the members of the standing committees 

were selected on the basis of their scientific and 

technical breadth and experience and their stature 

in their communities.

In 2001, the SSB obtained verbal agreement 

from the presidents of the National Academy of 

Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, 

who were respectively also the chair and vice chair 

of the NRC, that standing bodies could author 

advisory reports so long as their membership could 

be shown to be appropriately qualified, balanced, 

and free of conflicts of interest for the topic at 

hand. In the end, however, the NRC prohibited 

Boards and standing committees from authoring 

reports, unless the authoring body was first formally vetted and appointed to serve as a committee 

for the topic in question (i.e., the particular subject 

or issue about which a new report was to be prepared) and unless the preparation of the report followed the same procedures as were prescribed for 

ad hoc study committees.

6. National Research Council, “Checklist for Responsible Staff Officers for Compliance with Section 15 of the Federal Advisory 

Committee Act,” 17 December 1997, edited 13 August 2009.
96 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

The effect of this policy was twofold. First, 

it prolonged the turnaround time between when 

NASA might present a question to the SSB (or the 

SSB might identify an urgent issue that needed 

attention) and when the SSB could respond. The 

process of obtaining NRC project approval and 

appointing a study committee (even one that 

already existed as a standing committee) typically 

added months to the process. The second issue was 

that the policy effectively weakened the Board and 

its standing committees. After a four-decade history of being the nation’s principal source of outside 

advice on space research, the SSB was being relegated to being a committee of committees, none of 

which could act on its own without going through 

added bureaucratic procedures. Distinguished scientists in the space research community began to 

ask, “Why should I sit on the SSB or an SSB committee whose role(s) have been neutered?” This led 

some to ask whether NASA should even fund the 

board and committees at all. 

An ancillary effect was to eliminate most 

letter reports from the SSB’s product line. From 

his experience as a member of the NRC Report 

Review Committee, Robert Frosch recalled that 

up through the mid-1980s letter reports 

were reports of what the committee was up to. 

You know, “We’ve had three meetings in which 

we discussed whatsis. I’m not sure how it will 

come out, but it will sort of be in this direction so you might start thinking about stuff 

like that.”... And [then] we began—from the 

RRC point of view—to see letter reports that 

had findings and recommendations, somewhat 

concealed but pretty clearly you didn’t have to 

worry much to get the idea the committee recommends even if it didn’t say so.7

The SSB under the chairmanship of Tom 

Donahue and Lou Lanzerotti was not necessarily 

the worst offender in the NRC, but it had been 

amongst the most active sources of letters. Thus, 

senior RRC officials began to urge that the proliferation of letter reports be curtailed well before 

enactment of FACA section 15, especially to avoid 

cases of special pleading. In 1992, the SSB established its own guidelines saying that “letter reports 

should be limited to important and urgent topics 

where rigorously defensible recommendations can 

be briefly stated.”8 In 1994, still some years before 

enactment of FACA section 15, the NRC Report 

Review Committee issued further formal criteria9

that would govern the authorization and review of 

letter reports. 

One aspect of the new guidelines was precipitated in part by the SSB. In late 1992, the SSB 

wanted to send a letter to NASA Administrator 

Daniel Goldin to express concerns about his plans 

to break apart the Office of Space Science and 

Applications. Both the chair of the RRC, Peter 

Raven, and the chair of the NRC, Frank Press, 

felt that a letter that volunteered advice about how 

NASA was organized would not be appropriate, 

and Press put a stop to it before it could be delivered.10 That experience, and a few other similar 

cases, led the RRC to require that all proposals for 

letter reports receive formal authorization before 

7. Frosch interview, pp. 5–6.

8. NRC Report Review Committee, “Guidelines for Preparation of Letter Reports by Committees of the Space Studies Board,” 

RRC archives, National Research Council, Washington DC, 19 June 1992.

9. Raven memo to NRC Governing Board, “New Policy for Authorization of Letter Reports, RRC archives, National Research 

Council, Washington DC, 25 October 1994.

10. Letter from RRC chair Peter Raven to chair of the NRC Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications 

Richard Zare, 10 October 1994, RRC archives, National Research Council, Washington DC. In the end, the SSB did get to 

make its points about Goldin’s actions after Senator Barbara Mikulski arranged to have the Board conduct a review of the 

management of science at NASA in 1995 (see chapter 16).
Chapter 9 • Congress Drops Another Shoe—The NRC Gets Its Own FACA Sect

boards or committees could begin to prepare them. 

Nevertheless, letter reports continued to be an 

acceptable form of formal advice to federal agencies, but the guidance was meant to ensure that 

they would meet NRC standards for both quality 

and timeliness. 

Letter reports had often been prepared to 

address an urgent, narrowly focused issue or to 

respond to a very specific question from NASA, 

which often had a pressing time constraint within 

which NASA needed an answer. Recipients valued 

the letter reports because of their quick availability. 

A 1995 letter from the Board to then-NASA Chief 

Scientist France Cordova is a particularly interesting example of a quick-response letter report that 

would probably be impossible under the NRC’s 

section 15 procedures. Cordova had a discussion 

with the Board at its 1 March 1995 meeting, during 

which she outlined Agency concerns about possible 

budget-driven cutbacks in the scientific workforce 

at NASA field Centers. She asked the SSB to provide its views about the roles and missions of Center 

scientists so as to assist senior NASA managers as 

they weighed options for dealing with the budget 

challenges in advance of mid-May deadlines. The 

Board pursued the questions in discussions with 

other senior NASA officials and in its own internal discussions, both at the meeting and at a subsequent SSB executive committee conference call, 

and framed a response. The SSB letter was sent to 

Cordova on 29 March,11 with an explicit caveat 

that acknowledged that the depth of the Board’s 

commentary was limited by the urgency of NASA’s 

schedule for seeking views. 

Another example stemmed from an August 1998 

request from Carl Pilcher, the Science Program 

Director in NASA’s Solar System Exploration 

Division, for the SSB’s standing Committee on 

Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX) to 

assess the Agency’s plans for Mars exploration so 

as to facilitate mission planning decisions for 2003 

and 2005 launches. Pilcher asked for SSB input 

by 15 November 1998. COMPLEX was able to 

gather information from key NASA experts during 

a committee meeting in September and to draw 

on earlier studies by COMPLEX and other NRC 

committees and to provide a letter report to NASA 

on 11 November 1998 that responded to Pilcher’s 

request.12 While this was a case where COMPLEX 

was able to act in near-record time, it does illustrate 

the more general ability of standing committees to 

quickly respond to special Agency needs. 

The SSB reviews of draft Agency science strategies (see chapter 8) were also conducted via letter 

reports prepared by the Board, often with standing 

committee input and often on short time scales. 

But under the new NRC policy requiring that the 

SSB assemble, vet, appoint, charge, and utilize a 

unique committee to prepare a letter report, the 

time by which NASA needed an answer had often 

passed. Subsequently, the NRC discouraged letter 

reports unless either the authors of the letter were 

first vetted as an ad hoc committee established 

under the provisions of FACA section 15 or the 

letter only used and restated material from prior 

section 15–compliant NRC reports.

Reactions to the NRC’s 

Implementation of FACA Section 15

Senior NASA science executive Paul Hertz described 

the problem from the Agency perspective:

Every member of the community will give us 

advice, but how do we boil that down into 

something, which can inform our decision 

11. Space Studies Board letter report, Claude Canizares to France Cordova, On NASA Field Center Science and Scientists (National 

Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington DC, 29 March 1995).

12. Space Studies Board, Assessment of NASA’s Mars Exploration Architecture: Letter Report (National Research Council, The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1998).
98 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

making? The value of having an advisory committee to weigh these inputs and then give us 

advice gives a level of value to a decision that, 

if we make it ourselves, seems arbitrary.... [I]f 

we can’t root our decisions in the community, 

then we are just a bunch of arbitrary bureaucrats and we lose our...credibility, our legitimacy with the community.

The NRC has forbidden the standing committees...or the Space Studies Board itself 

from giving us findings, recommendations, or 

advice on anything. According to their rules as 

they stand at the moment, if we want advice 

on a subject we have to ask a specific question 

and then they have to formulate an...ad-hoc 

committee that is specifically put together to 

answer that question and has its conflicts of 

interest specifically balanced with regard to 

that question. And then they will undertake 

a quick study to answer the question, and 

then their response will go through the complete NRC and Academy review before we can 

receive it. 

And so we no longer get responses to the 

kinds of questions that we used to ask the 

standing committees....I don’t get any kind 

of balanced consensus or trade-off between the 

various possibilities and options....The NRC 

committees can’t even come to a conclusion; 

they can only gather together senior members 

of the community to provide discussion and 

individual opinions.13

Len Fisk summarized the standing committees’ 

handicaps, saying, “Yes, they meet with NASA 

people, and they get to have a dialog. But there 

is no power behind the dialog. There is no public 

statement that somebody can refer to that brings 

some clout to what the Board has to say.”14

When Marcia Smith moved from the 

Congressional Research Service to become director 

of the NRC Space Studies Board and Aeronautics 

and Space Engineering Board, she got an insider’s 

look at whether the National Academies responded 

appropriately and consistently to FACA:

I didn’t realize that the Academies were under 

FACA until I was accepted for the job, and I 

started looking into it more thoroughly. The 

first thing I learned was that the NRC’s regulations on FACA were interim and they had been 

interim for a long time before I went to work 

there.... So it was very hard to know exactly 

what that meant and exactly what was applied. 

And I found the NRC’s implementation of 

FACA to seem capricious at times. Sometimes 

it seemed as though if the NRC did or did 

not want to do something, FACA would be 

used as the excuse. That may be harsh, it may 

even be untrue, but after three years that is 

what I walked away believing. As opposed to 

when I walked in the door, I thought, “Oh, 

good thing, I’m all for transparency and public 

accessibility and everything.”... And the fact 

that people were resisting applying FACA was 

just people who were too set in their ways 

and who had been in their jobs for too long. 

But I walked out of there with a completely 

different idea.15

Claude Canizares held out hope that the NRC 

could find a path to resolution of the problems:

I think when the FACA lawyers got too close 

to things, I think some of what I’m describing 

about the effectiveness of the SSB was diminished...I’m not convinced that the Academies 

have been as forceful as would be warranted 

13. Hertz interview, p. 5.

14. Fisk interview, p. 20.

15. Smith interview, p. 23.
Chapter 9 • Congress Drops Another Shoe—The NRC Gets Its Own FACA Sect

to try to advocate for a sensible and effective 

position.... I wish there were ways to maybe 

vet the group in some public way. Have public 

discussions to say that we are doing that. Then 

have maybe even the surgeon general’s warning 

on the letter that says this should be taken as 

advisory but not a firm recommendation but 

that still allows the government to hear this, 

because otherwise they won’t hear it.16

Another SSB chair and former NASA official 

Charles Kennel shared his colleagues’ feelings of 

dismay:

I will just say that as far as I am concerned, 

the infestation of FACA rules and quasi-FACA 

rules on a naive and unsuspecting Academy and 

panel process was, for the first 10 years, a complete disaster and hobbled the Space Studies 

Board in ways that are almost unspeakable.17

Nevertheless, Kennel held out hope that some of the 

most egregious problems could be overcome in the 

future, adding, “but we’ve gotten through that.”18

There was some evidence that Kennel’s hopes 

were beginning to be realized. As of early 2015, 

the staff director of the SSB and ASEB, Michael 

Moloney, indicated that the boards and standing committees were becoming more engaged in 

direct, informal discussions with NASA science 

officials, who regularly used the NRC groups 

as sounding boards with whom they could share 

issues and hear the experts’ opinions. Moloney saw 

that as an important way for the NRC to fulfill its 

role as a forum for dialog between the government 

and the U.S. scientific community.19 When NRC 

boards and standing committees are not meeting 

to respond to a formal request for advice, they are 

permitted to meet with government officials in 

closed sessions where there can be more candid discussions than might be acceptable in sessions open 

to the public. By late 2016, the NRC seemed to be 

moving towards a policy that would allow the SSB 

and its standing committees to issue statements 

or letters expressing consensus views or concerns, 

although those statements would be devoid of any 

formal advice to the government.20

From the perspective of the National Academies, 

the institution’s FACA section 15 procedures could 

be viewed as examples of responsible behavior to 

protect the Academies and stay within the strict 

confines of the law. They kept the Academies more 

transparent and beyond any hint of conflict. But 

in the course of surviving the 1994 suit brought by 

the Animal Defense League and the 1997 federal 

court decisions, the Academies solutions also presented significant problems for the value and utility, not to mention the perception in the scientific 

community, of the SSB and its committees.

16. Canizares interview, p. 10.

17. Kennel interview, p. 4.

18. Kennel interview, p. 4.

19. Moloney, 18 March 2015 interview.

20. Moloney e-mail to the author 24 September 2016.

101

CHAPTER 10

NASA Senior Reviews

NASA’s success with go-aheads for major missions such as the Cassini Saturn orbiter and 

the beginning of the Great Observatories program in the mid-1980s and then a robust series 

of new mission starts in the late 1980s and early 

1990s came with a mortgage. Many of those missions were intended to operate over a long span of 

time—more than a decade—and others proved 

to be so well designed that they typically exceeded 

their “prime-phase” design lifetimes and continued to produce valuable scientific results for many 

years. Consequently, NASA found itself having to 

find ways to either pay for their operations and data 

analysis1

 activities at the expense of having funds 

to start new missions or be able to count on continuously rising budgets. The latter option proved 

unrealistic, and in fact impossible. SESAC recognized this challenge as it organized its study that 

led to the 1986 Crisis report. (See chapter 5.) 

Associate Administrator Lennard Fisk described 

the challenge as one of his principal concerns when 

he met with SESAC’s successor, SSAAC, in 1990.2

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin began to 

attack the problem in 1992 when he commissioned 

a set of review teams to look for ways to find efficiencies and budget reductions in various programs.3

 The Chief of the Astrophysics Division’s 

Science Operations Branch Guenter Riegler began 

to press managers at the Goddard Space Flight 

Center, which handled most astrophysics mission 

operations, to reduce their costs or face the need to 

pull the plug on some missions altogether. 

Riegler began his NASA career as an astrophysicist conducting research in x-ray astronomy at the 

Goddard Space Flight Center. He joined NASA 

Headquarters in 1987 and eventually served as 

Director of Research Program Management and 

then Executive Director for Science in the Office 

of Space Science. He moved from Headquarters 

to the Ames Research Center in 2002 to serve as 

Director of Astrobiology and Space Research at 

Ames until his retirement in 2005.

Riegler’s initial efforts were partially successful, 

but NASA officials recognized that the problem 

was bigger than what could be accomplished by 

ad hoc approaches and simple belt-tightening. A 

major element of the solution rested in involvement 

of advisors from the outside scientific community.

1. Mission operations typically cover support for control centers where specialists manage tracking and orbit data computations, 

monitoring of spacecraft health, scheduling of changes to spacecraft status and instructions, and uploading of commands. Data 

analysis typically includes data processing and conversion of raw telemetry data into physical units, distribution and archival of 

data files for scientific use, and scientific analysis.

2. Alexander document files, NASA HRC.

3. Alexander document files from OSSA staff meeting on 18 May 1992. 
102 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Senior Reviews of Space Mission 

Operations

In 1992, Riegler was commissioned to organize 

a “senior review” of six currently operating astrophysics flight missions;4

 the process expanded to 

consider 11 astrophysics missions in 1993; and 

it was adopted subsequently across all of NASA’s 

space and Earth science programs. The original 

process only considered mission operations (i.e., 

the effort devoted to monitoring and operating the 

spacecraft in flight), and it did not examine the scientific data analysis segments of ongoing projects.5

The reviews assessed the progress and scientific 

accomplishments of ongoing missions and their 

objectives and plans for future (presumably more 

efficient) operations. 

An expanded level of senior reviews, which 

assessed the requirements and value of both mission operations and data analysis funding, was 

initiated for solar-terrestrial physics6 missions in 

19977 and for astrophysics missions in 1998, and 

they were further expanded to consider planetary science flight mission programs in 2001.8

 In 

addition to helping NASA managers deal with 

the budget challenges noted above, the process 

offered an effective way for the Office of Space 

Science to meet some of its performance evaluation 

requirements under GPRA. Missions were ranked 

based on assessment of the scientific merit of their 

proposed operations for the next two years and on 

factors such as cost efficiency, expected new hardware or software development, and education and 

outreach plans. Each review panel was charged to 

recommend to NASA a strategy for which missions 

should be either

a. continued at their current levels of activity 

and support, 

b. continued but with some budget enhancements or reductions compared to their 

current levels,

c. continued with “bare-bones” funding for 

operations and data handling amounting 

to about one half of the prime-mission 

levels but with no funds for science data 

analysis, or

d. terminated.

In 2007, the Earth Science Division of NASA’s 

Science Mission Directorate formed a senior review 

panel to evaluate 13 operating Earth science missions, all of which were at or approaching the 

end of their planned prime mission lifetimes.9 A 

second panel was convened in 2009. The panel 

was charged to make recommendations for mission extensions and funding levels for fiscal years 

2010 and 2011 as well as preliminary recommendations for the subsequent two years, 2012–2013. 

The panel’s approach was modeled closely on that 

4. Logsdon, John M., ed., with Stephen J. Garber, Roger D. Launius, and Ray A. Williamson, Exploring the Unknown: Selected 

Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume VI: Space and Earth Science (NASA SP-2004-4407, NASA 

History Division, Washington DC, 2004), p. 173.

5. Guenter Riegler, Chief, Space Science Operations Branch, NASA Headquarters, “Charter: OSSA Operations and Data Analysis 

(MO&DA) Blue Team,” 17 June 1992. Reproduced in Logsdon, John M., ed., with Stephen J. Garber, Roger D. Launius, and 

Ray A. Williamson, Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume VI: Space 

and Earth Science (NASA SP-2004-4407, NASA History Division, Washington DC, 2004), p. 248–249.

6. The field of solar-terrestrial physics is also sometimes called solar and space physics or heliophysics.

7. See http://science.nasa.gov/heliophysics/senior-review/.

8. For an in-depth description of the senior review process as it had evolved by 2002, see Guenter Riegler, “The ‘Senior Review’ 

Process” (Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters January 2002) in Alexander document collection, NASA History 

Division, Washington, DC.

9. Senior Review Committee, “NASA Earth Science Senior Review,” (NASA Earth Science Division, Science Mission Directorate, 

NASA, Washington DC, 2007).
Chapter 10 • NASA Senior Revie

employed in earlier years for space science missions. 

NASA officials gave guidelines to each mission for 

out-year funding levels against which to prepare 

proposals for the review panel to evaluate, and the 

panel was asked to consider scientific productivity, 

contribution to national needs, technical status, 

and cost efficiency. Based on those factors, the 

panel was then expected to categorize each mission 

in terms of whether it merited

a. continued funding at the guideline level,

b. continued funding with some augmentation,

c. continued funding but at a level below the 

guidelines, or

d. preparation for termination.10

The Earth science panelists found that all 13 

missions were still making important scientific 

contributions and were worthy of continuation 

in 2010 and 2011, but they concluded that two 

missions could be terminated during fiscal year 

2012 or 2013. They also found that a third mission had become underutilized and recommended 

that extended operations in 2012 should depend 

on whether nearer-term efforts were successful to 

reduce costs, improve data access, expand data 

usage, and sustain data quality. Such a hopeful 

proposal for the nearer-term period, for which 

the panel failed to recommend any terminations, 

was probably not as helpful to NASA managers as 

they would have preferred, but the panel’s detailed 

assessments of each mission did provide insights 

that could help NASA set more realistic priorities.

NASA Director of Astrophysics Paul Hertz 

described the senior reviews as:

a process by which NASA could make a reasoned decision as to when a mission had outlived its value, [and] to determine when it was 

no longer a good buy to continue paying the 

operation costs in exchange for the additional 

science you would get for additional operations.... All the operating missions would 

essentially submit proposals as to what science 

they predicted they would do over the next 

two years and what it would cost to keep the 

mission going to attain that science.11

And he emphasized the way in which the process 

facilitated orderly planning for future years:

But those are always revisited the next two 

years, and...it allows us to make plans...and 

the missions can start the process for soliciting their next cycle of science investigations. 

If a mission is going to be terminated, it gives 

us the rest of the fiscal year to terminate them 

before their funding ends at the end of the 

fiscal year.12

A key aspect of the senior reviews, and a major 

factor in their success and acceptance, is the involvement of outside scientists to conduct the reviews. 

The term “senior review” pertains to what Riegler 

called “the highest level of peer review within the 

space science program.”13 About a dozen review 

panelists from the outside community are selected 

based on their breadth of experience and expertise, especially regarding their familiarity with 

multiple missions being considered in the review 

and their knowledge of the relevant research areas. 

Each biennial review panel is asked to examine the 

10. Senior Review Panel (Steven A. Ackerman, chair), “NASA Earth Science Senior Review 2009,” Earth Science Division, Science 

Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, 2009.

11. Hertz interview, p. 1.

12. Hertz interview, p. 2.

13. Guenter Riegler, “The Senior Review Process,” Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, January 2002.
104 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

expected continuing scientific value of individual 

missions. However, it also becomes a comparative 

review that pits missions (and data centers) against 

each other and seeks to rank the expected returns 

of competing missions, assess their effectiveness, 

and recommend a strategy for continued operations within a specific disciplinary program. 

Congress became so impressed with the value 

of the senior review process that it mandated regular use of the reviews by prescribing them in the 

NASA authorization bill for 2005:

SEC. 304. ASSESSMENT OF SCIENCE 

MISSION EXTENSIONS.

(a) ASSESSMENT.—The Administrator shall 

carry out biennial reviews within each of 

the Science divisions to assess the cost and 

benefits of extending the date of the termination of data collection for those missions 

that have exceeded their planned mission 

lifetime. In addition—

(1) not later than 60 days after the date of 

enactment of this Act, the Administrator 

shall carry out such an assessment for 

at least the following missions: FAST, 

TIMED, Cluster, Wind, Geotail, Polar, 

TRACE, Ulysses, and Voyager; and

(2) for those missions that have an operational 

component, the National Oceanic and 

Atmospheric Administration or any other 

affected agency shall be consulted and the 

potential benefits of instruments on missions that are beyond their planned mission lifetime taken into account.

(b) REPORT.—Not later than 30 days after 

completing each assessment required by 

subsection (a)(1), the Administrator shall 

transmit a report on the assessment to 

the Committee on Science of the House 

of Representatives and the Committee on 

Commerce, Science, and Transportation of 

the Senate.14

While the senior reviews have become a particularly powerful example of NASA’s reliance 

on outside advice for decision making, they also 

appear to have some soft spots. Astronomer and 

veteran member of the SSB and several decadal 

survey committees Marcia Rieke observed the 

challenge of forming truly balanced and objective 

review panels:

[O]ne thing that I have been concerned about 

is that if I look at the membership for the 

recent senior review panels and the suite of 

missions they’re looking at, it didn’t look to me 

that it was a balanced community group. And 

the missions that were recommended to be 

defunded, some of them successfully lobbied 

to get funding back. And those were the ones 

that didn’t seem to have particular defenders 

on the committee, should we say. And so I 

really worry about how well that’s working. 

The principle I think is still a good idea, but 

whether it’s actually working as well as it might 

is another question.15

As NASA budgets became more constrained 

in later years, some review panels felt that they 

had very little room to maneuver. When NASA 

was able to set funding limitation guidelines for 

the panels that were seen to be reasonable, panels 

could embrace a program that recommended priority choices but kept scientifically valuable projects on a productive course—“Add money to 

mission A, keep mission B at its current level, cut 

back on mission C but keep it going, and plan to 

terminate mission D.” Once NASA managers prescribed more severe limits under which the panels’ 

reviews were framed, the reviews became what one 

14. “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005,” section 304, PL 109-155, 30 December 2005.

15. Rieke interview, p. 55.
Chapter 10 • NASA Senior Revie

participant called “a blood bath with rather irrational decisions.”16 Even when senior review panelists thought they were being responsive to NASA 

guidance, there have been occasions when budget 

officials at OMB objected to the fact that some 

older missions received high scientific ratings, 

thereby running counter to OMB hopes to free up 

funds by terminating the old missions. This may 

have been the case when the administration’s fiscal 

year 2016 budget request for NASA included no 

funding for the Opportunity rover on Mars and 

the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, in spite of the 

fact that both missions received very high ratings 

in the 2014 senior review.17 Congress refused to 

accept the proposed terminations and provided 

funds to keep both missions alive at least through 

fiscal year 2017.

In 2015, recognizing the various political and 

scientific pressures on the senior review process 

that had emerged over the years, NASA asked 

the SSB to conduct an assessment of the value of 

extended missions and of the senior review process 

itself. That assessment produced very positive conclusions about the value and overall effectiveness of 

the senior reviews, saying that the study committee 

reached “a strong consensus that NASA’s approach 

to extended missions is fundamentally sound and 

merits continued support.”18 The study report also 

provided useful illustrations of the successes of 

extended missions and how the senior review process evolved over the years, and the report offered a 

number of recommendations about how to sharpen 

the process in the future. Thus, some 23 years after 

Riegler introduced the senior review concept, the 

process continued to be a valuable and effective 

model for using outside advice.

Senior Reviews of Scientific 

Research Programs 

In 1999, the Office of Space Science prepared to 

add a second system of senior reviews to its management toolbox—this one to review the office’s 

research and analysis (R&A) programs.19 R&A is 

NASA’s term of art for research programs (primarily 

funded via research grants to individual principal 

investigators) for new science instrument technology development, suborbital research flights on 

high-altitude aircraft and balloons and sounding 

rockets, analysis and interpretation of spaceflight 

data, development of theory and computer simulations, and ground-based telescopic and laboratory 

measurement in support of spaceflight investigations. Thus, R&A programs help bring spaceflight 

missions to scientific fruition, lay scientific and 

technological groundwork for future missions, and 

provide unique opportunities for training future 

space scientists and technical experts.

In 1998, two advisory studies had recommended that NASA implement a systematic process by which to evaluate its R&A programs. Both 

an internal committee operating as a task force 

under SSAC and an ad hoc committee of the SSB20

called for such an effort. OSS responded by first 

16. Correspondence from L. A. Fisk to the author, 21 February 2015. 

17. For discussion of reactions to the proposal, see Casey Dreier, “Is the Opportunity Rover a Mission ‘Whose Time Has Passed’? 

No,” The Planetary Society Blog, 16 March 2015, http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2015/0315-is-opportunity-a-missionwhose-time-has-passed.html and Leonard David, “NASA Moon Orbiter, Mars Rover Face Budget Chopping Block,” Space.com, 

27 March 2015, http://www.space.com/28943-opportunity-rover-lro-nasa-budget.html. 

18. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Extending Science—NASA’s Space Science Mission Extensions and the 

Senior Review Process (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2016), p. 7.

19. Guenter R. Riegler, “Assessment of NASA’s Space Science Research and Analysis Programs,” (Office of Space Science, NASA, 

Washington DC, 28 June 2001), Alexander document files, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, 

Washington, DC.

20. See Space Studies Board, Supporting Research and Data Analysis in NASA’s Science Programs: Engines for Innovation and Synthesis, 

(National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1998).
106 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

reorganizing its roughly 40 individual R&A programs into 11 topically related research clusters and 

then adapting the senior review process to conduct 

an assessment of the whole program in 2001. 

At the first R&A review, the senior review panel 

was asked to examine the elements of the program 

in terms of scientific merit and relevance, appropriateness of the budget distribution across the elements, structure of the program in terms of best 

meeting long-term strategic goals, and highestpriority needs for new initiatives or budget augmentations. The panel was also asked to assess the 

distribution of funding across the program and 

to recommend whether adjustments were needed. 

The panel responded to this charge by assigning 

programs to one of four categories:

1. most deserving of more funding if an augmentation could be obtained,

2. deserving of continued support and some 

increase if an augmentation could be 

obtained,

3. areas in need of improvement and/or candidates for reductions, and

4. candidates for major reductions or 

termination.

The panel placed seven of the R&A clusters in category 1, three in category 2, one in category 3, and 

none in category 4. The panel presented detailed 

assessments for all of the program elements, 

thereby giving NASA useful information with 

which to manage the programs going forward.21

The Office of Space Science embraced the panel’s 

recommendations by reducing the budget of the 

lowest-ranked program and charging its managers 

to develop a plan for progress improvement. Three 

of the high-priority initiatives received budget 

augmentations.22

In spite of repeated encouragement from advisory committees in 1998 and again in 2010,23

NASA did not attempt more cross-program R&A 

senior reviews. In response to the 2010 SSB report, 

which had emphasized principles and metrics for 

evaluating and managing R&A program effectiveness and portfolio balance, NASA’s Planetary 

Science and Astrophysics Divisions did organize ad 

hoc committees to examine the individual division’s 

R&A programs. The panel reports addressed issues 

such as program structure, adequacy of funding, 

and portfolio strength and balance, but they did 

not recommend priorities or potential budget reallocations along the lines of the mission operations 

reviews and the 2001 R&A review.24

Having a group of outside scientists review, evaluate, and rate the scientific productivity and funding portfolios of research programs that spanned 

the full range of science disciplines proved to be 

too big a challenge. The task was controversial and 

subjective. The senior reviews of space mission 

operations, when conducted within the boundaries of a single disciplinary program such as astronomy, were challenging enough, but they proved 

successful even when they were painful. However, 

an effort to tackle the whole research program in a 

single gulp was not repeated. 

21. See Guenter R. Riegler, “Assessment of NASA’s Space Science Research and Analysis Programs,” (Office of Space Science, NASA, 

Washington DC, 28 June 2001) in http://science.nasa.gov/heliophysics/senior-review/.

22. Memo from Guenter Riegler to R&A discipline scientists, “Recommendations and Decisions for the Space Science research and 

Analysis (R&A) programs,” 2001 at http://science1.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2010/12/27/RASR01_RESPONSE-NASA-HQ.pdf.

23. Space Studies Board, An Enabling Foundation for NASA’s Space and Earth Science Missions (National Research Council, The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2010).

24. See Supporting Research and Technology Working Group, “Assessment of the NASA Planetary Science Division’s MissionEnabling Activities,” Planetary Sciences Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council, 29 August 2011 and Committee to 

Review Astrophysics Programs for Research, Analysis, and Enabling Technology, “NASA Astrophysics Research, Analysis & 

Enabling Technology 2011 Review Panel Comments,” NASA Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC, 2011.
Chapter 10 • NASA Senior Revie

As chapter 16 will show, this was not the first 

time that the task of setting broad cross-disciplinary priorities exceeded advisors’ reach. But 

first, the next chapter will examine particularly 

important additions to the SSB’s portfolio of disciplinary advisory products that emerged at roughly 

the same time as NASA’s senior reviews.

109

CHAPTER 11

Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and 

Performance Reviews

At a 2015 hearing of the House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that 

approves NASA’s budget, the committee chair said, 

I really want to see NASA focus on those 

decadal surveys, I really think that’s the proper 

guide.... That’s my North Star, just to make 

sure that we’re following the recommendations 

of the best minds in the scientific community 

in each of these areas of specialty.1

The congressman’s comment illustrates one of the 

greatest success stories in the history of outside 

advice to NASA.

The NRC decadal science strategy surveys—or 

more colloquially known as the decadal surveys or 

just the decadals—are the signature products of 

the SSB. There is probably no NRC space science 

advisory product that has earned the attention 

and reputation, year after year, or had an impact 

to rival that of the decadals. Various observers and 

users have called these reports “the gold standard 

for scientific advice”2

 and have described them as 

“incredibly valuable,” “truly stunning,” “in a class 

by themselves in terms of congressional buy-in,” 

and “the National Academies at their best.”3

 How 

the decadal surveys gained such a unique place in 

the world of scientific advice provides an important lesson about the impact of broad engagement 

and commitment from the scientific community. 

The story of how the endeavor expanded from an 

activity conceived and pursued by a single community—U.S. astronomers—to an activity that spans 

all of space science marks an important milestone 

in the evolution of NASA’s scientific advisory history. And as we shall see, the ability of the decadal 

survey process to evolve and adapt to a changing 

scientific, technological, programmatic, and political environment has been a continuing challenge.

Origins of the Decadal Survey 

Process

In 1962, the National Academy of Sciences 

Committee on Science and Public Policy 

(COSPUP) formed a panel on astronomical facilities and gave it a straightforward charge: examine needs for new ground-based astronomical 

1. Congressman John Culberson quoted in “A Great Day on Capitol Hill: House Appropriations Hearing on fiscal year 2016 NASA 

Budget Request,” FYI: AIP Bulleting of Science Policy News, 12 March 2015, Number, 34, American Institute of Physics.

2. Comment by William Atkins, former House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics staff director, at November 2006 SSB 

Decadal Science Strategy Surveys Workshop, Alexander document files, NASA HRC.

3. Paul Hertz at November 2012 SSB workshop on Lessons Learned in Decadal Planning in Space, Alexander document files, 

NASA HRC; Turner, Allen (9 September 2013, p. 9) and Weiler (9 September 2013, p. 3) interviews, respectively.
110 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

facilities in the United States, assess the likely 

costs of new facilities, and recommend priorities 

for facility construction over the ensuing decade.4

Astronomer Albert E. Whitford, who was director 

of the University of California’s Lick Observatory 

from 1958 to 1968, was appointed chair of the 

committee. He was a respected leader of the U.S. 

astronomy community, a member the National 

Academy of Sciences, and an important participant in the founding of the Kitt Peak National 

Observatory.

The eight-person Whitford committee included 

experts in both optical and radio astronomy, who 

represented many of the major astronomical institutions of the day. The committee’s 1964 report 

briefly summarized the most notable and promising scientific questions in the field and assessed 

the status of U.S. astronomy compared to the rest 

of the world. This assessment considered the state 

of observing facilities as well as trends in graduate 

student enrollment in astronomy and the implications for demand for astronomy facilities in the 

United States. The committee confined its attention to needs and priorities for ground-based facilities to be supported by the NSF, Office of Naval 

Research, and NASA, even though it recognized 

the emerging opportunities for space astronomy 

in the nascent U.S. space program. NASA had 

already gained an image for its robust budget, and 

the committee emphasized that its recommendations represented a “prudent” program that would 

be “of the order of one half of one percent of that 

going into the space effort.”5

Five years after publication of the Whitford 

report, COSPUP formed a new astronomy survey 

committee that had a substantially broader and 

more ambitious charge—namely, to review the 

state of U.S. astronomy, identify the most important scientific problems in the field, and recommend priorities for both ground-based and space 

astronomy for the coming decade.6 The new committee, which was considerably larger—23 members—than the Whitford committee, was chaired 

by Jesse Greenstein of Caltech. 

Greenstein was an astrophysicist who earned a 

Ph.D. degree from Harvard and who was elected 

to the National Academy of Sciences in 1957. He 

led the establishment of the graduate program in 

astronomy at Caltech and served as its chair from 

1948 until 1972. In the 1950s, his earlier interest 

in radio astronomy reawakened, and that interest 

was reflected both in his seminal studies of quasars and his efforts to establish the Caltech Owens 

Valley Radio Observatory and the National Radio 

Astronomy Observatory.7

The Greenstein committee drew on input from 

about 100 experts who served on a dozen topically organized panels and working groups; thus, 

its conclusions reflected input from a significant 

fraction of the growing community of U.S. astronomers. The committee’s 1972 report8

 included an 

extensive discussion of contemporary frontiers in 

astrophysics; an assessment of the state of U.S. 

astronomy and astrophysics in terms of manpower, 

funding, and facilities; explicit, prioritized recommendations for new investments for the next 

4. Committee on Science and Public Policy, Ground-Based Astronomy: A Ten-Year Program (National Academy of Sciences-National 

Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1964).

5. Committee on Science and Public Policy, Ground-Based Astronomy: A Ten-Year Program (National Academy of Sciences-National 

Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1964) stated in the report’s Foreword.

6. Astronomy Survey Committee, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970s (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy Press, 

Washington, DC, 1972).

7. Robert P. Kraft, “Biographical Memoir of Jesse Leonard Greenstein” (National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs, vol. 

86, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005).

8. Astronomy Survey Committee, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970’s (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy 

Press, Washington, DC, 1972).
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

decade and estimates of their likely costs; and 

principles to guide implementation of the report’s 

recommendations. The survey’s scope spanned the 

full range of astronomical subjects—including 

solar and planetary astronomy—and it considered 

all relevant federal funding agencies—including 

not only NASA and NSF, but also the Department 

of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission 

(which later became the Department of Energy). 

While the committee was entirely independent 

of the government agencies, there were connections 

that promoted communications with the agencies’ 

own advisory committees. Notable from a NASA 

perspective was the fact that Leo Goldberg, who 

chaired NASA’s Astronomy Missions Board (see 

chapter 3), was also a member of the Greenstein 

committee. 

The general scope of the Greenstein committee’s survey of astronomy and astrophysics served as 

a framework for all future decadal surveys, and it 

introduced attributes that became fundamental factors that endowed decadal surveys with extraordinary staying power. These included the following:

• broad disciplinary scope that covered an 

entire scientific field;

• a long time horizon that examined accomplishments and advances over the previous 

decade and scientific priorities for the next 

decade;

• inclusive participation by a large fraction 

of the relevant scientific community;

• explicit priorities for new projects and 

facilities, including consideration of their 

estimated costs and recommended schedules; and

• consideration of enabling capabilities such 

as workforce and training, computation 

and data handling, institutional factors, 

and various dimensions of balance.

The committee recommended four “highest 

priority” initiatives followed by seven efforts that 

were “of high scientific importance,” but not so 

important as to displace any in the top four. The 

top tier included one space program, which would 

be devoted to x-ray and gamma-ray astronomy and 

which rounded out the list at fourth position. The 

second-tier space recommendations included a proposed doubling of support for aircraft, balloon, and 

sounding rocket astronomy (#6 overall priority); 

continuation of the Orbiting Solar Observatory 

satellite series (# 7 priority); and “an expanded program of optical space astronomy...leading to the 

launch of a large space telescope at the beginning 

of the next decade” (#10 priority).9

The Greenstein report’s treatment of the Large 

Space Telescope (LST, which later became the 

Hubble Space Telescope) was somewhat controversial. There were advocates for the LST, especially 

within NASA, but the survey committee declined 

to include it in its list of high priority programs. 

The committee was concerned that LST would be 

an especially expensive project and that it would be 

affordable only in a budget environment that supported more vigorous growth than was considered 

to be realistic. Therefore, the survey report cited 

the extraordinary potential of an LST and stated 

that “This program should be directed toward the 

ultimate use of an LST.”10 However, the report suggested that support for the LST in the 1970s should 

be limited to modest funding for technology development leading to consideration in the 1980s if 

funding increases materialized to support such a 

large project.11 While that conclusion was hard to 

swallow within NASA, it probably improved the 

9. National Research Council, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970s (The National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1972), p. 8.

10. National Research Council, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970s (The National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1972), p. 100.

11. Robert W. Smith, The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA, Science, Technology, and Politics (Cambridge University Press, New York, 

NY, 1989), pp. 131–134.
112 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

immediate credibility of the report by showing that 

the survey committee did stay true to its responsibility to be realistic and make hard choices. 

The outcome of the Greenstein committee’s 

measured support for LST provides an interesting 

story in contrasts between how the recommendations of this early decadal survey were treated by the 

community compared to the practically inviolable 

status of later surveys that are described below in this 

chapter. Two Princeton astronomers, John Bahcall 

and survey committee member Lyman Spitzer, 

mounted a full-court press to lobby both the members of the Greenstein Committee and Congress to 

accept the LST as an important and viable new initiative. Subsequently, Congress did begin to hear a 

more supportive perspective from the astronomical 

community. Also in 1974 the SSB initiated a new 

study of priorities for space science. Its 1975 report 

endorsed the LST as a new budget start for fiscal 

year 1976 saying that since the publication of the 

Greenstein report “the LST has moved to first place 

in priority among the large space projects under consideration by the astronomical community.”12 This 

was probably the last time that an NRC committee 

departed so explicitly from the position of a decadal 

survey. Although there were several more years of 

nail-biting experiences as the telescope made its way 

through the congressional approval process, it did 

survive and emerge as a successful program.13

The astronomy community followed up on 

the Greenstein report with decadal survey reports 

in 1982, 1991, 2001, and 2010.14 Each of those 

surveys followed the general template that the 

Greenstein committee introduced in the 1969–

1972 study. They also expanded the level of broad 

community participation by holding multiple 

town-hall meetings during regular conferences of 

the American Astronomical Society and at various 

universities and astronomy research facilities. Each 

of the survey reports enjoyed a positive reception 

in Congress and OSTP and supportive attention 

in NSF and NASA. A report’s high-priority recommendations were not always affordable within the 

ten-year time span recommended by the committee, but in almost all cases the federal government 

was ultimately able to initiate the recommended 

projects. For example, the space x-ray telescope recommended in the 1982 survey was launched as the 

Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1999; a space infrared telescope recommended in the 1991 survey was 

launched as the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2003; 

a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope recommended in the 2001 survey is being built for launch 

as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 

2018; and a successor to JWST recommended in 

the 2010 survey is in its formulation stage at NASA 

for a mid-2020’s launch.

The 199115 and 200116 survey reports are good 

examples of how the surveys produced results. Box 

11.1 illustrates the outcomes from recommendations 

for major investments in astronomy and astrophysics space missions. Seven flight programs—SIRTF, 

FUSE, SOFIA, medium-size Explorer satellites, 

JWST, GLAST, and SDO17—went forward 

12. National Research Council, Opportunities and Choices in Space Science (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1975), p. 40.

13. A full account of the aftermath of efforts to keep LST alive is presented in chapter 5 of Smith’s book.

14. The 1991 survey was administered by the staff of the NRC Board on Physics and Astronomy, which was established in 1983 and 

which is a companion NRC board to the SSB. All subsequent astronomy surveys have been administered jointly by the BPA and SSB.

15. National Research Council, The Decade of Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics (The National Academies Press, Washington, 

DC, 1991).

16. National Research Council, Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 

2001).

17. SIRTF (Space Infra-Red Telescope Facility), FUSE (Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer), SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory 

for Infrared Astronomy), JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope), SDO (Solar 

Dynamics Observatory).
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

Survey Recommendations Outcome

The Decade of Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics (1991)

#1 large initiative: Space Infrared 

Telescope Facility (SIRTF)

The redesigned free-flying SIRTF mission was approved in 1998 and 

launched in 2003 as the Spitzer Space Telescope.

#1 moderate initiative: dedicated 

spacecraft for the Far-Ultraviolet 

Spectrographic Explorer (FUSE)

FUSE was originally planned for a Space Shuttle launch but 

subsequently configured for launch on an expendable rocket and 

launched in 1999.

#2 moderate initiative: Stratospheric 

Observatory for Far-Infrared 

Astronomy (SOFIA)

SOFIA was initiated as a NASA-German Space Agency collaboration 

in 1996. The telescope first acquired astronomical images in 2010.

#3 moderate initiative: Delta-class 

Explorer program acceleration

Four Delta-class astronomy and astrophysics Explorers were 

launched in the 1990s compared to one in the 1980s.

#4 moderate initiative: Astrometric 

Interferometry Mission (AIM)

AIM was redesigned in the 1990s to become the Space Interferometry 

Mission (SIM), simplified further in 2002, but not recommended in the 

2010 decadal survey, and discontinued.

#5 moderate initiative: international 

collaborations on space instruments

NASA continued to engage in international collaborations but without 

creating a separate budget line.

Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium (2001)

#1 major initiative: Next Generation 

Space Telescope

Design studies for the renamed James Webb Space Telescope began 

in 2002 and construction began in 2004.

#2 major initiative: Constellation-X 

Observatory (Con-X)

After determining that Con-X would be too costly, NASA collaborated 

with ESA studies of an International X-ray Observatory, renamed the 

Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (Athena). The 

mission has not yet been approved.

#3 major initiative: Terrestrial Planet 

Finder (TPF)

NASA selected two alternative TPF design concepts for study in 2002. 

Budget problems led to termination of the effort in 2006.

#4 major initiative: Single Aperture Far 

Infra-Red (SAFIR) Observatory

NASA initiated a mission concept study for Far-IR Surveyor mission in 

2015 for consideration in the 2020 decadal survey.

#1 moderate initiative: Gamma-ray 

Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST)

GLAST was launched in 2008 and renamed the Fermi Gamma-ray 

Space Telescope.

#2 moderate initiative: Laser 

Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA)

NASA joined as a partner with ESA to prepare for a future LISA 

mission, leading to a technology test flight in 2015 and studies of a 

future gravity-wave space observatory.

#3 moderate initiative: Solar Dynamics 

Observatory (SDO)

SDO was launched in 2010.

BOX 11.1 Summary of outcomes from the largest recommended space program initiatives in the 1991 and 2001 

astronomy and astrophysics decadal surveys

successfully. On the other hand, the 1991 survey’s proposed planet-hunting Astrometric 

Interferometry Mission foundered, as did its successor, the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which was 

endorsed in 2001. Neither mission moved forward 

to development stage. The Con-X mission, LISA, 

and the SAFIR18 observatory for infrared astronomy did not blossom in the 2000s, but they still 

remain alive as prospects for the 2020s. 

18. Con-X (Constellation-X x-ray observatory), LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), SAFIR (Single Aperture Far Infra-Red 

observatory).
114 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

NASA OSSA 

initiates Senior 

Reviews or space 

mission operations

Congress passes 

Government 

Performance and 

Results Act (GPRA)

First NASA 

Office of Space 

Science and 

Applications 

(OSSA) 

Strategic Plan

NRC implements 

new FACA 

compliance 

policies

Congress amends 

FACA to include 

the National 

Academies

Congress mandates 

decadal surveys, 

including mission 

cost and readiness 

assessments

NASA 

Administrator 

restructures 

NASA 

Advisory 

Council

Congress 

passes GPRA 

Modernization 

Act

Congress mandates 

regular mid-decadal 

performance 

reviews and 

biennial mission 

extension reviews

1988198919901991199219931994199519961997199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009201020112012201320142015

Decadal surveys 

in Astronomy 

and Astrophysics

SSB completes 

first Decadal 

Surveys for 

Solar System 

Exploration and 

the Solar and 

Space Physics

SSB completes 

first Decadal 

Survey 

for Earth 

Science and 

Applications 

from Space

Decadal Surveys 

in Astronomy and 

Astrophysics, 

Planetary 

Science, and 

Solar and Space 

Physics

SSB “Survey 

of Surveys” 

report

Decadal surveys 

in Astronomy 

and Astrophysics

First SSB review 

of NASA science 

strategic plan

FIGURE 11.1 Timeline of advisory activities, 1989 to 2015

Expanding from Astronomy to All 

Space and Earth Science

In 2000, while the 2001 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey report was in preparation, 

NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science 

Edward Weiler concluded that he should apply 

the decadal survey process to the other elements 

of NASA’s space science program as well. Thus, a 

major expansion of the decadal surveys began in 

2001. Responding to Weiler’s requests, the SSB 

organized two new survey committees—the Solar 

and Space Physics Committee, chaired by physicist 

Louis Lanzerotti, and the Solar System Exploration 

Survey Steering Committee, chaired by astronomer Michael Belton. Following the astronomers’ 

model, both surveys were organized around a main 

steering committee and an array of disciplinary 

and cross-disciplinary subpanels. Both surveys 

utilized town meetings at various locations across 

the United States to gather community member 

perspectives. The solar system survey committee 

also invited scientists to submit short papers that 

summarized proposals for new initiatives for consideration by the survey committee and its panels. 

These first two decadal surveys to reach beyond 

the field of astronomy and astrophysics were published in 2003.19 (See figure 11.1.)

The 2003 planetary science survey20 provides 

an interesting example of successes as well as of 

action delayed. Table 11.1 lists the survey committee’s recommendations for major flight missions 

and NASA’s response. Five candidate missions 

were recommended for NASA’s medium scale New 

19. Solar System Exploration Committee, New Frontiers in the Solar System: An Integrated Exploration Strategy (Space Studies Board, 

National Research Council, National Academies Press, Washington DC, 2003); Solar and Space Physics Survey Committee, The 

Sun to the Earth – and Beyond: A Decadal Research Strategy in Solar and Space Physics (Space Studies Board, National Research 

Council, National Academies Press, Washington DC, 2003).

20. National Research Council, New Frontiers in the Solar System: An Integrated Exploration Strategy (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2003).
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

Frontiers Program, and two were selected to proceed to development and then launched. The New 

Horizons mission to Pluto led the way and produced 

spectacular results at Pluto in 2015. The second 

mission in the program—Juno—was launched in 

2011 and entered into an orbit at Jupiter in 2016. 

Studies for the survey’s only recommended 

large mission, which would explore Jupiter’s satellite Europa, led to concepts that were initially unaffordably complex and ambitious. Consequently, 

the 2011 decadal survey report21 said that the mission could not be endorsed unless it was simplified. 

NASA began that simplification, and the revised 

Europa mission moved into formulation stage 

in 2016. Congressional enthusiasm for the mission, particularly the enthusiasm of Congressman 

Culberson, who chaired the relevant House budget 

appropriations subcommittee for NASA, made this 

a case study in going beyond the decadal survey’s 

recommendations. Congress not only embraced the 

mission but also directed NASA to add a Europa 

lander element.22

The story for the outcomes of 2001 Mars program recommendations was also a mixed bag. The 

TABLE 11.1 Major flight programs recommended by the 2003 Solar System Exploration decadal survey

Survey Recommendations Outcomes

#1 priority large initiative: Europa 

Geophysical Explorer

After exploring joint studies with ESA in 2007, NASA initiated new studies 

in 2011 in response to the 2011 decadal survey call for a simplified 

multiple-flyby mission to Europa. With congressional urging, the 

formulation phase began in 2015, and a lander was added to the mission 

concept in 2016. 

#1 priority medium initiative: Kuiper BeltPluto ExplorerThe New Horizons mission was selected as the first New Frontiers 

Program mission; it launched in 2006 and flew past Pluto in 2015.

#2 priority medium initiative: lunar South 

Pole-Aitkin Basin Sample Return

A lunar sample return mission was carried over for the next round of New 

Frontiers mission selections.

#3 priority medium initiative: Jupiter Polar 

Orbiter with Probes

The Juno orbiter mission (without probes) was selected in 2004 as the 

second New Frontiers mission and was launched in 2011 for a 2016 arrival 

at Jupiter.

#4 priority medium initiative: Venus In Situ 

Explorer

A Venus mission was carried over for the next round of New Frontiers 

mission selections. 

#5 priority medium initiative: Comet Surface 

Sample Return

A comet sample return mission was carried over for the next round of New 

Frontiers mission selections.

#1 priority large Mars initiative: Mars 

Sample Return

NASA joined with ESA in 2009 to plan a sample return mission but 

withdrew in 2011, citing budget cuts. In 2012, NASA began new studies of 

a 2020 rover and sample-caching mission.

#1 priority medium Mars initiative: Mars 

Science Laboratory 

MSL design began in 2004. It was launched in 2011, and the Curiosity 

rover landed on Mars in 2012.

#2 priority medium Mars initiative: Mars 

Long-Lived Lander Network

The InSight mission was selected as a one-node geophysical network to 

be launched in 2018.

21. National Research Council, Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013–2022 (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2011).

22. Eric Berger, “Congress: NASA must not only go to Europa, it must land,” ArsTechnica, 16 December 2015, http://arstechnica.com/

science/2015/12/congress-nasa-must-not-only-go-to-europa-it-must-land/.
116 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

committee’s top-priority medium-scale mission—

the Curiosity rover—was built, launched in 2011, 

and landed on Mars in 2012. The mission did grow 

significantly in scope and cost during development, 

thereby causing delays in subsequent Mars missions. The survey’s top priority large mission—a 

Mars Sample Return—started out briefly as a collaboration between NASA and ESA, but NASA 

withdrew in 2011 due to budget problems. NASA 

then regrouped in 2012 and initiated studies for 

a surface rover and sample-collector mission that 

could be the first phase of a sample return mission 

in 2020 or later. A sample-caching rover was the 

top-priority recommendation of the 2011 decadal 

survey, and so NASA attempted to stay true to the 

survey’s priorities.

In 2003, then SSB chair Lennard Fisk 

and the author, Joseph Alexander, met with 

NOAA Assistant Administrator for Satellite and 

Information Services Greg Withee and NASA 

Associate Administrator for the Earth Science 

Enterprise Ghassem Asrar to discuss the idea of 

further expanding the use of decadal surveys to the 

field of Earth observations and applications from 

space. The two officials agreed, and in 2004 the 

NRC established the Committee on Earth Science 

and Applications from Space.23

This survey was different from its predecessors 

in several ways. First, it encompassed a field that 

has a large applied science dimension that builds 

on and extends beyond the basic research aspects 

of the Earth sciences. The committee acknowledged this both in terms of how the survey’s topical panels were organized and by focusing much of 

the committee’s priority-setting on an assessment 

of potential societal benefits. Second, the Earth science community was considered to be significantly 

more diverse, both topically and culturally, than 

the space science disciplines that were considered 

in the prior surveys. Furthermore, the community 

was (a) demoralized by recent budget cuts in a Bush 

administration that was not especially supportive 

of the Earth sciences and (b) hesitant to embrace 

the idea of a decadal survey for the field. To begin 

to cope with such challenging aspects of the survey, 

the organizers held a planning workshop before the 

steering committee was appointed to initiate discussion and gather ideas about how to organize the 

survey. One of the survey’s eventual successes was 

the fact that the undertaking did help bring the 

community together and get its members to take 

a more integrated view of their field. As a consequence of this impact, one might argue that the 

survey report was among the most important documents for the field, possibly ranking only behind 

the Bretherton report (see chapter 5).

Another important difference between the 

Earth science survey and its predecessors was that 

the survey’s two sponsors, NASA and NOAA, 

and Congress asked the committee to prepare an 

interim report before the survey was completed in 

order to provide a heads-up on urgent issues that 

would require near-term attention. The committee 

complied with a report24 delivered in 2005. Its central conclusion was that due to recent, persistent 

budget cuts, “the national system of environmental 

satellites is at risk of collapse.” Lamentably, many of 

the concerns outlined in this report were not terribly 

different from the Space Applications Board’s 1982 

report, “Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space: 

A Program in Crisis,” that is described in chapter 2. 

While such a stark description in the 2005 interim 

report garnered government and community attention, the survey committee did not see satisfactory 

23. National Research Council, Earth Science and Applications from Space: Urgent Needs and Opportunities to Serve the Nation (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005).

24. National Research Council, Earth Science and Applications from Space: Urgent Needs and Opportunities to Serve the Nation (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005).
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

near-term progress, and it repeated its pessimistic 

assessment in the final survey report a little more 

than a year later.25

Applying Lessons Learned

In 2006, the SSB held a workshop to evaluate the 

effectiveness of the first round of surveys that had 

expanded the process to new scientific fields starting in 2001. Survey committees had often struggled with a tendency to underestimate the cost and 

technological risk of new-mission candidates and 

to rely on unrealistically optimistic cost estimates. 

In essence, the new surveys were giving credence to 

the kind of concerns expressed by the Greenstein 

committee in 1972 when it declined to give a high 

priority to LST because of worries about its potential budgetary impact on the rest of NASA’s space 

astronomy program. Consequently, participants at 

the 2006 workshop recommended four steps for 

future decadal surveys: 

1. include cost assessment and technology 

experts on survey committees, 

2. obtain independent cost estimates and 

include cradle-to-grave life-cycle costs, 

3. include cost uncertainty indexes to help 

define the risk of cost growth, and 

4. use common costing approaches so that 

costs for different missions or facilities can 

be compared.26

Congress embraced the recommendations when it 

passed the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 and 

directed that future decadals include independent 

estimates of life-cycle costs and technical readiness 

of missions.27

The next round of surveys produced reports 

that were published in astronomy and astrophysics28 and in planetary science29 in 2011 and solar 

and space physics30 in 2012. The new surveys all 

took heed of the conclusions from the 2006 workshop and incorporated an extensive process of independent cost and risk assessment that was aimed 

at enabling the survey committees to more rigorously evaluate and compare candidate missions. 

However, the survey reports were delivered in the 

midst of an unstable NASA budgetary and political environment. Consequently, NASA managers 

faced an uphill battle to implement the surveys’ 

recommendations even though they often wished 

to follow them.

University of Chicago theoretical astrophysicist 

and veteran of several decadal survey committees, 

Michael Turner, had an enlightening analysis of 

the difficulties that the 2001 and 2010 astronomy 

and astrophysics surveys encountered:

First, the community has gotten less homogenous.... If you go back 30 years, everybody 

saw everybody a couple of times a year, and 

the community was well-connected and on 

the same page. Astronomy is much more 

25. National Research Council, Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2007).

26. Space Studies Board, Decadal Science Strategy Surveys: Report of a Workshop (National Research Council, The National Academies 

Press, 2007), pp. 2–3.

27. “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008,” H.R. 6063, P.L. 110-422, signed 15 October 2008.

28. National Research Council, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2011).

29. National Research Council, Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013-2022 (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2011).

30. National Research Council, Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2012).
118 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

heterogeneous and in my opinion more interesting and exciting! 

Next, the projects have gotten more expensive and take longer to build, and so it’s not 

obvious that the decade is a right time unit 

any more. Agency budgets have been unpredictable and not increasing. It’s easy to be a 

genius when budgets are going up. It’s easy to 

look bad when they are going down. In the 

2001 survey,...for some of the projects we 

endorsed there was no way they were going 

to get done during the decade or even the 

next decade. In my mind the big issue here is 

schedule and readiness—not that cost isn’t an 

important issue—but readiness is even more 

important. For some of those projects the 

community was unrealistically led to believe 

that they were actually ready to go. I think we 

did a lot better on the readiness and the cost 

[in 2010], but the money available for new 

activities at NASA kept shrinking. We got the 

most detailed information ever from [NASA], 

however, it changed with time, which was not 

very helpful. Then of course the big disaster was the [James Webb Space Telescope] 

overrun. 

Finally, we were all set up for just stunning international cooperation.... And then 

everything unravels sadly, because of budgets 

on both sides of the Atlantic. On our side, we 

didn’t have enough money to go fast enough for 

ESA. On their side, they had too much money, 

and if they didn’t [move] fast enough they were 

going to lose their budgetary authority in the 

future.... It was kind of the perfect storm.31

In late 2012, the SSB and the NRC Board on 

Physics and Astronomy (BPA) organized another 

workshop—this time to identify lessons learned 

from the most recently completed surveys.32 The 

workshop involved past survey committee chairs 

and members, other scientists and engineers, 

agency representatives, and representatives from 

the international space research community. 

Participants examined every aspect of the decadal 

survey process, including planning, coordination 

between the NRC and the agencies, the character 

of recommended goals and priorities, cost and risk 

assessments, dealing with contingencies, and international perspectives. 

SSB chair Charles Kennel opened the workshop 

by acknowledging the problems with the recently 

completed surveys and noting that each one had 

been overtaken by events in some way. Some survey 

recommendations were already in tatters, and 

others had already become unaffordable. Workshop 

co-chair Alan Dressler put things in a brighter perspective by observing that with the decadal surveys “the NRC does something imperfectly that 

should be impossible.”33 Lennard Fisk’s keynote 

talk and Kennel’s closing remarks succinctly captured key conclusions from the workshop. Fisk 

opened the meeting by posing two rhetorical questions: “Should we abandon our decadal process? 

Certainly not! Should we try and adapt the decadal 

process for today’s reality? Absolutely!”34 Kennel 

noted that he heard plenty of support for continuing the process at its current scope without making 

it more elaborate, but he also heard arguments for 

being more explicit about the uncertainties and 

limitations of the surveys’ cost estimates. As for the 

31. Turner interview.

32. Chapter 2 of the workshop report, Lessons Learned in Decadal Planning in Space Science: Summary of a Workshop (The National 

Academy Press, 2013), includes a comprehensive discussion of how the 2011 and 2012 surveys were organized and conducted.

33. Alexander document files from the 12 November SSB workshop.

34. Quoted in National Research Council, Lessons Learned in Decadal Planning in Space Science: Summary of a Workshop (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2013), p. 3.
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

bottom line, he emphasized that “nobody said we 

shouldn’t have another decadal survey.”35

NASA Associate Administrator for Science 

John Grunsfeld summarized the views of many 

NASA managers about the risks of overly optimistic decadal survey mission models when he 

commented on the 2010, 2011, and 2012 surveys 

as follows:

Each decadal survey is unique.... Starting 

with planetary, they took a very risky strategic tack of looking at the budgets that they 

enjoyed for years and saying, “Well look, if we 

study a budget option that’s flat or declining 

then that gives somebody the ammunition to 

do that program, not the more desirable one. 

So let’s assume that we get at least [growth to 

match] inflation and then [also] prepare for a 

really big increase....” Later on they then said, 

“We will add some decision rules in case you 

don’t get that,” because it was already clear that 

that was not the economy we are in. So that’s 

one factor—a realistic budget. We are struggling...where the budgets that were assumed 

to develop the survey were much too optimistic. [B]oth in planetary and astrophysics they 

did an experiment where they said, “Let the 

decadal process actually design missions. Have 

Aerospace [Corporation] do cost and technical evaluations.... “Basically doing everything 

that we actually do here for a living in SMD.... 

[T]he Space Studies Board really didn’t have all 

the team members needed or the time to do it 

right.... [W]e know from vast experience of 

over 50 years in the space age that you really 

don’t know what something is going to cost 

until well after you have set the requirements 

and done the design work and performed a 

good cost estimate.... What we really need the 

decadal surveys to focus on is for the community to...prioritize the main science objectives 

and show through some level of analysis, some 

level of cost forecasting, and existence proofs 

of instruments that could answer that science, 

but then let NASA and the community go 

back and figure out exactly what their implementation will be once the budget is settled.36

In the last part of his comment, Grunsfeld was 

essentially harkening back to Newell’s early 

guidance for the SSB to provide “broad overall objectives...rather than detailed program 

formulation.”37

In addition to NASA concerns over the credibility and utility of decadal survey committees’ 

mission cost estimates, a few members of the scientific community have worried about the risk that 

the surveys can freeze priorities so that there is no 

opportunity for timely response to important new 

discoveries. These critics argue that it is wrong for a 

single committee, regardless of its size and breadth, 

to be able to issue a document that takes on “biblical importance,” and thereby constrains the future 

directions of a field.38

Given concerns exemplified by Grunsfeld’s 

comments above and by some scientists, the most 

ambitious and comprehensive examination of the 

decadal survey process was a study initiated in 2014 

by an ad hoc committee that was organized under 

SSB auspices. The committee’s report—“The Space 

Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and 

Best Practices”—was a resounding reaffirmation 

35. Quoted in National Research Council, Lessons Learned in Decadal Planning in Space Science: Summary of a Workshop (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2013), p. 79.

36. Grunsfeld interview.

37. See John E. Naugle, First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, NASA History 

Division, Washington, DC, 1991), ch. 5, p. 72.

38. Luhman interview, 11 November 2014.
120 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

of the decadal survey process, but it did offer a 

number of useful, and feasible, ideas for improving the process and making it more resilient. These 

ideas included approaches for reviewing the state 

of the science during the organizational phase of 

a survey so that the survey committee could begin 

its work on prioritizing future science goals more 

quickly and for fostering international discussions 

of science goals so as to facilitate better coordination towards opportunities for international cooperation. The report was unequivocal in saying that 

decadal surveys should not abandon the practice 

of recommending priorities for both a discipline’s 

science goals and the missions or programs needed 

to pursue the goals.39

The committee devoted much of its attention to 

the issue of obtaining realistic cost estimates, and 

it recommended that survey committees utilize a 

two-phase cost and risk assessment in which candidate missions would be run first through a coarse 

“cost-box” analysis before subjecting fewer candidates to a more in-depth analysis. In using this 

approach, the committee also recommended that 

most missions so analyzed be clearly understood 

to be reference missions rather than high-fidelity 

design assessments. Future survey committees 

would devote their most intense efforts to understanding the very largest candidate missions where 

unforeseen cost growth or technical hurdles could 

have seriously disruptive effects on a discipline as 

a whole. The 2015 committee report also made a 

strong case for the importance of surveys that “provide clear decision rules and decision points that 

will effectively establish cost caps, with the intent 

of triggering reconsiderations of the mission and 

the possibility, or necessity, of rescoping its science 

capability.”40

Mid-Course Assessments Track the 

Decadal Surveys

The 1991 decadal survey for astronomy and astrophysics, which was prepared under the leadership 

of Princeton astrophysicist John Bahcall,41 was 

remarkably successful. By the middle of the decade 

following the report, the survey’s major recommendations for space activities either had been 

accomplished or were well on the way. Most notably, development of the top-priority large mission, 

the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, had started, 

and advanced technology activities for important 

future missions were in progress. At the same time, 

NASA was beginning to implement strategic planning requirements called for in the new GPRA legislation, and so the agency needed guidance about 

what scientific priorities should guide NASA’s 

planning for the end of the decade. Consequently, 

NASA asked the SSB to update the scientific priorities that had been outlined in the 1991 astronomy 

decadal survey and, thereby, provide a mid-decade 

review and an up-to-date basis for NASA’s next 

space science strategic plan. The SSB, jointly with 

the Board on Physics and Astronomy, organized 

an ad hoc Task Group on Space Astronomy and 

Astrophysics to do the job, and their report was 

issued in 1997.42 Recognizing the special status of 

decadal surveys in the astronomical community 

and a high degree of protectiveness on the part of 

the chair and authors of the survey report, the task 

group took pains to explain that their effort was “not 

39. National Research Council, The Space Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and Best Practices (National Academies of Sciences, 

Engineering, and Medicine, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2015), pp. 1–6. 

40. National Research Council, The Space Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and Best Practices (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2015), p. 6.

41. National Research Council, The Decade of Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, 

and Medicine, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1991).

42. National Research Council, A New Science Strategy for Space Astronomy and Astrophysics (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1997).
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

a decadal survey and does not replace the widerranging, consensus-building activities associated 

with the Bahcall report and its predecessors.”43

 Less than half a decade later, as the 2001 

decadal survey report for astronomy and astrophysics was nearing completion, the field was exploding 

(pun noted) with discoveries that would pose new 

questions about fundamental aspects of physics 

and cosmology: “What is dark matter? How can 

dark energy be explained? What caused an apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe 

at its earliest moments? Does Einstein’s theory 

of gravity work as well in the presence of intense 

gravity as it does under more ‘normal’ circumstances?” Discoveries in other subdisciplines—for 

example, mounting evidence for the ubiquity of 

planets around other stars and of massive black 

holes—were equally copious and exciting. Thus, in 

only a few short years after publication of the 2001 

decadal survey, the scientific core of the field was 

evolving at an unprecedented pace. A new NRC 

committee addressed the implications of developments at the interfaces between astrophysics and 

physics in a 2003 report—“Connecting Quarks 

with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the 

New Century”44—that was intended to complement the most recent astronomy and astrophysics 

decadal survey report by summarizing the new scientific developments and recommending actions 

that NASA, NSF, and DOE could take to pursue 

those opportunities. Some astronomers began to 

ask whether scientific opportunities were moving 

so rapidly that the basis for recommendations in 

the 2001 decadal survey deserved to be revisited.

At the same time that the scientific scene was 

changing at a breathtaking pace, the political and 

programmatic environment at the relevant federal 

agencies was also in considerable flux, especially 

at NASA. The Space Shuttle Columbia accident 

in February 2003 created exceptional stresses, 

and the conclusions of the Columbia Accident 

Investigation Board45 prompted internal and external assessments of NASA’s programs and operations. One consequence that was immediately 

important to astronomy was NASA Administrator 

Sean O’Keefe’s decision to cancel any further Space 

Shuttle servicing missions to the Hubble Space 

Telescope.46

President George W. Bush introduced his new 

Vision for Space Exploration47 in January 2004, 

and that initiative had important implications for 

space astronomy, as well as for the rest of NASA’s 

space and Earth science programs. The core of 

the initiative involved human missions to and on 

the Moon, which would serve as test beds for later 

human missions to Mars and elsewhere in the solar 

system, and a complementary robotic solar system 

exploration program. 

NASA’s plans for responding to the Bush 

vision assumed a growing NASA budget from 

fiscal year 2005 onward, and the budget for science was divided between “exploration missions,” 

which included planetary science, and “other science activities,” into which fell most of astronomy 

as well as Earth science and solar-terrestrial physics. The message for activities that were lumped 

in “other science” seemed to be that they would 

be expected to be good soldiers and tighten their 

43. National Research Council, A New Science Strategy for Space Astronomy and Astrophysics (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1997), p. 4.

44. Board on Physics and Astronomy, Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century (National 

Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2003).

45. Columbia Accident Investigation Board, Report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration and the U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, August 2003).

46. But see chapter 16.

47. George W. Bush, “A Renewed Spirit of Discovery: The President’s Vision for U.S. Space Exploration,” The White House, January 

2004. 
122 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

belts while the exploration effort gathered steam. 

NASA’s budget–chart makers even assigned a dull 

grey shade to the band depicting other science at 

the bottom of the chart while other elements of the 

budget, all of which were implied to be relevant 

to exploration, were displayed in colored bands in 

the year-by-year budget projection.48 The concept 

of a balanced science program, which had been 

advocated by countless advisory bodies and which 

aimed to permit all discipline areas to make progress, seemed to have gone out the window. It was 

enough to give more than a few astronomers a case 

of the willies.

Bush appointed the Commission on 

Implementation of United States Space Exploration 

Policy, chaired by former senior DOD and aerospace industry executive Edward “Pete” Aldridge, 

to recommend research, development, and management strategies to implement the vision.49

The Aldridge report included a “notional science 

research agenda” that provided some reassurance by explicitly incorporating scientific themes 

and objectives that compared well with the scientific themes of the 2001 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey. The fact that astronomer 

Neil deGrasse Tyson, as well as geochemist Laurie 

Leshin, lunar geologist Paul Spudis, and planetary 

scientists Maria Zuber were members of the commission probably made a difference. Nevertheless, 

scientists outside NASA began to worry about how 

NASA managers would embrace the new exploration priorities and how NASA’s response would 

impact community priorities for the future. 

Budget requests in ensuing years would reinforce those worries. When the Bush initiative was 

announced in 2004, the total NASA budget was 

projected to grow robustly by around 5 percent per 

year through fiscal year 2007.50 However, those 

increases never materialized, and at the same time 

continuing costs to operate the Space Shuttle and 

complete construction of the International Space 

Station pushed previously expected budget windfalls farther out into the future. (See chapter 16’s 

discussion of the SSB “Balance” report for more.)

The Committee on Astronomy and 

Astrophysics, which was a joint standing committee of the SSB and BPA, concluded that this stew of 

rapidly developing scientific advances and alarming changes inside NASA called for a review of the 

progress made since the last decadal survey as well 

as an evaluation of whether any changes in direction were appropriate. When the review idea was 

first broached, there were immediate concerns from 

some members of the recent survey committee and 

its parent boards, the SSB and the BPA. In particular, they worried that a review by a committee 

not as broadly based, as inclusive, or as deliberative 

could not be as credible. More risky, in this view, 

was the possibility that such a review could actually 

propose revisions to the decadal survey priorities. A 

review that proposed new or different priorities just 

a few years after the decadal survey was completed 

could threaten long-term community buy-in and 

scientific stability for the survey. Others countered 

that refusing to take a look at whether the thoroughly debated survey priorities were still timely 

seemed unnecessarily defensive and tantamount to 

according the survey scriptural status. 

The two parent boards overcame the decadal 

survey protectors’ reservations and crafted an 

acceptable study charge so that the verbosely titled 

Committee to Assess Progress Toward the Decadal 

48. See chart #14 of the NASA Administrator’s FY 2005 budget summary presentation available at http://www.nasa.gov/

pdf/55522main_FY05_Budget_Briefing020304.pdf.

49. President’s Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy, A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover

(U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, June 2004).

50. NASA Administrator’s FY 2005 budget summary presentation, http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/55522main_FY05_Budget_

Briefing020304.pdf, 3 February 2004, chart #14.
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

Vision in Astronomy and Astrophysics could be 

appointed in 2004. The committee, chaired by C. 

Megan Urry of Yale University, included members 

of the recent survey committee, the Quarks-withthe-Cosmos committee, and other senior leaders in 

U.S. astronomy. Their report highlighted ways in 

which program priorities from the decadal survey 

would address important new scientific findings, 

and it concluded that recent advances “do not 

require that the NRC reexamine the [decadal 

survey] report or undertake an in-depth mid-course 

review of the scientific goals or recommended priorities.”51 The report also emphasized the concept 

of balance—in terms of tools, ranging from computer modeling and theory to major facilities and 

space missions, and in terms of size, ranging from 

small to large projects—as many advisory committees had throughout NASA’s (and the NACA’s!) 

history. The report was relatively mild in terms of 

raising explicit concerns about the community’s 

confidence in NASA’s stewardship of the decadal 

survey recommendations and rather vague regarding specific actions that were recommended.

The important point for the 2005 progress 

assessment report was that it broke new ground. 

The Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics 

initiative to conduct a review of progress halfway 

between decadal surveys and to consider Agency 

responsiveness was a seminal event. Midterm 

reviews subsequently became regular formal events 

that were enshrined in law and applied across the 

space and Earth sciences. They generally followed 

the 2005 approach of adhering to the priorities 

that were laid out in the prior decadal survey and 

assessing agencies’ progress in implementing those 

priorities. And as we shall see, the fact that they 

involved performance evaluations, rather than just 

recommendations of goals, made them more likely 

to stimulate controversy. 

Mid-Decade Reviews Go 

Mainstream

By 2005, the NRC had conducted five decadal surveys in astronomy and astrophysics and had broken 

new ground with surveys in planetary science, solar 

and space physics, and Earth science from space. 

Both the pace of important new scientific discoveries and the time scale over which NASA’s budget 

and programs were buffeted began to pose new 

problems for the staying power of major recommendations from the decadal surveys. At the same 

time, given the fact that Congress had embraced the 

decadal surveys as important sources of guidance 

on Agency priorities, members of Congress began 

to ask for a way to monitor NASA’s responses to the 

surveys’ recommendations. When the new astronomy and astrophysics progress review appeared in 

early 2005, it apparently helped set a broader process in motion. 

Subsequently, Congress passed and the 

President signed the NASA Authorization Act of 

2005, which included specific direction to NASA 

to have 

[t]he performance of each division in the 

Science directorate of NASA...reviewed and 

assessed by the National Academy of Sciences 

at 5-year intervals 

and to 

transmit a report to the Committee on 

Science of the House of Representatives and 

the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 

Transportation of the Senate—(1) setting 

forth in detail the results of any external 

review...; (2) setting forth in detail actions 

taken by NASA in response to any external 

51. National Research Council, Review of Progress in Astronomy and Astrophysics Toward the Decadal Vision: Letter Report (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005), p. 8.
124 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

TABLE 11.3. Complete list of decadal survey reports and midterm assessment reports through 2016 (All reports are 

available via The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, at http://www.nap.edu/.)

Astronomy and astrophysics decadal surveys

Ground-Based Astronomy: A Ten-Year Program (1964)

Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970s (1972)

Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s (1982) 

The Decade of Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics (1991)

Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium (2001)

New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics (2010)

Planetary science decadal surveys

New Frontiers in the Solar System: An Integrated Exploration Strategy (2003)

Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013–2022 (2011)

Solar and space physics decadal surveys

The Sun to the Earth—and Beyond: A Decadal Research Strategy in Solar and Space Physics (2003)

Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society (2012)

Earth science and applications decadal surveys

Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond (2007) 

Earth Science and Applications from Space 2017 (expected 2017)

Decadal survey midterm reviews

Review of Progress in Astronomy and Astrophysics Toward the Decadal Vision (2005)

A Performance Assessment of NASA’s Astrophysics Program (2007)

Grading NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program (2008)

A Performance Assessment of NASA’s Heliophysics Program (2009)

Earth Science and Applications from Space: A Midterm Assessment of NASA’s Implementation of the Decadal Survey 

(2012)

review; and (3) including a summary of findings and recommendations from any other 

relevant external reviews of NASA’s science 

mission priorities and programs.52

Thus, the midterms became law. The SSB 

subsequently organized midterm reviews that 

were published in space astronomy in 2007, solar 

system exploration in 2008, solar and space physics in 2009, and Earth science and applications 

from space in 2012. Table 11.3 lists all of the 

decadal surveys and midterm reviews produced 

through 2016.

Although all the program assessments were 

responsive to the congressional mandate, they 

were not cut out with the same cookie cutter. 

One aspect that they all shared was a gloves-off 

approach to how the review committees judged 

the government’s performance in responding to 

the recommendations of their respective decadal 

surveys. NRC reports have often been known 

for their temperance and kid-gloves presentation 

52. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005, Public Law 109–155, 30 December 2005, 119 Stat. 

2917.
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

of critical points of views. The midterms may 

have taken the same kind of traditionally polite 

approach, but they were still quite explicit about 

findings of federal failings to respond to the recommendations of the decadal surveys. And the 

review committees were not afraid to point the 

finger at parts of the Administration outside 

NASA or at Congress.

The first assessment in response to the 2005 

Authorization Act was the 2007 astronomy and 

astrophysics report, “A Performance Assessment 

of NASA’s Astrophysics Program.” Coming only a 

couple years after the first attempt at a midcourse 

review, the 2007 report was considerably more 

explicit. While concluding that NASA’s 2003 program plan to act on advice from both the 2001 

decadal survey and the 2003 Quarks-with-theCosmos report was appropriately responsive, the 

report went on to say that realities of execution 

had curtailed progress and that NASA’s subsequent 

2006 plan would lead to further erosion. The report 

emphasized that “NASA’s Astrophysics Division 

does not have the resources to pursue the priorities, 

goals, and opportunities”53 in the decadal survey 

and the “Quarks” report. The committee made 

several recommendations, including one regarding 

a recurring theme of nearly every advisory committee and report—namely, that NASA needs a balanced and diversified portfolio of large and small 

missions and investments in technology development, data analysis, data archiving, and theory. 

Owning to the fact that the report was prepared during the time when NASA’s internal advisory structure was in disarray (see chapter 12), the 

report also tackled the problem of NASA communications with the outside community by recommending the following: 

NASA should consider changes in its advisory 

structure to shorten the path between advisory 

groups and relevant managers so as to maximize the relevance, utility, and timeliness of 

advice as well as the quality of the dialogue 

with advice givers.... Currently advice of all 

kinds—from the high-level policy and strategic advice needed by NASA’s administrator 

and senior management to the more tactical 

expert advice needed by science managers—is 

transmitted vertically through the NASA 

Advisory Council to the administrator and 

then down to the relevant managers. Direct 

two-way connections between advisory committees and managers would foster several 

important goals, including timely provision 

of and access to input tailored to the needs of 

the managers at each level, strengthened communication between NASA and the scientific 

user community, and greater flexibility for the 

NASA Advisory Council to focus on issues of 

policy and high-level agency strategy. NASA 

might also wish to reconstitute informal management operations working groups to enable 

science managers to quickly and effectively 

obtain expert advice on specific issues. The 

committee suggests that a continual dialogue 

between vested parties will produce the most 

effective outcome, especially in circumstances 

when difficult choices may be required.54

The 2008 evaluation of NASA’s solar system 

exploration program took a more quantitative 

approach to program assessment. The committee evaluated NASA’s progress against the 2003 

decadal survey and a complementary 2006 NRC 

report that had examined NASA’s Mars program 

53. National Research Council, A Performance Assessment of NASA’s Astrophysics Program (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2007), p. 2.

54. National Research Council, A Performance Assessment of NASA’s Astrophysics Program (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2007), pp. 41–42.
126 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

architecture, and it gave a real report card with letter 

grades (A through F) plus trending assessments to 

each of the major elements of the program. The 

report gave the overall planetary science program 

a B but indicated that the state of the program was 

worsening over time, saying “on its current course, 

NASA will not be able to fulfill the recommendations of the solar system exploration decadal 

survey.”55 When the committee looked at individual flight programs, it gave the Mars program an 

A but gave some other flight programs—small 

Discovery-class principal-investigator-led missions 

and large flagship missions—a D. In what looked 

like a classic case of the law of unintended consequences, subsequent to the NRC review NASA 

took money from the healthy Mars program and 

bolstered activities that were rated more poorly. 

While outside observers saw this was a case of cause 

and effect, NASA officials disputed that and said 

the budget decisions had already been made when 

the NRC assessment was published. Nevertheless, 

the midterm review grades provided NASA officials with cover when they rebalanced budget allotments at the expense of the Mars program. NASA 

Administrator Mike Griffin defended the cuts 

to the Mars program, saying that it had become 

too bloated.56 The outsiders’ view was captured by 

one former SSB member who later noted that one 

doesn’t achieve excellence by taking money from a 

strong program and giving it to a weak program so 

that they both become mediocre. 

The 2009 heliophysics program review mapped 

NASA’s program against the decadal survey’s seven 

topical chapters and then used the practice adopted 

by the planetary scientists of giving letter grades to 

how NASA was responding to recommendations 

in each of those areas. This midterm review was 

probably the most negative evaluation to date, and 

that turned out to have a real, and possibly unexpected, impact. The review committee’s bottom 

line was that,

Unfortunately, very little of the recommended 

NASA program priorities from the decadal 

survey’s Integrated Research Strategy will 

be realized during the period (2004–2013) 

covered by the survey. Mission cost growth, 

reordering of survey mission priorities, and 

unrealized budget assumptions have delayed or 

deferred nearly all of the NASA spacecraft missions recommended in the survey. As a result, 

the status of the Integrated Research Strategy 

going forward is in jeopardy, and the loss of 

synergistic capabilities in space will constitute 

a serious impediment to future progress.57

The committee gave most of the seven elements 

into which they divided the heliophysics program a 

C grade and even gave NASA an F for its attention 

to how the program connected to other scientific 

disciplines. Grades for individual flight projects 

and other specific program elements were not especially severe, with the evaluation granting four 

As, six Bs, three Cs, and only one D. The report 

also looked ahead at lessons that should be considered in planning the next decadal survey, and it 

provided specific recommendations about how to 

improve the next survey.58

55. National Research Council, Grading NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program: A Midterm Review (The National Academies 

Press, Washington, DC, 2008), p. 4.

56. Griffin remarks at Space Studies Board meeting, 2 May 2006, SSB archives, Washington, DC. Also see transcript of Griffin 

speech to Goddard Space Flight Center employees on 12 September 2006, p. 2, http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/157382main_griffingoddard-science.pdf.

57. National Research Council, A Performance Assessment of NASA’s Heliophysics Program (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2009), p. 2.

58. National Research Council, A Performance Assessment of NASA’s Heliophysics Program (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2009), pp. 3–9.
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

The heliophysics performance review report 

landed at NASA with a splat—it was not happily 

received. The earlier planetary science review was 

nearly as critical, but NASA’s planetary science 

chief was said to have accepted it as a wake-up 

call, which he sought to embrace and use to his 

advantage. However, NASA heliophysics division 

officials appeared to take the review as more of a 

personal attack. Others at NASA, while not going 

as far as taking the report personally, nevertheless 

agreed that the report appeared to go overboard 

in its negative tone. While no one outside NASA 

disagreed that the Agency program had serious 

problems, not all of which were of NASA’s making, 

there were independent views that the tone of the 

report was unnecessarily pejorative. 

Were it not for a change in NRC policies after 

implementation of FACA section 15, the heliophysics performance review might have gone to NASA 

with fewer sharp edges and a tone that would have 

not have been viewed as confrontational. Up until 

the early 2000s, the SSB conducted an informal 

review of all reports prepared under its auspices 

before a committee’s draft report went out for 

formal peer review. For each report, a small group 

of board members would be assigned to read the 

draft report and then lead a discussion of the report 

with the authoring committee chair during a board 

meeting. The process added a little time to the 

overall report schedule, but it often exposed issues 

that the report authors had overlooked and were 

wise to reconsider. Because of conflict-of-interest 

policies implemented simultaneously with NRC 

compliance with FACA, the board no longer could 

hold such discussions.

Compounding the problems with the heliophysics report, the SSB recognized belatedly that 

it had not given the committee adequate staff support and guidance. Consequently, the SSB also 

took away some lessons about how to work to make 

assessments more likely to be constructive and less 

likely to drive NASA straight up the wall.

The final performance assessment in the SSB’s 

first round after the congressional call for regular 

reviews addressed NASA’s response to the 2007 

decadal survey for Earth science and applications 

from space. The 2012 report, which employed 

qualitative assessments rather than letter grades, 

started positively with kudos for NASA:

NASA responded favorably and aggressively to 

the 2007 decadal survey, embracing its overall 

recommendations for Earth observations, missions, technology investments, and priorities 

for the underlying science. As a consequence, 

the science and applications communities 

have made significant progress over the past 

5 years.59

But the committee moved quickly to its major 

concerns about the robustness and long-term outlook of the U.S. program, saying that, “The nation’s 

Earth observing system is beginning a rapid decline 

in capability as long-running missions end and key 

new missions are delayed, lost, or canceled.” The 

review was very clear that NASA was not solely 

to blame:

Congress’s failure to restore the Earth science 

budget to a $2 billion level [at which it was operating in fiscal year 2006] is a principal reason 

for NASA’s inability to realize the mission 

launch cadence recommended by the survey.... 

The 2007 decadal survey’s recommendation 

that the Office of Science and Technology 

Policy develop an interagency framework for 

a sustained global Earth observing system has 

not been implemented. The committee concluded that the lack of such an implementable 

and funded strategy has become a key, but not 

59. National Research Council, Earth Science and Applications from Space: A Midterm Assessment of NASA’s Implementation of the 

Decadal Survey (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2012), p. 2.
128 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

the sole, impediment to sustaining Earth science and applications from space.60

Thus, while earlier midterm reviews in other 

fields had acknowledged that problems were not 

always under NASA’s control and that NASA 

sometimes had to try to make the best of a difficult situation, the Earth science assessment was 

the first to be explicit about how other parts of the 

government had to share some blame and responsibility. The Earth science budget subsequently did 

enjoy modest improvements, and by 2015 NASA 

funding for Earth observation satellite programs 

appeared to have stabilized, albeit at levels still 

below what the survey committee had hoped to see. 

NASA began to prepare many of the recommended 

space missions for launches in 2017 and beyond, 

especially via the innovative use of small, low-cost 

spacecraft and instruments on the International 

Space Station. And with the help of congressional 

prodding, the Obama administration prepared 

a National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations 

in 201361 and a National Plan for Civil Earth 

Observations in 2014.62

Assessing the Assessments

The 2012 SSB-BPA decadal survey workshop 

examined experience with the midterm reviews 

as well as the decadal surveys themselves. There 

was wide agreement that the midterms were an 

important vehicle for stewardship of the surveys 

and that they could have value for Congress, the 

Administration, and the scientific public, as well 

as NASA. The reviews provided recognition and 

measures of progress as well as relevant advice 

about needed corrective actions. 

Views about the merits of the midterm reviews 

have not always been glowingly positive. NASA 

officials, in particular, have sometimes complained 

that the assessment reports were prone to criticizing 

the Agency for failures or inactions beyond NASA’s 

control, especially when budget constraints limit 

the capacity to act. For example, senior Science 

Mission Directorate manager Paul Hertz put the 

problem as follows:

...several of the mid-decade reviews that have 

been done so far have said, “You’re doing a 

terrible job because you don’t have enough 

money.” That’s not helpful. The Earth science 

one said, “Well, within the money you have, 

you’re doing a reasonable job of prioritizing 

and responding.” That is helpful. So, even with 

the same instructions when they tell us that we 

don’t have enough money, [they should] know 

that we don’t actually have control over how 

much money we get. I don’t get to pick my 

budget. So if a review committee tells me, “You 

didn’t get the money that the decadal survey 

thought you were going to [get], and you haven’t done what they said they were going to do 

because of that, and therefore, you get a failing 

grade,” it’s true but not helpful.63

Hertz did acknowledge that statements in midterm 

review reports sometimes can be directed at audiences other than the science program managers. A 

finding about inadequate budgets can be an effort 

by the review committee to press senior NASA 

60. National Research Council, Earth Science and Applications from Space: A Midterm Assessment of NASA’s Implementation of the 

Decadal Survey (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2012), p. 3.

61. National Science and Technology Council, National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations (Executive Office of the President, 

Washington, DC, April 2013).

62. Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Plan for Earth Observations (Executive Office of the President, Washington, 

DC, 18 July 2014).

63. Hertz interview, pp. 7–8. 
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

leadership or OMB or Congress about a problem. Then, to the extent that those other decision 

makers take the priorities of the decadal survey 

seriously and have the ability to redirect resources, 

a midterm review conclusion about the impacts of 

budgets can be helpful in the end.

In view of the state of NASA’s own advisory committees at the time of the workshop (see 

chapter 12) and concerns about the charters and 

clout of the SSB standing committees when operating under NRC FACA constraints (see chapter 

9), people saw an especially important role for the 

midterms in monitoring Agency progress and interpreting the surveys in the face of rapidly changing 

programmatic environments. However, there have 

been doubts about whether the midterms alone 

can provide timely stewardship in today’s dynamic 

environment. One congressional staff member who 

follows NASA programs closely had this to say 

about the midterm assessment reports:

They are not my go-to document.... I still 

think we need some sort of interim...conversation about where things are and what’s the 

constellation of factors that are influencing the 

implementation of the decadal.... I think that 

the midterms are providing it, but I wonder if 

that’s the right vehicle and maybe an every two 

or three-year conversation rather than an every 

five-year that’s an actual report.64

Of course, that more regular role of monitoring progress against the recommendations of the 

decadals was once filled by the SSB’s standing 

committees until they were put on a tighter leash.

The workshop discussions drew the line at 

changing scientific priorities via the midterm 

reviews, both because the midterms lacked the 

broad community involvement upon which the 

decadals were based and because scientific advances 

are not likely to support changing priorities in as 

short a time as five years. On the other hand, the 

workshop exposed a lot of sentiment for adapting 

decision rules that a survey might have proposed 

for dealing with programmatic exigencies. The 

midterms were also viewed as the perfect time 

to begin planning for and improving the next 

decadal survey.

Astronomer Marcia Rieke summarized the situation from her perspective, having served on several 

decadal survey committees:

I think the value is that science happens at a 

pretty rapid pace sometimes. For example, if 

you go back and look at Astro2010 [the 2010 

astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey] 

there were a number of questions posed in 

there that could not be answered and were 

recognized as unanswerable.... And there 

were several science areas that we realized were 

moving sufficiently rapidly that there ought 

to [have been] a mid-decade look at whether, 

for example, technology development funds 

ought to be re-vectored in midstream. And 

we were thinking [that] if there’s limited technology development funds, why not to take 

a look mid-decade and see how has the science evolved. How have the technologies for 

these kinds of missions evolved, and where 

do we think the greatest opportunity is? And 

the Astro2010 explicitly said we need to take 

a look at these questions mid-decade...but 

mid-decade reviews may be needed just 

because circumstances and the science behind 

things changes so quickly that waiting a full 

10 years may not be serving the community 

well. That said, these are still going to be done 

with the notion that you don’t change mission 

priorities,...that you don’t revisit the whole 

scene, that you have the specific focused task 

to look at how the sciences and technologies 

have evolved and how is the implementation 

64. Whitney interview.
130 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

going and should the implementation be 

tweaked in some way.65

Why the Decadals Work

The decadal science strategy surveys have enjoyed 

remarkable acceptance, respect, and staying 

power. Even though their recommendations have 

often been overly optimistic and their execution 

has taken longer than the decade for which they 

have been framed, both NASA and Congress have 

tended to view them as the best advice available. 

Nearly all space flight program initiatives recommended by the surveys in the 1990s or beyond have 

been adopted or carried on for study and later selection. The statement quoted at the opening of this 

chapter by Congressman John Culberson, Chair 

of the House Commerce, Justice, and Science 

Appropriations Subcommittee, may have established him as a leader of the survey fan club. One 

year later, Culberson doubled down on his enthusiasm for the decadals, encouraging the NSF to also 

embrace the process and saying,

I’m very impressed with the work...the 

National Academies have done in their decadal 

surveys, and that’s why I included language in 

our 2016 bill to ensure that NASA follows the 

decadal recommendations.... [The decadal 

surveys allow] us as members of Congress to 

recognize what the priorities are of the scientific community and their best objective judgment, and fund those priorities and make sure 

they’re carried out....66

This record of success can be ascribed to several key aspects of the surveys. First, the broad 

participation by a substantial fraction of the 

relevant research community and the intense 

deliberations that lead to the surveys’ conclusions 

provide a kind of heft that makes them very difficult to discount or disregard. (Fig. 11.2 provides a 

simple illustration of the differences in approaches 

between a typical NRC advisory study and a typical decadal survey.) 

A survey committee’s membership is drawn 

from a broad cross section of the relevant research 

community—including not only scientists but also 

engineers and experts with management and policy 

experience—so that there are ample opportunities 

to correct for persons who might be pushing a 

single agenda or who might not be expert in all 

the dimensions of the work at hand. Furthermore, 

by being convened under the aegis of the National 

Academies, the committees legitimately benefit 

from the stature and reputation for independence 

for which the Academies have been known. 

Policymakers recognize that the results of the surveys represent about as good a community-wide 

consensus as can be obtained. Just as importantly, 

the broad participation generates buy-in across the 

community so that researchers feel a sense of ownership in the survey results and are usually likely to 

stand behind the results.

Second, the recommendations in the survey 

reports are derived from a fundamental scientific 

assessment that first defines a set of scientific goals 

from which implementation priorities are derived. 

The surveys don’t first ask, “What do we want to 

build?” or “How much money do we expect?” and 

then build a program around those estimates. Of 

course, in the cold light of day it’s hard to imagine that such considerations don’t enter into committee members’ thinking, but the logic for the 

survey conclusions is built first on the science. The 

more carefully and coherently that train of scientific arguments is built, the more successful the 

65. Rieke interview, p. 4.

66. House Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, 16 March 2016, quoted in FYI: The Bulletin of 

Science Policy News, No. 34, 17 March 2016, American Institute of Physics.
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

final result will be. So the survey committees first 

ask, and ask their colleagues, “What have been the 

major scientific developments over the past decade? 

What are the most pressing scientific problems to 

be tackled in the coming decade? What do we need 

to do to make progress in answering those questions?” Thus, they begin by following Newell’s 

original call for “broad overall objectives.”67 Having 

then filled in the scientific outline, they proceed to 

translate the scientific strategy into an implementation strategy.68

The third powerful attribute of the surveys is 

that they do recommend specific priorities and recommend implementation actions in priority order. 

To do so requires the committees to make difficult 

choices, from which there are inevitably winners 

and losers. Recent surveys have also proposed decision rules, which recommend how NASA should 

Briefings to 

Committee

Briefings to 

Committee

Data from government 

or other parties

Study Committee hearings, 

deliberations, and reoprt 

preparation

Study Committee hearings, 

deliberations, and reoprt 

preparation

Report peer review

Report peer review

Cost and technical 

evaluation

Panel A Panel B Panel N

Committee report 

revisions

Committee report 

revisions

Report delivery 

and release

Report delivery 

and release

Data from government 

or other parties

Town hall meetings

Community white 

papers

Briefings to panels

Optional workshop(s)

Optional workshop(s)

FIGURE 11.2 Notional illustration of key differences between a regular NRC study (upper diagram) and a decadal 

survey (lower diagram)

67. See John E. Naugle, First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, NASA History 

Division, Washington, DC, 1991), ch. 5, p. 72.

68. The recommended programmatic strategies are often used as standards against which to measure program performance as 

discussed in chapter 8.
132 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

weigh decisions when unforeseen implementation problems arise or other issues force managers 

to make tradeoffs or choose between alternative 

paths.69 Thus, the surveys demonstrate a sense of 

seriousness about the recommendations and a willingness on the part of the scientific community 

to take ownership of their recommendations. Of 

course, having such an explicit recommended strategy certainly gives decision makers and managers 

a basis from which to work if they so choose. They 

also appreciate the fact that having such a solid outside set of recommendations often provides excellent cover that permits them to point to a decadal 

survey when justifying a decision.

A logical question to ask is, “Given the success 

of the decadals in the space sciences, can the process 

be as useful for other scientific and technical fields 

outside of NASA’s scientific interests?” The list 

above of success factors—broad community participation and consensus, foundation built on fundamental scientific goals, rank-ordered priorities, 

and consideration of approaches for dealing with 

unforeseen problems—is a big list. Consequently, 

decadals are a major effort to accomplish. Agencies 

and scientific communities need to be willing and 

able to commit the time, energy, and resources to 

make a decadal survey successful.

The more a decadal survey is directed at a 

relatively contained ensemble of sub-disciplines 

and communities, the easier and more tractable the effort is likely to be. A relatively homogeneous agency mission and stakeholder community 

should be a ready candidate for a decadal survey if 

it will have the attributes noted above. However, 

as mission and stakeholder diversity increase—for 

example, by combining scientific research with 

service or operational or regulatory roles—the 

endeavor can become increasingly complex. This 

kind of diversity especially impacts the outreach 

and consensus-building aspects of a survey.

Finally, one might ask whether a decadal survey 

approach would be an appropriate way to tackle a 

major, but so far unmentioned element of NASA’s 

program. That is, “Is the decadal survey process 

applicable to the area of human spaceflight?” The 

discussion above would suggest not for at least two 

reasons. First, the mission of human spaceflight 

is not at all narrowly defined or distinct, and one 

might argue that the mission is not well defined 

at all. Efforts to define a clear set of goals or a 

singular rationale for human space flight70 have 

struggled and have usually ended up with diverse 

purposes that include national security, technology, international relations, science, education, and 

others. That is a lot for a decadal survey to get its 

arms around. Second, the community for human 

spaceflight is probably too narrow. It consists 

mostly of elements of NASA—notably Johnson 

Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, and 

Kennedy Space Center—plus the aerospace firms 

that support those centers and build the necessary 

hardware. No larger community exists in the way 

that it does for the space sciences, where scientists, 

technologists, and students pursue their work in 

many academic, private sector, and government 

laboratories. On the other hand, the SSB and the 

ASEB did jointly conduct the first decadal survey 

covering the scientific aspects of human spaceflight 

69. An example of a decision rule might be “If budget problems arise, first de-scope or delay major missions; then, if necessary, 

delay small and moderate-scale missions, and preserve R&A resources as the highest priority.” For a good discussion of decision 

rules, see National Research Council, “The Space Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and Best Practices” (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2015), pp. 74–78. 

70. For example, see National Research Council, “Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of 

Human Space Exploration” (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2014); National Research Council, “NASA’s 

Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus” (The National Academies Press Washington, DC, 2012); and 

National Research Council, “America’s Future in Space: Aligning the Civil Space Program with National Needs” (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2009). 
Chapter 11 • Expansion of NRC Decadal Surveys and Performance Revie

in 2010, and that survey report was issued in 2011.71

The NASA office responsible for managing life and 

physical science in the low-gravity environments 

of laboratories on the International Space Station 

appeared to be striving to respond as positively to 

the survey recommendations as limited budgets 

would permit.

Returning to the decadals for the space sciences, 

the addition of the mid-course reviews in 2005 

served to enhance the chances for success and reinforce the utility of the surveys. By having a middecadal assessment of the government’s response 

to the surveys, there was some continuing attention and follow-up so as to reduce the likelihood 

that the survey reports were not permitted to fade 

away through neglect or misuse. The midterms 

also provide a means for the research community to interact with the government to respond 

to changes in the programmatic environment that 

might require corrective actions, changes in decision rules, or other implementation adjustments, 

all within the scientific priorities and general 

principles that were set forth in the survey report. 

Thus, the institution of the midterms served to 

help provide robustness to the survey process even 

as the overall programmatic and political climate 

became more complex and challenging for federally sponsored science.

As the next chapter will show, the midterms 

became especially important when NASA’s own 

in-house committees were not able to operate with 

full authority.

71. National Research Council, “Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences Research for a New Era,” 

Washington, DC, The National Academies Press, 2011.

135

CHAPTER 12

A NASA Advisory Council under Stress

During NASA’s early history, the NASA 

Advisory Council (NAC) and its predecessors 

served at the pleasure of the NASA Administrator, 

and the council’s agenda and level of engagement 

also largely reflected the Administrator’s interests. 

That tradition remained in place as the century 

turned over in 2001, but the Administrators’ interests in the early 2000s took a worrisome turn.

When Dan Goldin was Administrator, he was 

an ardent user of the external advisory process. 

One of Goldin’s last interactions with the NAC 

before he left NASA was to approve the formation 

of an International Space Station Management and 

Cost Evaluation (IMCE) task force led by former 

NASA and aerospace industry executive Thomas 

Young. The NAC IMCE’s independent, expert 

review was highly critical of NASA’s management 

and financial controls of the program, referring to 

deficiencies as being inexcusable.1

Waning Influence

Sean O’Keefe, who had served as comptroller 

and chief financial officer of the Department of 

Defense, as Secretary of the Navy, and as Deputy 

Director of OMB, succeeded Goldin in late 

2001. O’Keefe brought credentials in government 

management and budgeting; therefore, he was 

counted on to get his arms around the unabated 

and uncertain growth of Space Station costs. 

However, O’Keefe had no discernible prior exposure to the science community or its culture. Many 

scientists viewed O’Keefe’s interest in courting the 

outside community for advice and guidance as 

shallow at best.

Lennard Fisk, who served as an ex-officio 

member of the NAC by virtue of being chair of 

the SSB, was skeptical of O’Keefe’s interest in 

outside advice:

O’Keefe did not want NAC advice. He wanted 

to make sure they only talked about totally 

irrelevant things. And if you challenged him, it 

was sort of bizarre. He would come into every 

meeting, and he would go through this flowery speech about how wonderful we were for 

giving our time and all that sort of stuff, the 

same speech every time. And then a couple of 

times...I raised a question. I forgot what the 

subject was, but he just practically stormed 

out of the room. I guess I was there to just say 

flowery things. It wasn’t a real advisory structure of any substance. Some of that was also 

driven by FACA. Everything had to be said in 

1. Letter from NAC Chair Charles F. Kennel to NASA Acting Administrator Daniel R. Mulville, “NASA Advisory Council 

Findings from the International Space Station Management and Cost Evaluation (ICME) Task Force,” 19 December 2001. The 

full report is available at http://history.nasa.gov/youngrep.pdf.
136 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

the open. Therefore there was a great deal of 

sensitivity about saying anything.2

Former NAC chair Charles Kennel saw the role 

of the NAC as having been important during the 

years of turmoil over the Space Station (e.g., via the 

IMCE task force) but being diminished after the 

Space Shuttle Columbia accident in 2003:

[T]he NASA Advisory Council during that 

time became a rather pathetic observer.... We 

could begin to feel that we were being kept at 

arm’s length. 

Sean O’Keefe did appoint Fred Gregory, 

who was Deputy [Administrator] at that point, 

to liaise with us. And Fred brought us news, 

but basically it was clear that the decision on 

the program then was being made in very 

closely held hands. They tried various ideas on 

us to see if they made sense to us, but I never 

had the sense of how things were developing. 

So, maybe our reactions were okay, but I didn’t 

think we played a very big role.3

O’Keefe left NASA in early 2005 after reorganizing to pursue President Bush’s Vision for 

Space Exploration, and he was succeeded in April 

2005 by Michael Griffin. In contrast to O’Keefe, 

whose professional background was in management and administration, Griffin earned advanced 

degrees in engineering and physics and worked for 

most of his career in the aerospace arena. Prior to 

becoming Administrator, he held senior management positions at the Johns Hopkins University 

Applied Physics Laboratory, Orbital Sciences 

Corporation, DOD, and NASA (where he was 

Associate Administrator for Exploration from 1991 

through 1993). Griffin was firmly committed to 

implementing the vision and to meeting, or even 

accelerating, its goals to develop new Constellation 

transportation systems to replace the Space Shuttle 

and to return astronauts to the Moon. 

Griffin’s NAC

Not long after taking the Administrator’s job, 

Griffin turned his attention to how the NAC could 

assist in his efforts to build Constellation. He disbanded the existing NAC and changed its composition and structure. He kept former chair Charlie 

Kennel as chair of the NAC Science Committee 

and the only carry-over member. Kennel is an 

accomplished theoretical plasma physicist who has 

also served in senior leadership positions, including executive vice chancellor of UCLA, NASA 

Associate Administrator for Mission to Planet 

Earth, and director of the Scripps Institute of 

Oceanography. Griffin appointed Apollo-17 astronaut and former U.S. Senator from New Mexico, 

Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, as the new NAC Chair. 

Schmitt, who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard in geology, was the only scientist to walk on the Moon. 

Given his Apollo experience, one might not be 

surprised that Schmitt came to the NAC as a vigorous advocate for human missions to the Moon. 

Likewise, many of the new NAC members shared 

backgrounds that made them sympathetic to the 

humans-to-the-Moon initiative.

Griffin restructured the reporting relationships 

of the NAC and its committees. Before this time 

(see chapter 6), each NAC committee (e.g., the 

Space and Earth Sciences Advisory Committee, 

etc.) reported to the NAC and also provided advice 

to the relevant program Associate Administrators. 

And each committee had discipline subcommittees that reported to the main committee and also, 

at least informally, advised the relevant discipline 

division chiefs. In the restructuring, the discipline 

subcommittees were suspended and the main committee was only permitted to provide its advice up 

2. Fisk interview, p. 16.

3. Kennel interview, p. 6.
Chapter 12 • A NASA Advisory Council under Stre

the chain to the NAC, where the NAC would forward it to the Administrator when and if it saw fit. 

The program Associate Administrators and division leaders were left out of the loop. 

Griffin contended that the changes were needed 

because NASA was receiving sometimes-conflicting

 advice from too broad a spectrum of advisory entities. He felt that one consequence of that was that 

NASA managers weren’t being held accountable 

to make their own decisions as responsible public 

officials.4 He also felt that with so many advisory 

avenues there was too little attention paid to integrating across disciplines and too much room for 

dueling goals and priorities being influenced by the 

loudest advocates. With the new structure, Griffin 

intended to ensure that NASA management was 

more directly a part of the advisory conversation 

and that the NAC would play a more significant 

peer review role as advice trickled up from lower 

advisory committees.5

Kennel watched as scientists on NAC and in the 

larger community tried to voice concerns over priorities being pushed for human space exploration 

at the expense of science, and he concluded that,

[T]hey didn’t exactly work out at all with 

the science community. By that time, the life 

and microgravity sciences program had been 

completely eviscerated. There were rants 

against certain darlings of the science program that seemed, to us, irrational. In fact, 

there was an attempt to cut the astrobiology 

program by more amount of money than any 

other science program, and we didn’t understand that. There began to develop a hostile 

relationship between the science part of the 

NASA Advisory Council, with which I was 

involved, and the rest of it, which had been 

reconstructed along the lines to build the 

Constellation program.6

Schmitt saw the conflict as a case of some members trying to overturn the Bush administration’s 

new Vision for Space Exploration and, thereby, 

straying well beyond the NAC’s proper charge: 

The Science Sub-committee...kept coming 

back with advice counter to the presidential 

policy, and that wasn’t our job. We weren’t 

supposed to be advising the President; we were 

supposed to be advising Mike Griffin on how 

to implement the President’s policy.7

Given the NAC scientists’—Wesley Huntress 

of the Carnegie Institute of Washington and 

Eugene Levy of Rice University—unwillingness 

to play along with NASA’s approach, Schmitt persuaded Griffin to dismiss them from the NAC, and 

Griffin did so in August 2006. Kennel resigned a 

few days earlier. In a letter to the NAC, Griffin 

assailed Huntress and Levy as having conflicts of 

interest and caring more about the interests of the 

scientific community than of NASA.8 Huntress 

described Schmitt’s approach to leading the NAC, 

and a major source of tension, as follows:

[He] controlled the agenda very strictly, did 

not want to hear dissenting opinions, [and] 

did not want to hear that science was getting harmed. Every attempt that we made in 

4. Griffin remarks at Space Studies Board meeting, 2 May 2006, SSB archives, National Research Council, Washington, DC.

5. Griffin interview. Griffin also outlined his views in considerable detail in a 12 September 2006 speech at the Goddard Space 

Flight Center. See http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/157382main_griffin-goddard-science.pdf.

6. Kennel interview, pp. 6–7.

7. Schmitt interview.

8. Letter from Michael Griffin to the NASA Advisory Council, 21 August 2006 (reproduced at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.

html?pid=21810). Also see Andrew Lawler, “NASA Chief Blasts Advisors,” Science Magazine, 22 August 2006, http://www.

sciencemag.org/news/2006/08/nasa-chief-blasts-advisors.
138 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

our little science committee to bring something forward for recommendation just got 

slapped down.9

When Griffin and Schmitt reconstituted the 

Science Committee, the new committee quickly 

developed an adversarial relationship with the NASA 

Headquarters science staff. Huntress recalled that,

The decadals meant nothing to these folks...

as if the decadals were irrelevant. It was really 

hard on the AA and the staff, because these 

[NAC] committees were trying to dictate to 

them what their programs should be.10

The realization of this new system dismayed 

many in the space science community. Fisk 

described two examples of how the system operated, both in early 2007, to the SSB. First, the 

NAC Science Committee brought forward a resolution proposing to restore the cuts to the research 

and analysis (R&A) program by taking some 

money from flight programs. The resolution was 

killed by the NAC chair. Then shortly later, the 

committee offered a resolution to endorse NASA’s 

Earth science program. That resolution met the 

same fate.11

Marcia Smith described the impact of the 

revised approach in colorful (or bland, if you prefer) 

terms: “[A]ll the grain keeps getting pounded out 

of the recommendations as they work their way. So 

it’s just white flour by the time it gets up to the 

Administrator.”12

Fisk assessed the impact of the change in starker 

terms:

[T]his, I think, was one of the most destructive 

things that ever happened to NASA science...

it was just the beauty of that advisory structure, given the connections to the community, 

given the vertical chain of information for the 

management. I mean it was just destroyed, and 

it was something that was built up successfully 

over 40 years by that point.13

Earlier reductions in the NASA Headquarters 

staff made the effects of limitations in access to 

outside advisors more acute than it might have 

been otherwise. Under Administrator Goldin, the 

size of the Headquarters staff had been reduced 

from somewhat more than 2,000 positions in the 

mid-1990s to less than 1,000 in 1999; and the staff 

count had only recovered to around 1,300 by 2005. 

With the reduced staff to manage a program that 

was every bit as broad and complex as it was in the 

1990s, NASA managers had their hands full, and 

they needed to be able to rely on outside experts as 

sounding boards and avenues to sample the views 

of the scientific community even more than before.

Edward Weiler recalled that the view from 

inside NASA mirrored what outsiders such as 

Smith and Fisk saw:

So the bottom line is that was a really dark 

day for the advisory system. The NASA I 

grew up with had an incredibly strong advisory system—starting with MOWGs going 

up to division committees and then SSAAC 

and NAC and having the Academy, at least 

in astronomy, and having decadals and 

CAA14—to a point where we had nothing. 

9. Huntress interview, p. 13.

10. Ibid.

11. Alexander document files from 5 March and 28 June 2007 SSB meetings, respectively.

12. Smith interview, p. 21.

13. Fisk interview, p. 15.

14. Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics of the SSB.
Chapter 12 • A NASA Advisory Council under Stre

OSS had no advisory group; the SSAAC was 

cut off at the limbs because it advised Griffin 

and it didn’t advise the AA technically. And we 

had no active CAA at that time. That was kind 

of a bad period.15

Budget issues became a major source of alarm 

within the space research community and tension between NASA and scientists on the NAC. 

When the Bush Vision was announced in 2004, 

the Agency’s overall budget was projected to grow 

faster than the rate of inflation through fiscal year 

2007 and then level off when NASA anticipated 

that funds would become available for new activities after the Space Shuttle was retired in 2010. 

The projections called for a robust budget for space 

and Earth science that would grow from about 

$5.5 billion in 2004 to about $7 billion in 2009.16

However, when NASA submitted its fiscal year 

2006 budget request to Congress in early 2005, the 

optimistic prior projections ran smack into reality. 

Administration priorities such as deficit reduction and funding for homeland security and the 

war in Iraq made NASA’s rosy expectations unsustainable. NASA was under relentless pressure from 

OMB to live with a budget that would constrain 

the number of remaining Space Shuttle flights and 

retire the Shuttle by 2008.17 NASA’s total 5-year 

budget growth projection was reduced significantly compared to a year earlier, with the largest portion of the reduction ($3.1 billion) coming 

from science. Now the space and Earth science 

budget profile showed a drop from fiscal year 

2005 to 2006, followed by one-percent annual 

growth thereafter, corresponding to a likely loss 

in buying power from 2006 onward due to inflation.18 A considerable fraction of the reductions to 

science funding represented transfers to deal with 

continued Space Shuttle and International Space 

Station funding shortfalls, while the higher priority exploration program was expected to sustain 

smaller proportional cuts. In terms of total budget 

levels for NASA, Griffin felt that his hands were 

tied, because he had no choice but to find ways 

to live with the reduced figures that he inherited 

when he arrived as Administrator.19 On top of the 

external (to space science) pressures on the budget, 

cost growth in a number of large Science Mission 

Directorate flight missions20 further limited the 

office’s flexibility to make adjustments.

The way in which NASA proposed to implement the cuts to its science program budget made 

the situation even more alarming.21 New mission 

starts were deferred, the launch rate for small 

Explorer-class missions was approaching historical lows, and investments in new technologies for 

future missions were reduced. Across-the-board 15 

percent reductions in R&A were particularly perplexing, because scientists consistently considered 

this element of NASA’s science programs to be crucial. R&A grants, especially to university researchers, provided a key means for translating space 

15. Weiler interview, p. 9.

16. NASA Administrator O’Keefe’s fiscal 2005 budget presentation. “NASA FY 2005 Budget,” 3 February 2004 at http://www.nasa.

gov/pdf/55522main_FY05_Budget_Briefing020304.pdf. See charts 10, 13, and 14.

17. In fact, the last Shuttle flight occurred in July 2011.

18. NASA Administrator O’Keefe’s fiscal year 2006 budget presentation. “NASA FY 2005 Budget,” 7 February 2005 at http://www.

nasa.gov/pdf/107495main_FY06_AOK_pres.pdf, chart 6. Also National Research Council, An Assessment of Balance in NASA’s 

Science Programs (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2006) p. 10.

19. Griffin interview.

20. Among the projects that were in cost and schedule trouble were the James Webb Space Telescope, the Stratospheric Observatory 

for Infrared Astronomy airborne telescope, the DAWN asteroid mission, and the Mars Science Laboratory surface rover mission.

21. See Space Studies Board, An Assessment of Balance in NASA’s Science Programs (National Research Council, The National 

Academies Press, 2006), for a more detailed discussion.
140 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

mission data into scientific understanding, providing the scientific foundation for future research, 

and training students in space research and development. A plan to cut funding for astrobiology 

research to less than half of its fiscal year 2005 

level was especially vexing. Astrobiology—studies 

regarding the chemical and biological origins of 

life in the solar system and beyond—spanned the 

interfaces between traditional disciplines to constitute an exciting new direction for space science.

While space scientists had good cause for worry, 

the microgravity life and physical sciences—i.e., 

research to be conducted in Space Station laboratories—were put on life support. The budget for 

these areas was reduced by a factor of three, dropping from about $900 million in fiscal year 2005 

to about $300 million in 2006 and beyond. Such 

cuts could be expected to severely reduce the use 

of the Space Station as a research laboratory, postpone or delete critical biomedical research needed 

to reduce risks to long-term human spaceflights, 

immediately cancel support for hundreds of students and post-docs, and drive many researchers 

away from the field.

NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science, 

former astronaut Mary Cleave, retired in April 

2007 and was replaced by planetary scientist Alan 

Stern. Although he was only on the job for one 

year, Stern worked to begin funding restorations 

for R&A and small flight missions. Stern’s successor, Edward Weiler, continued to push for reallocations to the budget.

The cuts to science budgets were fundamentally tied to the need to find ways to fund Space 

Station development and support the remaining 

Space Shuttle flights. Thus, there was a cultural 

mismatch between consideration of the interests 

of the scientific community, which viewed itself 

as the customer of the science program, and the 

customers of the Space Station/Shuttle program, 

which were basically NASA and its industry contractors. Space scientists saw external advice as a 

crucial way of operating, while the NASA-industry 

community responsible for Station and Shuttle saw 

no need for external advice. 

Consequently, Griffin’s budget decisions, which 

stimulated much of the controversy, reflected a 

serious misreading of the scientific community’s 

priorities and expectations about relationships with 

NASA. This became clear in a May 2006 meeting between Griffin and the SSB, during which 

Griffin candidly explained that he viewed R&A to 

be welfare for university professors and their students, who put their own interests ahead of national 

interests. He said that he would have expected 

scientists to prefer a new spaceflight mission over 

R&A and was surprised to hear so many views to 

the contrary. Further, Griffin viewed scientists as 

contractors who worked for NASA—a perspective 

quite different from the scientists who always saw 

themselves as partners with NASA.22 But he told 

the board that he was willing to listen. One cannot 

help but wonder whether the treatment of NASA’s 

science budget might have played out differently if 

there had been more open and continuing dialog 

between the Agency’s leadership and the scientific 

community.

Lingering Impacts

Griffin left NASA at the end of the Bush administration, and, in July 2009, former astronaut Charlie 

Bolden succeeded him as Administrator. Kenneth 

Ford, the founder and CEO of the Florida-based 

Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, had 

taken over as NAC chair when Schmitt resigned in 

October 2008. He led the NAC until 2011, when 

Bolden appointed Steve Squyres, a highly respected 

planetary scientist from Cornell University, to 

become chair.

22. Administrator Griffin also outlined his views in considerable detail in a 12 September 2006 speech at the Goddard Space Flight 

Center. See http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/157382main_griffin-goddard-science.pdf.
Chapter 12 • A NASA Advisory Council under Stre

The constrained reporting structure for NAC 

committees that had been instituted under Griffin 

remained largely unchanged through 2013. 

Committees and subcommittees could only formally convey their advice up the advisory body 

chain. Consequently, program division directors 

and associate administrators could hear the advice 

as it was being framed, but they could not cite the 

advice or use it to explain decisions (e.g., in interactions with congressional committees) unless the 

advice successfully made its way out of the NAC to 

the Administrator and back down the NASA management pipeline. Given that the NAC had many 

issues to consider, much relevant advice that would 

be useful for senior managers’ decision making 

never made it through the NAC’s high-level filter.

Squyres described the system that he inherited 

as being an impediment to the overall effectiveness 

of the NAC:

And every single recommendation, every single 

finding from every committee had to flow 

through the NAC and had to flow through the 

Administrator. And so, for example, let’s say a 

science committee has some advice that really 

is advice for [NASA Associate Administrator 

for Science] John Grunsfeld. It’s not advice for 

Charlie [Bolden]; it’s advice for John.... We 

wound up spending so much of our time on 

committee business and so much of our time 

on issues that were not the big issues facing the 

agency but instead were the ones facing individual AAs and so forth. It really kind of stood 

in the way of us doing some of the things that 

I think the Council really should be intended 

to do.23

The old Management Operations Working 

Groups also became endangered species. In their 

place, NASA formed ad hoc “analysis groups” 

to deal with more tactical topics that arose. The 

analysis groups were not chartered under FACA as 

formal subcommittees of NAC committees or subcommittees; they were charged to gather individual 

opinions from their members, rather than consensus views of the whole group. They were permitted to prepare white papers from the group so long 

as they did not include recommendations. Then, 

the collected opinions of analysis group members 

were forwarded upward to the relevant NAC committees.24 A few NASA managers continued to fly 

below the formal advisory system radar by using 

MOWG-like rump committees, thereby following an old tradition of finding a way to do what 

seemed sensible in spite of seemingly irrational 

rules. Nevertheless, for observers who remembered 

the good old days with MOWGs feeding subcommittees that fed higher-level committees and thus 

providing useful, timely advice to management 

levels along the way, the jury was still out. 

The NAC and its committees had always been 

viewed on Capitol Hill as being more a creature of 

NASA and less independent than their NRC counterparts, and the upheaval in advisory architecture 

and membership made them seem even less influential. As of 2013, Marcia Smith found the whole 

process rather toothless:

I must say, these last several years where I 

have been listening in on the NAC committee meetings, I have been disappointed at 

just how ineffectual they are, and how much 

people pull their punches when push comes 

to shove. So you get these great discussions 

and people are absolutely willing to say whatever is on their mind. But when it comes to 

the end of the meeting and they are writing 

down their recommendations that they want 

23. Squyres interview.

24. While the analysis groups were primarily intended to help forward ideas from the scientific community to NASA, they also 

helped promote communications across the community and to relevant NRC committees. 
142 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

to forward to the full NAC, everybody pulls 

their punches. They all want to reach consensus and “yada, yada, yada.” Then whenever 

they come up with [a conclusion] that goes to 

the full NAC, “Oh no, we can’t say that. Oh, 

we said that a year ago, we don’t need to say 

it again.” And what actually gets sent to the 

Administrator is really hardly worth the paper 

it’s printed on. And then NASA takes it and 

at the next NAC meeting, they report “Well, 

NASA did not accept your advice on this and 

they did not accept your advice on that.” And 

so you wonder what the point is. It does provide a good forum for people to vent, but they 

don’t seem willing to take that extra step and 

actually put words on paper, except in very 

rare instances.25

Fresh Air?

In late 2013, Administrator Bolden and NAC chair 

Squyres began to institute changes that would 

restore the council’s effectiveness. In addition to 

adjustments to the NAC’s committees, task forces, 

and membership structure, the advisory relationships were being brought back to an arrangement 

that more nearly matched earlier approaches. In 

November 2013, NASA announced that “In addition to Council recommendations that are now only 

provided to the Administrator, the Council and its 

standing committees will also be encouraged to 

send specific recommendations to NASA Mission 

Directorate Associate Administrators.”26 Under 

the revised arrangement, Squyres expected that 

NAC standing committees would “only come to 

the Council and they only come to Charlie when 

they’ve got an issue that cuts across the agency or 

there’s sufficient importance that they really want 

to spend a silver bullet.”27

The two subcommittees of the NAC Science 

Committee that employed analysis groups—planetary science and astrophysics28—did connect 

their activities with the analysis groups by ensuring 

that the analysis group chairs also served on the 

subcommittee. Thus, one problem that had handicapped the NAC for nearly a decade appeared to 

be near solution.

Squyres felt that the analysis groups developed 

into an effective platform for hearing from the scientific community:

They serve an important function. They do 

provide a forum in which the community 

can gather together. The way you become a 

member of one of the analysis groups is you 

show up at the meeting, that’s it. Nobody gets 

chosen; there’s no selection process; it’s selfselecting.29 The people who have the resources 

and the time to show up...and they voice 

their opinions. If you go and you listen to one 

of these meetings, you get a pretty good sense 

of what’s the pulse of the community on this 

issue or that issue.30

25. Smith interview, p. 19.

26. See http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-advisory-council-reorganizes-for-greater-effectiveness/.

27. Squyres interview.

28. In early 2016, there were planetary science AGs in extraterrestrial materials curation and analysis, lunar exploration, Mars 

exploration, outer planets, small bodies, and Venus exploration; and there were astrophysics AGs for the Cosmic Origins, 

Exoplanets, and Physics of the Cosmos programs.

29. Members of the relevant disciplinary communities are usually well aware of these plans via newsletters, informal information 

exchanges, etc.

30. Squyres interview.
Chapter 12 • A NASA Advisory Council under Stre

Proving, perhaps, that any good idea can be 

undermined by an ardent bureaucracy, NASA officials announced in early 2015 that since the advisory groups were no longer formally affiliated with 

the NAC or its subunits, they could no longer meet 

without arranging for every individual meeting to 

be treated as a conference. However, thanks to new 

constraints that the administration had imposed in 

response to widely publicized lavish spending and 

abuses of conferences by other agencies,31 NASA 

had adopted highly conservative documentation 

and approval requirements on all Agency participation in conferences. The net result was that each 

advisory group meeting would need to be justified, 

organized, approved, and documented as a separate 

ad hoc event. According to one NASA manager, the 

administrative and logistical work load for analysis 

group activities would triple compared to when 

they were handled as informal sources of input 

to NAC subcommittees. Furthermore, because 

there were restrictions on the number of NASA 

employees permitted to attend conferences, the 

new arrangement made it more difficult for NASA 

people to hear from outside scientists who would 

attend the meetings. Consequently, their linkage 

to NASA’s advisory activities and their capacity to 

give officials scientific community input on programmatic issues could become even more tenuous 

and arduous, as well as costly.

Concerns about the operation and effectiveness 

of the NAC did not escape congressional attention. In April 2014, some members of the House 

Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

proposed to include language in the 2014 NASA 

Authorization bill that would change the structure 

and expand the authority of the NAC to make it 

more like the National Science Board, which has 

power over the NSF that is more akin to a corporate 

board of directors. While the proposal for NSB-like 

changes did not survive, the bill was subsequently 

modified to call for a study of the effectiveness of 

the current council and for recommendations of 

possible changes:

SEC. 707. NATIONAL AERONAUTICS 

AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION 

ADVISORY COUNCIL.

(a) STUDY.—The Administrator shall enter 

into an arrangement with the National 

Academy of Public Administration to assess 

the effectiveness of the NASA Advisory 

Council and to make recommendations to 

Congress for any change to—

(1) the functions of the Council;

(2) the appointment of members to the 

Council;

(3) qualifications for members of the 

Council;

(4) duration of terms of office for members of the Council;

(5) frequency of meetings of the Council;

(6) the structure of leadership and 

Committees of the Council; and

(7) levels of professional staffing for the 

Council.

In carrying out the assessment, the Academy 

shall also assess the impacts of broadening 

the Council’s role to advising Congress, and 

any other issues that the Academy determines 

could potentially impact the effectiveness of 

the Council. The Academy shall consider the 

past activities of the NASA Advisory Council, 

as well as the activities of other analogous 

federal advisory bodies in conducting its 

assessment.32

31. The stringent travel constraints at NASA were imposed as part of an administration-wide clamp-down after scandals over a 

General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas in 2010. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gsa-chief-resignsamid-reports-of-excessive-spending/2012/04/02/gIQABLNNrS_story.html.

32. H.R.4412 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2014, 113th Congress (2013–2014).
144 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

That version of the Act passed in the House of 

Representatives on 9 June 9 2014 by an impressive 

402 to 2 vote. The Senate then assigned the bill 

to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 

Transportation on 19 June, where it languished as 

did so many other pieces of potential legislation 

in 2014. After another unsuccessful try in 2015, 

the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 

did include the provisions when it was enacted in 

March 2017.

The NAC in Context

Throughout NASA’s history, the NASA Advisory 

Council, or something resembling it, has been a 

fixture in the Agency’s overall approach to gathering outside expert advice. NASA’s predecessor, the 

NACA, was formally established around an advisory committee. The concept was continued, in an 

embryonic form, in NASA’s first years to balance 

and complement the role of the National Academy 

of Sciences and the Space Science Board. From the 

1960s through the 1990s, the NAC, its predecessors, and its committees provided a forum for discussions between NASA’s leadership and experts 

from the space community about NASA policies, 

priorities, and tactics. The degree to which the 

NAC became involved in important issues varied 

with each Administrator’s preferences and the style 

of the NAC chair, but it was always there.

The NAC, and its specialized committees, survived a rebooting experience in the 2000s. When 

a NASA Administrator sought to downplay the 

NAC’s role or to shape its priorities, the overall 

effectiveness of the council suffered. The effects 

were obvious to the larger space research community, and the community responded to press 

NASA for changes. Those changes, reflecting the 

resilience of a system that has been proven over 

decades, appear to be taking hold to some degree 

in the 2010s. The next chapter takes a look at 

whether NASA’s advisory culture and history has 

been unique or whether it is simply a test particle 

in the larger universe of federal research agencies.
145

CHAPTER 13

Comparing NASA’s Advisory Culture 

with Other Agencies

Needless to say, NASA is not the only agency 

that invites and receives external advice. 

There are roughly 1,000 FACA committees;1

 more 

than 400 NRC committees and boards;2

 and an 

unknown number of temporary ad hoc committees advising the federal government at any time. 

Perhaps half of the FACA committees are proposal 

peer review panels, especially at NIH and NSF, 

but still there is a lot of advising going on. So it 

makes sense to ask the following questions: How 

do NASA’s advisory processes and culture compare 

with those in other similar agencies? Does NASA 

do things differently? Is it more or less engaged? Is 

its approach exceptional or typical? An unscientific 

attempt to address those questions follows.

National Science Foundation 

Advisory Structure 

The top of the advisory structure for the National 

Science Foundation (NSF) is the National Science 

Board (NSB), which is the highest-level policy 

advisory body for the NSF.3

 However, it is also the 

formal, legislatively established, operating entity 

for the NSF, and thus it is much more than just an 

advisory body. NSB memberships are presidential 

appointments, and NSF officials don’t enjoy the 

same degree of flexibility to accept or ignore NSB 

guidance that is the case for purely advisory bodies. 

NASA has no corresponding managing entity that 

oversees Agency policy and operations to the extent 

that the NSB does for the NSF.

The NSB regularly produces reports on the state 

of U.S. science and engineering research, education, and workforce development that are broader 

in scope and deeper in their analysis than what 

has typically come from the NSB’s nearest NASA 

counterpart, the NAC. It also has tackled specific 

strategic issues (e.g., portfolio content) and tactical issues (e.g., execution of peer review) for which 

independent outside advice was needed.

The NSF has a FACA advisory committee for 

each of its seven technical directorates, for example the Advisory Committee for Mathematical 

and Physics Sciences, and they are formed by and 

provide advice to the corresponding NSF assistant 

1. According to a 2009 CRS report (Wendy R. Ginsberg, “Federal Advisory Committees: An Overview,” CRS report R4052, 

Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC, 16 April 2006), there were 917 active committees advising 50 agencies in 

fiscal year 2008.

2. The 2014 National Academies Report to Congress (see http://www.nationalacademies.org/annualreport/) states that the institution 

published more than 400 reports that year; hence, one can expect there to have been more than 400 advisory committees in place 

that year.

3. See http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/ for full information about the NSB.
146 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

director.4 Thus, the directorate committees are 

roughly comparable to the NASA FACA committee that is chartered under the NAC to provide 

advice regarding activities of the Science Mission 

Directorate. 

Each directorate also has a Committee of Visitors 

that meets every three years to review the directorate’s proposal peer review and selection processes.5

These committees have been described as filling a 

watchdog role for which there is no obvious counterpart at NASA. Former NSB member and veteran of several Committee of Visitors reviews Louis 

Lanzerotti lauded the process:

[The Assistant Directors] would call in a group 

to...see that the review process was performing as it should be, and whether the decisionmaking was according to the reviews.... [O]

ne would see who is reviewing these proposals, 

and whether that was the right set of reviewers, and whether the decision making by the 

program manager was consistent with the 

reviews.... I found that really very, very constructive in terms of how they manage their 

programs.6

In the past, the NSF also utilized committees that advised the discipline division directors 

within a directorate, but those bodies were dissolved when the Clinton administration directed a 

reduction in the number of advisory committees 

as part of its reinventing government initiative. 

Thus the NSF advisory structure partially mirrors 

the NASA advisory structure under Administrator 

Griffin, in the sense that advice starts at a relatively 

high level in the organization and flows upward 

through the highest-level advisory body, with no 

lower discipline-specific advisory groups. At times 

in the past, connections between the NSB and 

division-level, disciplinary issues have been tenuous 

at best.

Part of the logic for the NSF advisory process is that NSF is different, because it is not a 

mission-driven agency like NASA and DOE. 

Instead, because NSF responds predominately to 

proposal pressure, it is an agency that is “driven 

by the genius of the scientific community.”7 The 

vast array of proposal peer review panels give NSF 

ample tactical advice. Consequently, in this view, 

the NSF needs less guidance about what to do as 

compared to how it’s being done. If a new layer of 

subcommittees was added below each of the division committees that could just lead to unneeded 

micromanagement. From this perspective, the 

visiting committees address the really important 

issues that benefit from an outside look. 

Not everyone has been convinced by these 

arguments. Some observers who have interacted at 

length with both agencies argue that by not having 

lower-level discipline-oriented advisory bodies, 

advice that eventually works its way up to the 

NSB and to NSF leadership is inevitably diluted. 

Astronomer and student of national science policy 

Kevin Marvel put it this way:

It limits the range of comment of any single 

directorate advisory committee on any one 

topic. So if we’re looking at it from astronomy, at the most we only have three reps on 

this body, and they can only say so much, and 

any report that the internal advisory committee releases can only have so much content to 

go into astronomy. Whereas if you had a complete division-based advisory structure, as they 

4. For a full list of NSF FACA committees, see http://www.nsf.gov/about/performance/dir_advisory.jsp.

5. For information about NSF Committees of Visitors, see http://www.nsf.gov/about/performance/dir_advisory.jsp; for a description of 

the NSF peer review process, see http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/.

6. Lanzerotti interview, pp. 11–12.

7. Turner interview.
Chapter 13 • Comparing NASA’s Advisory Culture with Other Agenci

used to have, then that advisory body would 

be responsible for advice pertaining specifically 

to that division and pass that advice up to the 

next higher level, which it could then get amalgamated and ultimately given to the Director.8

Claude Canizares drew on his experience on 

both NSF and NASA committees to describe a 

committee culture that often couldn’t see the forest 

for the trees:

The MPSAC [Mathematical and Physical 

Sciences Advisory Committee], at least when 

I was on it, felt almost like [my] early days...

with SESAC, where you would just have a 

bunch of people representing their areas, 

trying to juggle things so that they could get 

a better seat at the table. They are always the 

haves and the have nots. The physicists have 

much bigger budget than astronomy, but also 

particularly than math or chemistry. And there 

were always materials scientists who would 

come in and argue that they are much more 

relevant because they produce products.9

Former NSB and SSB member Mark Abbott 

raised a possibly more fundamental point. Abbott 

noted that there can be a gap between advisory 

committees’ broad strategic advice and advice 

about how to execute: 

[S]ometimes the advice is a little bit disconnected between the process that NSF puts in 

place for formulating a vision of where they 

want to go versus the kind of day-to-day proposal pressure.... I can understand why people 

see that sometimes you get the high-level 

stuff from a science board or maybe a standing committee, but then you get all of this 

advice when every six months a whole raft of 

proposals comes in. Where does the NSF get 

something in between vision and day-to-day 

funding decisions? 

I think that’s sometimes problematic...because they don’t have a real standing 

committee. The committees at the directorate level have to see so much. They really do 

come in, and it’s Death by PowerPoint, and 

they make a report and off they go. It’s hard to 

make that crosswalk between vision and sort 

of an implementation strategy and the tactics 

that are down at the program level.10

The NSF has sometimes formed ad hoc advisory entities to obtain strategic and tactical advice 

that might otherwise have come from disciplineoriented standing committees. A notable example is 

the senior review that the Division of Astronomical 

Sciences first organized in 2005. The review, 

which was recommended by the 2001 astronomy 

and astrophysics decadal survey and which was 

modeled after NASA’s senior reviews of space science mission operations (see chapter 10), examined the balance in support of NSF ground-based 

astronomical facilities. The review panel, which 

was established as a subcommittee of the FACA 

committee for the Directorate for Mathematical 

and Physical Sciences, recommended priorities for 

continued operations as well as recommendations 

for budget reductions and even facility closures.11

Worries about increasingly constrained budgets that motivated the 2005 senior review did not 

8. Marvel interview, pp. 9–10.

9. Canizares interview, pp. 9–10.

10. Abbott interview, pp. 2–3.

11. Senior Review Committee, “From the Ground Up: Balancing the NSF Astronomy Program” (Division of Astronomical Sciences, 

National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, 22 October 2006), https://www.nsf.gov/mps/ast/seniorreview/sr_report_mpsac_

updated_12-1-06.pdf.
148 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

moderate; in fact, the outlook worsened, so the 

2010 decadal survey recommended another review. 

Consequently, the NSF organized what was termed 

a portfolio review in 2011. The broader portfolio 

review examined the entire astronomical sciences 

program, including not only facilities but also 

activities such as research grants, laboratory and 

computational research, workforce development, 

and education. Thus, the committee’s comprehensive report12 resembled a recommended strategic plan for the division that assessed community 

needs; alternative budget scenarios; and priorities, 

capabilities, investments, and disinvestments for 

the period 2015 to 2020, all in the context of priorities from the 2010 decadal survey.13 While the 

portfolio review certainly delivered specific advice 

that responded to its charge, occasional portfolio 

reviews are not substitutes for regular advice to help 

bridge long-term vision and shorter-term issues of 

program execution.

One notable outcome of the 2005 senior review 

was a recommendation to drastically reduce 

funding for, and potentially close, the Arecibo 

Observatory, which is home to the world’s largest single-aperture radio telescope and which is 

most familiar to the public via its role in popular 

fiction and movies such as the James Bond movie 

GoldenEye and Contact, the movie based on Carl 

Sagan’s book of the same name. NSF began to 

implement the senior review recommendation, 

but supporters of Arecibo mounted rescue efforts 

and convinced Congress, and the government of 

Puerto Rico, to provide enough funding to keep 

the observatory alive.14 One factor that probably 

helped persuade the NSF to continue funding 

Arecibo was a NRC report on near-Earth asteroid (NEO) hazard assessments and mitigation.15

That report made a clear recommendation for an 

Arecibo role in radar detection and characterization of NEOs. However, the NSF astronomy program portfolio review in 2011, a similar review 

conducted for the NSF Division of Atmospheric 

and Geospace Sciences in 2015, and the 2016 

National Academies midterm review of NSF 

and NASA astronomy programs16 again gave the 

observatory a low priority;17 by 2016 Arecibo again 

appeared to be on the chopping block.18

In addition to its own internal advisory bodies, 

the NSF uses the NRC for independent advice. 

The NSF has always been a sponsor of the astronomy and astrophysics decadal surveys, and the 

foundation supported the decadal surveys for solar 

12. Portfolio Review Committee, Advancing Astronomy in the Coming Decade: Opportunities and Challenges (Division of Astronomical 

Sciences, National Science Foundation, Washington, DC, 14 August 2012).

13. The NSF’s Atmospheric and Geosciences Division Geospace Section formed an ad hoc committee to conduct a similarly broad 

portfolio review of its program in 2015. See http://www.nsf.gov/geo/ags/geospace-portfolio-review-2015/fact-sheet-gs-portfolio-reviewjune2015.pdf.

14. For a thorough discussion of the issues surrounding the support of the Arecibo Observatory, see Christine M. Matthews, “The 

Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory,” CRS report R40437, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC, 23 February 2012.

15. National Research Council, Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2010).

16. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, New Worlds, New Horizons: A Midterm Assessment, (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2016). 

17. Portfolio Review Committee, “Investments in Critical Capabilities for Geospace Science, 2016 to 2025” (Advisory Committee for 

Geosciences, National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, 14 April 2016) https://www.nsf.gov/geo/adgeo/geospace-review/geospaceportfolio-review-final-rpt-2016.pdf. 

18. See Nadia Drake, “Uncertain Future for Earth’s Biggest Telescope,” National Geographic.com, 4 June 2016, http://phenomena.

nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/04/uncertain-future-for-earths-biggest-telescope/. For the NSF “Notice of intent to prepare an 

Environmental Impact Statement and initiate Section 106 consultation for proposed changes to Arecibo Observatory operations,” 

see Federal Register Notices, vol. 81, no. 99, 23 May 2016, p. 32349. Also available in Alexander document file, NASA History 

Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
Chapter 13 • Comparing NASA’s Advisory Culture with Other Agenci

and space physics and for planetary science when 

they were initiated by the SSB. NSF program managers have sought consistently to be responsive 

to decadal survey recommendations, but budget 

constraints have often stretched the time scales on 

which they have been able to act. The NSF also has 

engaged the NRC for advice on specific topics via 

ad hoc NRC study committees, including those of 

the SSB. In general, NSF officials have a reputation 

for trying very hard to be responsive to recommendations from NRC committees. This may reflect 

the culture of the NSF in which the members of 

the staff see an obligation to be responsive to needs 

and ideas from the scientific community. Thus, 

one might argue that the NSF turns to the NRC to 

meet its needs for translation between vision and 

implementation.

However, Marvel noted that a significant consequence of the NSF committee architecture was that 

there was no simple linkage between NSF internal 

advisory activities and incoming discipline-specific 

advice from the National Academies:

[W]hen the community’s reports come 

through the National Academy, like the astronomy and astrophysics decadal surveys,... there 

is no internal match. So it basically falls to the 

division staff to advocate the recommendations of the survey within the agency, as there 

are no real other champions. Obviously the 

few people at the directorate level are going 

to know of the recommendation reports from 

the Academy and make them known, but 

that’s just a couple of voices drowned out by 

the voices from the other divisions within the 

given directorate. And so I think it’s harder 

for advice from the Academy, at least from 

the astronomy perspective, to get into the 

NSF chain.... It’s always seemed to me...that 

the division leadership seems blocked out or 

wedged out from any serious discussion about 

strategy for their division.19

Department of Energy Scientific 

Programs

Because it is a mission-driven agency, one might 

expect the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to 

be particularly similar to NASA. The DOE Office 

of Science has six program offices—Advanced 

Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy 

Sciences, Biological and Environmental Research, 

Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics, 

and Nuclear Physics—each of which has its own 

FACA-chartered advisory committee.20 Each committee has a subcommittee, called a Committee of 

Visitors, which conducts triennial assessments of 

the processes by which the office selects and funds 

research and of the quality of that research. The 

Office of Science also relies on the NRC, especially 

the Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA), for 

external advice in a manner similar to how NASA 

utilizes the SSB.

The Nuclear Science Advisory Committee 

(NSAC) that advises the Office of Nuclear Physics 

is an interesting case because it is shared with and 

also advises the NSF via the NSF Mathematics and 

Physical Sciences Directorate. Thus, one might consider this arrangement to be an example of a matrix 

management approach in which a single committee looks across two agency’s programs in the same 

field. NSAC appears to have a history of producing 

more formal, and more readily publicly available, 

reports than its counterparts at NASA. NSAC has 

prepared long-range plans for a national program 

in nuclear science at intervals of about every five 

to seven years, and these plans are developed via 

a process with substantial community engagement 

that is similar to the SSB decadal survey process. 

19. Marvel interview, p. 10.

20. For information about DOE FACA committees, see http://science.energy.gov/about/federal-advisory-committees/.
150 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

BPA has used these long-range plans as input to 

NRC decadal surveys for nuclear science.21 As an 

indication of the effectiveness of the NSAC, the 

decadal surveys have more often than not largely 

endorsed the NSAC strategic plans.

The High Energy Physics Advisory Panel 

(HEPAP) also advises both DOE and NSF. 

Its subcommittee, the Particle Physics Project 

Prioritization Panel (P5) has been an important 

influence in strategic planning for the Office of 

High Energy Physics. P5 has employed its own 

version of the decadal survey process in which the 

Division of Particles and Fields of the American 

Physical Society has managed a series of meetings and workshops to obtain broad community 

input, and then P5 has translated that scientific 

input into recommended DOE priorities. P5 is not 

established under FACA, so its recommendations 

are forwarded to HEPAP for concurrence and submission to the DOE. Thus, the resulting strategy 

shares many attributes of the SSB decadal surveys, 

but it lacks the degree of independence that comes 

from an effort conducted entirely under the auspices of the National Academies. Nevertheless, the 

fact that at a 22 May 2014 hearing of the Energy 

Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and 

Technology Committee the P5 report22 earned 

enthusiastic bipartisan support suggests that the 

arrangement has served DOE well.23

Michael Turner summarized his view of the 

DOE committees’ performance:

And I would say they are a model for managing with FACA Committees. I didn’t mean 

to imply the word perfect; I didn’t mean to 

imply that they get it all right. But I think that 

the [committees] that I’m aware of (HEP and 

Nuclear Science) have done a very good job. 

They’re getting the community input, and 

they give the agencies advice that they can 

actually use.

And he noted that there are pros and cons to the 

DOE approach:

Unlike an NRC report where you ask the 

Academy to do something, and then you don’t 

get to hear what’s going on inside, on the 

FACA committee side you do. But you lose 

the independence. But I think the advantage, 

if you’re looking for the pluses, is that you’ve 

got the agency keeping the committee focused 

on the task.24

At the risk of oversimplifying the situation, 

one might conclude that while DOE utilizes both 

its own internally established FACA committees 

and external NRC advisory bodies, it relies more 

substantively on the former than NASA does and 

consequently receives advice that may be more 

operationally specific but also more under DOE 

control and less independent than is the case 

for NASA. 

In 2014, DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences 

Advisory Committee (FESAC) got itself into a 

kerfuffle that illustrates how sometimes agency 

control can backfire. In response to congressional direction, the committee was asked to recommend investment priorities as part of a ten-year 

strategic plan for the department’s Fusion Energy 

Science program. When the committee’s report 

was released, it drew immediate flak from many 

21. See, for example, Board on Physics and Astronomy, Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter (National Research Council, 

The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2013).

22. Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, Building for Discovery: Strategic Plan for U.S. Particle Physics in the Global Context

(U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC, May 2014).

23. Richard M. Jones, “Upbeat Hearing on P5 Report” (FYI: The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News, American Institute of 

Physics, No. 109, 17 June 2014), https://www.nsf.gov/mps/ast/seniorreview/sr_report_mpsac_updated_12-1-06.pdf.

24. Turner interview.
Chapter 13 • Comparing NASA’s Advisory Culture with Other Agenci

members of the fusion science community. Critics 

charged that the committee failed to gather sufficiently broad scientific community input and that 

report was not representative of the views of the 

fusion research community. Critics also argued 

that the composition of the committee’s strategic 

planning panel was unbalanced in a way that put 

academic researchers at a disadvantage compared 

to scientists and facilities at national laboratories. 

Scientists from university-based fusion laboratories 

had been excluded from the report-drafting panel 

due to DOE lawyers’ concerns over conflicts of 

interest. The vice-chair of the planning panel was 

quoted as saying that the DOE’s treatment of conflict of interest was much more stringent than what 

would have been expected of an NRC committee. 

When it came time for FESAC to vote on whether 

to approve the planning panel’s report, only nine 

of FESAC’s 23 members were deemed conflict-ofinterest-free and able to vote.25 Thus, charges about 

the committee’s lack of inclusiveness and balance 

made the report vulnerable from the outset.

A Joint NSF-NASA-DOE Advisory 

Committee

Agencies most often establish advisory committees at their own initiative, but occasionally 

the push comes first from other directions. The 

Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee 

is an interesting example of the latter, in which 

the push came from the White House Office of 

Management and Budget, Congress, and then the 

NRC—and in which three agencies ultimately 

became sponsors of the committee. But let’s begin 

at the beginning.

In early 2001, the George W. Bush administration submitted its fiscal year 2002 budget request 

to Congress, and as administrations often do in 

the name of efficiency, the proposal included the 

idea for a potential reform. Specifically, the budget 

document suggested that maybe the management 

of U.S. research in astronomy could be more effective if all responsibilities then under the NSF and 

NASA were merged and assigned to NASA. In 

order to pursue the idea, the administration called 

for formation of a “Blue Ribbon Panel” to assess 

the issues and recommend options for handling 

federally sponsored astronomical research.26

NSF and NASA duly (but probably not gladly) 

accepted the charge to arrange an evaluation of the 

idea, and they jointly asked the NRC to form a 

committee for the task. The NRC Committee on 

the Organization and Management of Research in 

Astronomy and Astrophysics was very much a blue 

ribbon committee, chaired by former aerospace 

industry executive Norman Augustine and populated by a small who’s who in U.S. astronomy and 

science policy. It began its work in mid-2001 and 

released its final report in late 2001.27

The NRC committee concluded that NSF and 

NASA each had unique, important, and effectively managed roles and, therefore, responsibilities should not be consolidated in one agency. 

However, committee members were surprised 

to learn that the relevant sitting NASA associate 

administrator and NSF assistant director had never 

even met to discuss possible collaboration between 

the two agencies or other matters of common 

interest. Consequently, the committee called for 

better coordination and an integrated strategy 

for U.S. astronomical research. The committee 

25. For a more comprehensive description of the FESAC report and reactions to it, see article by Michael Lucibella, “Fusion Research 

Runs into Turbulence,” APS News, Vol. 23, no. 10, American Physical Society, November 2014, http://www.aps.org/publications/

apsnews/201411/fusion.cfm.

26. Executive Office of the President, A Blueprint for New Beginnings: A Responsible Budget for America’s Priorities (U.S. Government 

Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2001), p. 161.

27. National Research Council, U.S. Astronomy and Astrophysics: Managing an Integrated Program (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2001).
152 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

recommended that the government establish an 

interagency planning board and a multiagency 

advisory committee that would provide external 

input to the planning board.28 Congress liked the 

idea of an advisory committee that would look 

at cross-agency planning and coordination and 

included provisions for the advisory committee in 

the NSF Authorization bill for 2002.29 The legislation directed NSF and NASA to establish such 

a committee—the Astronomy and Astrophysics 

Advisory Committee (AAAC)—to monitor and 

advise on coordination of astronomy programs and 

to report to Congress annually. Administration 

of committee activities was assigned to NSF. Two 

years later, in 2004 authorization language for 

DOE, Congress added DOE astronomy programs 

to the advisory committee’s purview.30 Thus, the 

original OMB interest in possibly consolidating 

management of federal astronomical research in 

one agency morphed into formation of a FACA 

committee charged to look across agency programs 

on a routine basis—providing a fine illustration of 

the idea that “If no action is evident, then form a 

committee instead.”

In its early years of activity, the AAAC (sometimes fondly referred to as “aack,” pronounced as 

if the speaker were choking) was visibly active in 

promoting support for the recommendations of the 

2001 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey 

on Capitol Hill, and the committee continues to 

prepare an annual report to Congress and the agencies that includes discussion of the status of implementation of decadal survey recommendations. 

The concerns expressed by the 2001 NRC committee over the effectiveness of interagency coordination do appear to have been resolved, and the 

AAAC’s 2015 annual report lauded the agencies 

for having increased their cooperation and coordination.31 However, the committee is not often 

the agencies’ first choice for advice, particularly 

because the AAAC’s charter focuses on activities 

at the intersections of the agencies’ programs rather 

than the astronomy programs of individual agencies. Instead, NASA, NSF, and DOE more often 

tend to look to their own FACA committees or to 

committees of the NRC for specific advice. This 

case of a matrix management arrangement for an 

advisory committee may be less successful both 

because of the narrowness of its charge and the fact 

that the agencies have other committees on which 

to rely.

Astronomer Marcia Rieke had her own reservations about the AAAC: 

There is some weirdness in the AAAC in that 

some of what they do looks duplicative of 

agency advisory committees.... And in the law 

setting up the AAAC is a phrase that they’re 

supposed to monitor what happens with the 

decadal survey, and I have to say quite honestly 

that gives the NRC some heartburn, because 

it’s not clear what that means. Why is there yet 

another group doing that? But there haven’t 

been any particular crossed swords over differing recommendations. That’s certainly another 

forum where agencies can get advice. I think 

at one point in time when the AAAC was first 

constituted, there was a real concern about the 

NSF stewardship of ground-based astronomy 

and whether or not NASA should just take it 

over entirely. And I think the AAAC was meant 

to be more of a group formed in response to 

28. National Research Council, U.S. Astronomy and Astrophysics: Managing an Integrated Program (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2001), pp. 4–5.

29. National Science Foundation Authorization Act of 2002, Public Law 107-368, 19 December 2002.

30. Department of Energy High-end Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, U.S. Congress, Public Law 108-423, 30 November 2004.

31. Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee, Report of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (National Science 

Foundation, Washington, DC, 15 March 2015) http://www.nsf.gov/mps/ast/aaac/reports/annual/aaac_2015_report.pdf.
Chapter 13 • Comparing NASA’s Advisory Culture with Other Agenci

some of those thoughts. And maybe now it’s 

not clear whether their existence needs to be 

continued, but at the moment it is.32

National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration 

NOAA has a number of advisory bodies that are 

chartered under FACA. Most of them are charged 

to provide advice and oversight regarding various 

aspects of the agency’s mission (e.g., weather, climate, marine fisheries, and hydrographic services), 

which encompasses operational services, regulatory, and scientific research roles. NOAA’s Science 

Advisory Board (SAB) is probably the closest cousin 

to NASA’s FACA-chartered space and Earth science 

advisory committees. In contrast to NASA’s science 

committees, whose members are drawn largely 

from the research community, the membership 

of the SAB tends to be representative of the broad 

range of NOAA services customers and therefore 

more diverse. From time to time the SAB has produced letter reports (e.g., on draft strategic plans), 

and it has empaneled standing or ad hoc working 

groups that have prepared a steady stream of topically focused advisory reports. The Board formally 

reviews working group reports for approval and 

subsequent submission to the agency.33

Many outside observers who have been familiar with both agencies have noted, however, that 

NOAA tends to be less open to using its formal 

FACA committees than NASA and that the committees have been less pervasive and have had 

relatively less influence at NOAA compared to 

their NASA or NSF counterparts. The difference 

is probably attributable to several factors, including the fact that NOAA’s regulatory and service 

responsibilities add dimensions that are absent at 

NSF and NASA. NOAA officials may also feel that 

they have fewer resources to expend on an advisory 

structure than their sister agencies. Finally, one gets 

a sense that NOAA is culturally rather less open 

to outside advice. NOAA has less in-house institutional capability compared to NASA, which draws 

on in-house expertise via the substantial technical 

staffs at the NASA field centers. Consequently, 

NOAA may be more prone to simply comply with 

direction from other elements inside the administration (e.g., the Department of Commerce and 

OMB) rather than to turn to the outside for advice. 

The situation is further complicated by recent 

political controversies over climate change issues 

that have led to some congressional pressure for 

NOAA to be more open to advice from industry 

sectors where climate policies may have an impact.

In contrast to NOAA’s use of standing FACA 

committees, the agency has vigorously embraced 

input from ad hoc expert advisory committees when 

they have been created to tackle a particular problem. One notable example was the Independent 

Review Team (IRT) chaired by former SSB co-chair 

and long-time advisor to NASA and DOD, as well 

as NOAA, Tom Young. The IRT was set up to 

review NOAA’s environmental satellite program 

management in 2012 and 2013, and the team’s 

report pulled no punches, saying, for example, 

that Department of Commerce and NOAA oversight of the programs was “dysfunctional and not 

[providing] value added.”34 NOAA officials made 

prompt efforts to act on the advice from Young’s 

team. NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan 

32. Rieke interview, pp. 3–4.

33. For information about the NOAA SAB, see http://www.sab.noaa.gov/.

34. NOAA NESDIS Independent Review Team, “NOAA NESDIS Independent Review Team Report,” NOAA, National 

Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, 20 July 2012, available at http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/pages/images/

stories/NESDIS_IRT_Final_Report.pdf and at http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/NESDIS_

IRT_Final_Report.pdf.
154 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

colorfully, but appreciatively, described the IRT’s 

assessment as having “wirebrushed” the agency’s 

management approach.35

Lou Lanzerotti described a similar experience 

when he led an ad hoc effort to examine NOAA’s 

space weather program:

My experiences with NOAA are mostly phone 

calls that I have received from various NOAA 

executives and administrators who ask various questions on some issue or other. Or if 

NOAA wants to do something, like when they 

wanted to look at the National Space Weather 

Program, they put together a committee with 

an outside contractor who managed the process. That gave us a lot of independence.... 

It was very heartening to see that kind of 

independence provided, with no torquing at 

all. NOAA deserves credits in that particular 

instance for the way they handled the assessment of the space weather program.36

NOAA also has turned to the NRC from 

time to time to seek advice on specific, focused 

topics. For example, in 2001, NOAA’s National 

Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information 

Service (NESDIS) asked the NRC to provide 

advice on improving the transitioning of NASA 

research and technology development into NOAA’s 

operational services. Three boards — the SSB, the 

Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, and the 

Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate—

teamed to organize a study committee that issued 

its report to NOAA and NASA in 2003.37 That 

report, and vigorous congressional prodding, led 

to the formation of a joint NASA-NOAA transition office to implement many of the NRC’s 

recommendations. 

A particularly interesting case of one advisory 

committee trumping the advice of another followed the 2008 report prepared by a committee 

jointly organized by the SSB and the Board on 

Atmospheric Science and Climate. NASA and 

NOAA asked the committee to provide advice 

about how to recover lost climate measurements 

when NOAA’s meteorological satellite program 

was restructured to deal with serious development 

problems in the mid-2000s. The NRC established 

priorities for measurements needed for climate 

research and recommended a strategy to mitigate 

the impact of instrument payload reductions that 

had been proposed to remedy ballooning satellite 

system costs and schedule delays.38 NOAA did its 

best to follow the committee’s recommendations 

and even received a budget plus-up to cover the 

costs of some of the recommended restorations. 

However, one of the principal recommendations 

from Tom Young’s independent review team mentioned above was that NOAA badly needed to stick 

to its core mission—weather—and not dilute its 

efforts on other tasks that would distract attention and sap budgets. Consequently, NOAA, and 

the administration, followed the Young team’s 

advice and stripped the new satellite systems of 

climate sensors.

The work of the 2012 independent review team 

is illustrative of how NOAA sees the relative roles of 

the SAB and NRC committees on one hand and ad 

hoc advisory bodies on the other. Former Assistant 

Administrator for Satellite and Information 

35. Comments during 18 March 2015 hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science 

(quoted in http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/noaas-sullivan-pfo-new-way-to-buy-satellites-after-wirebrushing-from-tom-youngpanel).

36. Lanzerotti interview, p. 11.

37. National Research Council, Satellite Observations of the Earth’s Environment: Accelerating the Transition of Research to Operations

(The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2003).

38. National Research Council, Ensuring the Climate Record from the NPOESS and GOES-R Spacecraft: Elements of a Strategy to 

Recover Measurement Capabilities Lost in Program Restructuring, (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2008).
Chapter 13 • Comparing NASA’s Advisory Culture with Other Agenci

Services Mary Kicza noted that “the FACA committees and the NRC committees tend to be more 

strategic, [while ones like] the very focused Young 

committee tend to be more tactical.”39

NOAA co-sponsored the SSB’s 2003 decadal 

survey for solar and space physics40 and the 2005 

decadal survey for Earth science and applications 

from space.41 While NOAA officials have usually 

voiced an interest in responding positively to the 

surveys, the results have been mixed. NOAA has 

been less responsive to the recommendations from 

the decadal surveys compared to NASA and NSF. 

This has been partially a consequence of ongoing 

NOAA budget difficulties, but NOAA’s hesitant 

response can also be traced to NOAA’s need to 

focus on its core operational and service missions. 

Kicza made it clear that scientific advice has to 

be viewed in the context of NOAA’s multiplicity of 

customer needs: 

NOAA has to first and foremost provide continuity of observations. They cannot disrupt 

the level of capability that is provided to and 

depended upon by the public. That is always a 

first priority. Within and beyond that, we work 

to move forward, given the recommendations 

from the research community — balancing 

that against the needs of the operational community. It’s a triumvirate input that has to be 

considered — the operational requirement, the 

research opportunities, and what can be done 

within the budget envelope that we can afford.42

However, former SSB member and chair of the 

2012 decadal survey for solar and space physics Dan 

Baker noted that there is another angle on NOAA’s, 

and other agencies’, willingness to embrace outside 

scientific advice. Namely, when multiple agencies are on the receiving end and when the advice 

includes recommendations about relative agency 

roles and responsibilities, turf battles and budget 

envy can gum up the works. Baker saw this as 

his committee tried to address the nation’s space 

weather program:

[T]here was a lot of maneuvering with NASA, 

with NOAA, with NSF, all for somewhat different reasons as to what agencies should be 

involved, what should be the tasks assigned, 

and what should be the charge for each of 

those.... It has become more and more of a 

problem that agencies want to opt out.... 

[L]ots of problems...have arisen because of 

this kind of sibling rivalry between agencies. 

NSF is a very much favored agency within 

the government, but it doesn’t have as large a 

budget; the overall NSF budget is comparable 

to what is spent just on space and Earth science in NASA. And so I think there is a fair 

amount of resentment that sort of develops 

from that budgetary imbalance. Also NOAA, 

I think, resents the fact that they don’t have 

all the technical knowledge and management 

capability that NASA does, and so they have 

to go sort of hat-in-hand to NASA, to design, 

procure, manage and ultimately launch...the 

space programs that they rely on within [the 

National Environmental Satellite, Data, and 

Information Service].43

39. Kicza interview.

40. National Research Council, The Sun to the Earth — and Beyond: A Decadal Research Strategy in Solar and Space Physics (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2003).

41. National Research Council, Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2007).

42. Kicza interview.

43. Baker interview, pp. 3–4.
156 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

NASA in Context

Based on the cursory survey summarized above, 

one can still draw some general conclusions about 

how NASA’s advisory culture has compared with 

that of other R&D agencies. Many observers have 

found NASA’s openness and willingness to invite 

and listen to outside advice to be especially notable. Of course advice is just advice, not direction, 

and NASA has declined to accept and implement 

advice on occasions when the agency preferred, for 

any of a multitude of reasons. But on the whole, 

NASA has gotten high marks for its efforts to 

actively engage the outside community as advisors. 

Claude Canizares reflected on his experience with 

NASA, NSF, DOE, and others, saying, “Well there 

may be some of you-love-what-you-know in this, 

but I felt that at the time that I was in the advisory 

process, both at the NASA side and the Academy 

side, that the interactions between the advisory 

structure and the agency were about as good as you 

could hope for.”44

NASA has also appeared to turn to the 

National Academies more often and more regularly than most of its sister agencies. According 

to former Congressional Research Service space 

expert Marcia Smith, “I think that NASA used the 

National Academies more, at least more than I was 

aware of the other agencies using it.”45 The tradition began with the formation of the SSB before 

NASA was formally put to work, and it has continued under an uninterrupted series of contracts 

to engage the SSB and its committees to study a 

panoply of topics.

On the other hand, Len Fisk noted that NASA’s 

advisory culture and processes have been becoming more similar to and less distinct from those of 

other agencies:

I suspect that what NASA does today is more 

similar to what other agencies do. I think this 

sort of pervasive advisory structure, you know 

at all levels and connected to each other and 

all that stuff, was a unique NASA construct. 

It was not duplicated by anybody else. And, 

so NASA has returned to the norm in some 

sense. That’s unfortunate, because I don’t 

think it’s as good as what NASA did. But I 

think you probably go to other agencies and 

find that in some ways a disjointed structure. 

I mean there are advisory committees all over 

the government, but if you don’t wire them 

together effectively, then they are less effective 

than they would be.... I think the ones that 

NASA has probably have their counterparts in 

other agencies.46

There are a number of reasons for NASA’s 

apparent trending towards becoming more like 

the rest of the pack. First, the enactment of GPRA 

meant that all agencies had to prepare regular strategic plans and performance evaluations. Thus, 

some of what NASA did in the 1980s with advisory 

body assistance or input became more nearly the 

norm across the government in the 1990s. Second, 

the National Academies’ response to enactment of 

FACA section 15 measurably impacted the NRC’s 

ability to respond quickly or to call directly and 

immediately on standing bodies such as the SSB 

and its standing committees to respond to urgent 

needs for independent external advice. That change 

translated directly into limitations on the kinds of 

advice that the Academies could provide. From an 

internal NASA perspective, the restructuring of 

the NAC and its committees under Administrator 

Griffin, including dissolution of discipline subcommittees and MOWGs, led to a concomitant 

44. Canizares interview, p. 9.

45. Smith interview, p. 1.

46. Fisk interview, p. 23.
Chapter 13 • Comparing NASA’s Advisory Culture with Other Agenci

reduction in the ability of NASA’s internal advisory bodies to provide timely substantive attention 

to tactical issues about which NASA managers 

needed advice.

NASA’s Marc Allen summarized the situation 

succinctly as follows:

So you have this really strange thing that 

occurred starting the second half of the 2000s 

decade where you had two parallel advisory 

systems — both staffed with the cream of 

the crop in the U.S. [scientific] investigator 

community — both of which had been hamstrung in different ways by the very legislation 

that was supposed to improve the advisory 

system process.47

In short, an advisory culture that had been 

viewed by many as amongst the best in the federal 

R&D sector began to slide towards being similar to 

all the rest and even began to appear more adviceaverse as NASA entered its sixth decade. 

There has been one very important exception 

to this trend—namely, the decadal surveys and 

mid-decade evaluations. Allen observed the growing clout of the decadal surveys from inside NASA:

[I]n fact the Academy became much stronger. But it didn’t become stronger on the basis 

of small studies. Its decadal surveys became 

incredibly powerful...early in the 2000s.... 

[T]hese reports became increasingly large and 

complex.... And so the decadal surveys began 

to become increasingly programmatic. And 

this really meant that instead of a source of 

advice, they became almost like religious texts. 

In fact, provisions concerning how they should 

be used, how they should be structured, and 

how they should be conducted began to 

appear in congressional report language and 

even in statute.48

NASA has consistently and energetically supported the decadal survey process and has responded 

as vigorously as budgets, unforeseen technical and 

programmatic obstacles, and politics have allowed. 

The Agency provided funds to expand the coverage 

of the surveys to include all space and Earth science 

disciplines and to expand the depth of the surveys 

to include program cost and technical risk assessments. Ironically, NASA’s broad support of the surveys has helped make the agency less exceptional 

in the sense that other agencies—including NSF 

(which, of course, was a customer of the very first 

decadal survey in the 1960s), NOAA, DOE, and 

the Air Force Office of Scientific Research—also 

now support the surveys. Nevertheless, the NRC 

decadal surveys and midterms remain a particular 

bright spot in NASA’s advisory ecosystem.

The next chapter concludes Part II’s survey of 

advisory activities in the second half of NASA’s 

lifetime by summarizing what has persisted in the 

advisory environment going back to the NACA’s 

days, as well as what has evolved over time in 

response to changes in the policy and programmatic environment. 

47. Allen interview, 7 May 2014, p. 5. 

48. Allen interview, 7 May 2014, p. 5.

159

CHAPTER 14

Revisiting the Advisory Ecosystem

Events in the early history of space science 

forged important relationships between NASA 

and the scientific community, and those interactions created an advisory ecosystem that evolved 

over NASA’s first three decades. The chapters in 

Part I examined those early relationships. Part II 

traced later environmental changes and examined key developments that shaped the ecosystem 

as NASA entered middle age. Part III will take a 

deeper look at selected successes and stumbles of 

the advisory process in order to ask what made the 

system work (or not) and what that means for the 

future. But, first, let’s compare aspects of the advisory ecosystem of the mid-1980s with how those 

aspects appear as NASA approaches the end of its 

second three decades.

Culture of Acceptance of Outside 

Scientific Advice

Openness to outside advice remains very much a 

part of the culture of NASA’s space and Earth science organization. Members of the space research 

community remain every bit as interested in advising NASA as they were at its inception—indeed 

they take it as a given—and the Agency’s science 

managers continue to encourage it. There was 

reason to suspect a less welcoming attitude at the 

very highest levels of the Agency during the O’Keefe 

and Griffin administrations and in the early years 

of Bolden’s tenure. For example, Len Fisk’s recollection of O’Keefe’s apparent aversion to probing 

questions (chapter 12), the relatively heavy-handed 

operation of the NAC under Griffin, and the fact 

that the NAC science committees’ reporting relationships were only slowly restored under Bolden 

all give one pause. In reflecting on the later years 

of his tenure as head of NASA’s space and Earth 

science program,1

 Ed Weiler recalled his sense of a 

declining openness to outside advice at the highest 

policy levels:

I thought that was happening in my last 

couple of years here too, but I think that’s 

not an agency position but a personality position of certain individuals, regretfully, at high 

levels here and at OMB. For the first time in 

my career of 37 years here I actually detected 

people who would roll their eyes if you use the 

term decadal or NRC or National Academy. And 

that was very bothersome. Again it’s my personal opinion, but I think it would be backed 

up by others who were with me at the time. I 

am not talking about Charlie Bolden, by the 

way, but people who had some influence over 

decisions. I think the cachet at the National 

Academy and NRC went down over the last 

couple of years, because some of the advice 

1. Weiler retired from NASA in 2011.
160 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

wasn’t frankly what people wanted to hear or 

didn’t think they could afford or wasn’t money 

they wanted to spend in science as opposed to 

other priorities of the administration.2

But the overall advisory environment for space 

and Earth science remained generally supportive, 

in spite of the actions or body language of the 

Agency’s or Administration’s senior leadership. 

Science managers who dealt with the program 

day-in and day-out, and who made the hard decisions about program execution, continued to consult with and consider advisors from the outside 

research community.

Strength and Independence of the 

Modern Space Studies Board 

The clout of the original Space Science Board 

was due, in part, to the stature of the National 

Academy of Sciences. The Board also benefited 

from relative freedom from NASA controls and 

from institutional bureaucratic or procedural constraints. The National Academies’ stature and reputation for independence and expertise remain as 

strong as ever. The institution works hard to protect those attributes and the image that they sustain. Congressional interest in independent, expert 

advice remains relatively strong as demonstrated by 

continuing legislative calls for NASA to obtain or 

follow the National Academies’ advice. However, 

while respect for the stature and independence of the 

SSB and its sister bodies remains, many observers 

both inside NASA and in the scientific community 

believe that the earlier freedom from bureaucratic 

and procedural constraints has diminished. In the 

opinion of those stakeholders, some NRC policies 

and procedures that were introduced during the 

institution’s response to FACA section 15 have been 

a backwards move in terms of agility, flexibility, and 

general responsiveness (see chapter 9). 

Evolution of NASA’s Internal 

Advisory Committees 

As one would expect, just as the SSB’s committee 

structure and operating policies have evolved over 

the years, so too have those of NASA’s internal 

committees. The enactment of the Government 

Performance and Results Act (GPRA) helped formalize a basis for NASA advisory committees’ roles 

in assisting with program office strategic planning 

and performance evaluation. However, the most 

profound change came with Griffin’s reorganization of the NASA Advisory Council and its committees (see chapter 12). Management Operations 

Working Groups—the lowest and often most 

directly accessible elements of the advisory food 

chain—were largely disbanded; discipline subcommittees lost their formal, direct access to NASA 

science discipline division directors; and all committee advice had to be funneled up through the 

NAC to the Administrator. MOWGs and science 

subcommittees were replaced with ad hoc entities 

that NASA dubbed “analysis groups,” which could 

only report findings rather than render recommendations and which could not formulate consensus 

views to be relayed to NASA managers. Thus, 

what the Administrator saw as a more orderly and 

integrated process many other participants saw as 

a system evolving towards filtered advice, diluted 

impact, and compromised trust. 

The restructuring of NASA’s internal advisory apparatus also had a practical effect on the 

tools and information that were available to help 

science managers do their jobs. During Daniel 

Goldin’s time as Administrator, he oversaw a 

reduction in the size of the NASA Headquarters 

staff by more than a factor of two. Consequently, 

individual program managers had more tasks to 

juggle and less time to devote to each one. Those 

circumstances made access to good outside advice 

especially important, even crucial, but access to 

2. Weiler interview, p. 14.
Chapter 14 • Revisiting the Advisory Ecosyst

such advice through NASA committees became 

constrained.

Such changes would have very naturally and 

quickly made the SSB and its committees and sister 

boards even more important and powerful as they 

would be called upon to fill the gaps created by 

the weakening of the internal advisory committee 

system. However, the more-or-less concurrent postFACA changes in the SSB’s agility left NASA to try 

to pick between two imperfect choices for ways to 

get advice. 

Division of Labor between the NRC 

and NASA’s Internal Committees 

Perhaps one of the most enduring characteristics of 

the advisory ecosystem has been a widely accepted 

understanding of the relative roles and relationships 

between the NRC and NASA’s internal committees. The NRC provides strategic advice and recommends long-range scientific priorities. NASA’s 

committees provide tactical advice and recommendations about how to implement the NRC 

scientific priorities. Certainly there have been, and 

always will be, overlaps and exceptions. But this big 

picture of the division of labor has survived since 

it was articulated by Newell and Naugle beginning in 1958 and on into the early 1970s. Some 

five decades later, NASA’s science office head, John 

Grunsfeld, held the same view in 2014:

The NASA Advisory Council is...what I 

think of as tactical advice. Whereas for strategic advice I think of longer-term deliberation, of much broader engagement of the 

community, and some time for fermentation, 

and that’s what the National Research Council 

Space Studies Board does....3

Dan Baker shared the long accepted view about 

the division of responsibility between NASA and 

NRC advisory committees, but he felt that the 

system was broken:

Looking back [to the NASA science advisory 

structure of the 1980s and 1990s], there were 

internal advice panels that were almost always 

populated heavily by people from outside, who 

knew about management, who knew about 

how projects and programs are carried out. And 

so there you had very natural tactical advice 

that...really had to be listened to.... And then 

you had the very appropriate strategic advice 

being given by groups like...the Space Studies 

Board—they have the long-term, big picture. 

You had the tactical advice where anytime 

something was questioned or it was maybe 

going off the rails, you could get really good 

quick feedback from knowledgeable people. 

And I think...the whole advice apparatus of 

the nation was well served by that. There came 

a time when that internal advice especially was 

not appreciated, not wanted by administrators 

and associate administrators. So I think that 

the disbanding of that internal advisory apparatus has been very detrimental to the whole 

space program. I think the NASA Advisory 

Council is only a pale shadow of what internal 

advice used to be.4

Baker added that while in the early 2010s 

the NASA advisory functions had been partially 

restored to their older arrangements, he still saw 

impacts on both the NASA and the NRC elements 

of the advisory ecosystem:

[M]ore and more is being asked of the 

Academies and the NRC to provide tactical 

advice. I don’t think the Academies should 

3. Grunsfeld interview.

4. Baker interview, p. 7.
162 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

be doing this, and they are not well suited to 

be doing this. It’s really important that we as 

a nation look at how academia and industry 

and government really work together and how 

one gets appropriate advice fed back into the 

agencies and how that advice is dealt with.... 

[W]hen this advisory apparatus gets out of 

whack and when you try to get the boards 

to deliver immediate, instantaneous, tactical 

advice it just doesn’t work.... [T]hen we end 

up again with agencies that are desperate to 

get community buy-in; they are trying to do 

it through the NRC, because they are not getting it from the internal advisory apparatus. 

They start to resent the slowness, and they start 

shooting from the hip or they start criticizing 

the strategic advice of the decadals. I think this 

undercuts the decadal surveys, and you get into 

a negative feedback loop here on all of these 

things where the Academies and the NRC and 

the whole decadal process begins to be questioned. You think you need more quick answers. 

[T]he whole advisory apparatus...needs to be 

restored to its appropriate balance between 

internal, strong, and very responsive internal advice and broader, longer-term, strategic 

advice from the right parties.5

Value of FACA 

The enactment of FACA created a helpful set of 

standards for federal agencies’ use of advisory committees. It created an orderly management process, 

and it ensured public access to advisory activities. 

Thus, FACA was successful in its early implementation. But problems arose. In particular, NASA 

found ways to press, if not abuse, the provisions of 

the Act. By declining to separately charter the science committees and subcommittees, and instead 

making them subservient to the NASA Advisory 

Council, and by applying particularly restrictive 

constraints on committee membership conflict 

of interest, NASA lawyers (even if they had prudent objectives) made it difficult to add legitimate 

experts to its science advisory bodies. 

After enactment of FACA section 15, which 

applied to the National Academies, the NRC 

found ways to complicate its own procedures. The 

law requires that

The Academy shall make its best efforts to 

ensure that (A) no individual appointed to 

serve on the committee has a conflict of interest that is relevant to the functions to be performed, unless such conflict is promptly and 

publicly disclosed and the Academy determines that the conflict is unavoidable, (B) the 

committee membership is fairly balanced as 

determined by the Academy to be appropriate 

for the functions to be performed, and (C) the 

final report of the Academy will be the result 

of the Academy’s independent judgment. The 

Academy shall require that individuals that the 

Academy appoints or intends to appoint to 

serve on the committee inform the Academy 

of the individual’s conflicts of interest that are 

relevant to the functions to be performed. 6

The NRC interpreted these provisions for ensuring balance and objectivity to mean that standing 

boards and committees could not be permitted to 

author advisory reports, because the members had 

not been empaneled to provide advice on a topic 

that had not been defined in advance of their 

appointment to the standing body. In earlier times, 

the breadth and depth of the membership of the 

SSB and of its standing committee were accepted 

as strong reasons to qualify those bodies for many 

tasks within their areas of expertise. Consequently, 

5. Baker interview, pp. 7–8.

6. “Federal Advisory Committee Act Amendments of 1997,” Public Law 105-153, 111 Stat. 2689 (1997).
Chapter 14 • Revisiting the Advisory Ecosyst

they often undertook studies that produced letter 

reports or full-length advisory reports on topics for 

which they were already informed and viewed as 

experts, and they did so relatively quickly. Under 

the revised policy, the full appointment process 

had to run its course before a newly appointed 

committee, even with the same membership as 

the standing committee, could go to work. While 

this procedure permitted the NRC to argue that it 

had been very diligent about avoiding conflicts of 

interest, it also made the study process more timeconsuming and led standing committee members 

to doubt whether they had a meaningful role to 

play in the advisory ecosystem. The loss of flexibility on the part of standing boards and committees to respond relatively quickly to government 

officials’ need for advice likely also contributed to 

greater government interest in alternative forms of 

NRC interactions such as workshops and informal 

roundtable discussions.

Environment of Constructive 

Tension 

The constructive tension between the scientific 

community and NASA that was a constant ingredient of relationships in the early years of the space 

age has persisted undiminished. Scientists continue 

to press the Agency, sometimes with ambitions that 

border on naively optimistic, to support a robust 

science program. And NASA managers usually 

strive to be as responsive as budgetary, programmatic, and political realities permit. The tension 

has been less evident when times have been good—

for example, when science budgets were growing in 

the late 1980s. But relationships have become more 

stressed whenever advice has seemed to be ignored 

or blocked. Nevertheless, the advisory process has 

both leveraged the tension and often helped moderate it. 

The character and extent of the tensions also 

tend to reflect the leadership styles of the principals. In the mid- and late 1980s, Administrator 

James Fletcher understood the culture of the scientific community and knew how to stay open to 

community views, just as he had during his first 

tour as Administrator in the 1970s. Although the 

scientific community may have been unfamiliar to 

Richard Truly, Fletcher’s successor, Truly trusted 

his science head, Len Fisk, to maintain ties with 

the community and largely deferred to Fisk on 

matters of using outside scientific advice. Thus, 

relationships were relatively cordial during the late 

1980s. In contrast, Administrators O’Keefe and 

Griffin in the 2000s were more familiar with the 

defense industry community with which they had 

interacted, and they tended to see the scientists as 

contractors rather than partners. This heightened 

the tension during their tenures at NASA’s helm.

A second kind of tension became rather more 

prominent in NASA’s second three decades, and 

that is the tension associated with NRC studies 

conducted at congressional direction. Congress has 

been inclined to step in and call for an independent 

assessment from the National Academies when the 

members or their staffs have been concerned about 

whether they could trust the agency to be forthcoming or to do the right thing. Marcia Smith 

emphasized that federal agencies do not welcome 

advisory studies that are forced on them:

If Congress asks for a study, they [the funding 

agency] are going to resist anything that it says, 

because they resent being required to spend 

their resources on something that Congress 

asked for. They consider it an unfunded mandate, they didn’t want the advice, they didn’t 

want to pay for the advice, and they are being 

forced to do it, because the Congress said so.7

7. M. Smith interview, p. 13.
164 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

While such congressionally mandated studies 

often have been hard for NASA officials to swallow, they can also put the NRC in an awkward 

position when the NRC’s customer sees the NRC 

as an adversary rather than a constructive partner. 

Of course, NASA is not a monolithic institution in 

which everyone shares identical views on all issues. 

So we can add another dimension to the tension—

namely, the likelihood that on some issues there 

are people inside NASA who might welcome the 

contrary positions articulated in a mandated NRC 

report. Palace politics have always been an element 

of the way large institutions operate, and that’s not 

different here. In any case, chapter 16 will explore 

examples of congressionally mandated NRC studies in some detail. 

Need for Leadership

Chapter 6 described a deeply rooted advisory ecosystem that provided significant benefits for space 

and Earth sciences in NASA’s first three decades. 

But it was showing signs of stress thanks to austere 

budgets, unpredictable NASA decision making, 

and a series of accidents that had grounded 

America’s entire space launch system. Thus, there 

was an urgent need for leadership that could help 

reinforce the inherent strengths, restore vitality, 

and provide forward stability. 

All the major stakeholders responded in their 

own way. In the late 1980s, NASA’s Office of Space 

Science and Applications instituted a strategic 

planning process that communicated a clear sense 

of priorities. The office subsequently created the 

senior review process that utilized outside advice 

to optimize resources to be applied to ongoing 

space science flight missions. And then in the early 

2000s, NASA and the SSB worked together to 

expand and apply the decadal survey process to all 

space and Earth science disciplines. The SSB recognized that some form of stewardship was needed 

between surveys and introduced decadal midterm 

reviews beginning in the mid-2000s. The SSB also 

recognized that the surveys needed to improve 

their cost and technical realism and introduced 

more in-depth technical assessments for new mission candidates in the late 2000s.

Congress also took some meaningful actions 

over the same period. First, although the 1993 

Government Performance and Results Act and its 

2010 update, the GPRA Modernization Act, were 

not explicitly directed at the advisory process, the 

legislation formalized government agency strategic 

planning and performance reviews and, thereby, 

provided a natural opening for NASA’s advisory 

committees to participate. Congress was quite 

explicit about its expectations for using outside 

advice in the NASA Authorization Act of 2005, 

which directed NASA to “draw on decadal surveys 

and other reports in planetary science, astronomy, 

solar and space physics, earth science, and any 

other relevant fields developed by the National 

Academy of Sciences.”8 The 2008 authorization 

bill went farther in codifying the use of decadal 

surveys and their incorporation of cost and technology assessments and decision rules for coping 

with unexpected developments:

SEC. 1105. NATIONAL ACADEMIES 

DECADAL SURVEYS.

(a) In General – The Administrator shall enter 

into agreements on a periodic basis with 

the National Academies for independent 

assessments, also known as decadal surveys, 

to take stock of the status and opportunities for Earth and space science discipline 

fields and Aeronautics research and to recommend priorities for research and programmatic areas over the next decade.

(b) Independent Cost Estimates – The agreements described in subsection(a) shall 

include independent estimates of the life 

8. “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Act of 2005,” Public Law 109–155, 30 December 2005, 119 Stat. 2895.
Chapter 14 • Revisiting the Advisory Ecosyst

cycle costs and technical readiness of missions assessed in the decadal surveys whenever possible.

(c) Reexamination – The Administrator shall 

request that each National Academies 

decadal survey committee identify any 

conditions or events, such as significant 

cost growth or scientific or technological advances, that would warrant NASA 

asking the National Academies to reexamine the priorities that the decadal survey 

had established.9

And to mangle metaphors beyond recognition, 

the scientific community comprised a third leg of 

the stool by continuing to support advisory efforts 

with extraordinary investment of energy and 

effort. Scientists served, often tirelessly and without remuneration, on NASA committees, National 

Academies bodies, and ad hoc panels to translate 

their expertise and experience into advice, in spite 

of the short-term hiccups in the system. This effort 

and the countless hours that community members 

invested have amounted to an enormous off-thebooks contribution to the national space research 

enterprise.

How well has it worked? When did it work well, 

and why? Were there advisory duds that still offer 

useful lessons? The chapters to follow in Part 3 will 

begin to explore those questions.

9. “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Act of 2008,” Public Law 110–422, 15 October 2008, 122 Stat. 4779.

PART III.

Assessment and a Look 

into the Future

169

CHAPTER 15

Case Studies: Advice Requested by NASA

The preceding chapters’ tour through NASA’s 

scientific advisory history provides a framework through which to review the impacts of the 

process and a backdrop against which to examine 

some of the notable successes and failings of the 

system. The decadal surveys have become the signature products of the National Academies’ advice 

to NASA, and also NSF and NOAA, regarding 

goals and priorities in astronomy and astrophysics, 

solar system exploration, solar and space physics, 

and Earth science and applications from space. 

Chapter 11 discusses their origins, strengths, and 

successes in considerable detail. But the cumulative body of advisory work developed by National 

Academies bodies, especially the SSB, for NASA is 

much larger than the decadals alone. And NASA’s 

own internal advisory committees also have contributed in important, and sometimes more practical, ways. So when looking at the history of all 

this effort, what can we learn about what has succeeded, what has fallen flat, and why?

This chapter takes a deeper look at a few case 

studies of advisory efforts that were commissioned 

by NASA and that can serve as informative examples of the process. We look first at studies carried 

out by NASA committees, then at activities conducted by NRC bodies.

Internal NASA Advisory System 

Examples

With relatively few exceptions, NASA’s internal 

advisory bodies have operated as standing committees (or the equivalent) that have offered advice 

on a continuing basis when NASA officials or the 

committee members have perceived a need. That 

advice usually has been developed quickly—often 

during the course of a single meeting—and has 

been framed in a relatively ad hoc, topic-by-topic 

fashion. The senior reviews described in chapter 

10 are a notable exception in which committees of 

external experts have been organized periodically 

to carry out a systematic scientific evaluation and 

provide views that have informed major operational decisions. 

The sections below look at four other examples of major undertakings by internal committees created by NASA—the Great Observatories 

brainstorming group, the Earth System Sciences 

Committee (ESSC), the Discovery Program definition group, and the Mars Program Independent 

Assessment Team (MPIAT). They are useful illustrations of how NASA turned to outside experts to 

help define and advocate new scientific efforts or 

restructure ongoing programs. Three were ad hoc 

efforts; the ESSC was a formally chartered FACA 

committee.
170 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

THE GREAT OBSERVATORIES BRAINSTORMING 

GROUP: When Charlie Pellerin became Director 

of Astrophysics at NASA Headquarters in 1983, 

the Space Telescope (later to become the Hubble 

Space Telescope) was under construction for a 

planned mid-1980s launch. The 1982 astronomy 

and astrophysics decadal survey had given a high 

priority to a large x-ray telescope, the Advanced 

X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF, later to become 

the Chandra X-ray Observatory), as the next major 

space astronomy mission, but AXAF had not yet 

been given a go-ahead at NASA. At the same time, 

a vocal advocacy group was making a case for a 

new large telescope to operate at infrared wavelengths, and astrophysicists were also beginning to 

dream about a large telescope to measure cosmic 

gamma rays. Supporters of each proposal touted 

the strengths of their particular candidate over the 

alternatives, but none of these concepts had been 

able to gather enough steam to secure a development budget or a place in the new-start queue. 

Pellerin recalled that at the time, “The big popular 

story was that the Congress keeps asking ‘Why do 

you need so many telescopes?’”1

Pellerin adopted a two-pronged strategy to deal 

with the challenge. The first was to find a way to 

couch the proposals, not in terms of building one 

or another space telescope, but in terms of what 

were the most fundamentally interesting questions 

about the universe and how would measurements 

at different wavelengths resolve them. The second 

was to find a way to communicate the fundamental scientific value of different space observatories 

in terms that were unencumbered by the complex technical jargon that was so much of astronomers’ everyday language but Greek to policy 

makers. Pellerin and his staff pulled together a 

group of accomplished scientists as an informal, ad 

hoc advisory committee that would flesh out his 

plan. He recruited Cornell University astronomer 

Martin Harwit, who was then holding a visiting 

fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum, 

to chair the group, and they assembled for a rather 

unconventional meeting at the Goddard Space 

Flight Center.2

The 3 January 1985 meeting began with discussions of the top-level unanswered questions in 

astrophysics and cosmology. Then Pellerin threw 

his group of heavy hitters a curve. He recalled the 

meeting as follows:

[T]hen I said, ‘Okay...I’ve got crayons and 

magic markers and paper. I want you to take 

each one of these topics and write [it] on top of 

the paper. Go around the room and make me 

cartoons as to how the missions could work 

together synergistically to answer these questions’...So they had these guys—I mean these 

are the top people—on their hands and knees 

on the floor doing these pictures with the crayons. And at the end of the day Martin gathered them up and had a friend...get this into 

a brochure.... It was the Great Observatories 

brochure.3

The name “Great Observatories” actually 

emerged shortly after the brainstorming and cartooning session. Pellerin recalled meeting with 

Harvard astrophysicist George Field, who had 

just chaired the 1982 astronomy and astrophysics 

decadal survey, and explaining that Pellerin was 

stumped about what to call the program outlined 

1. Pellerin interview, p. 6.

2. Harwit provided his own firsthand account of this event in his book, In Search of the True Universe: The Tools, Shaping, and Cost of 

Cosmological Thought (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2013), pp. 234–238.

3. Pellerin interview, pp. 6–7. The brochure is reproduced (in black and white) in Logsdon, John M., ed., with Amy Paige Snyder, 

Roger D. Launius, Stephen J. Garber, and Regan Anne Newport. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the 

U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume V, Exploring the Cosmos. (NASA SP-4407, NASA History Division, Washington, DC, 2001), 

pp. 703–730.
Chapter 15 • Case Studies: Advice Requested by NA

in the new brochure. Field replied, “Why don’t you 

call it the Great Observatories?” 4

The concept of a Great Observatories program 

that integrated a suite of separate space observatories into a synergistic whole was a great success. 

It created a coherent story for how multiple measurements at different wavelengths could address 

some of the most important, and fascinating, 

problems in modern science. It brought competing factions together to support one another for 

a common scientific good. And by means of the 

Great Observatories comic book the concept could 

be communicated clearly and non-technically 

to audiences ranging from members of Congress 

to schoolchildren. The program name became a 

household word, at least in the space community. 

Al Diaz, who was helping manage planetary 

science programs at the time and who later held 

a number of senior positions with management 

responsibilities for the observatories, was typical of 

the concept’s admirers: 

It was an elegant plan. It was something that 

you could actually understand...to cover the 

electromagnetic spectrum outside of the influence of the atmosphere and take full advantage 

of the space capability.5

Pellerin made an effort to avoid letting the brochure trivialize the science. He recalled that his 

group of crayon-wielding experts supplemented 

their lay-reader presentation with inserts for more 

scientifically informed readers by adding 

little boxes where smart guys, smarter than 

me in physics and more specialized, could put 

down the arguments with some equations that 

[I could use with] an observer who was critical 

of this. I could go toe to toe with the other 

scientists if I had to.6

The ad hoc Great Observatories brainstorming group subsequently morphed into an informal 

advisory committee—the Astrophysics Council—

for Pellerin in his role as Astrophysics Director. 

It performed first as a Management Operations 

Working Group and later as a subcommittee of the 

NASA Space Science and Applications Advisory 

Committee (see chapter 5). This group served as a 

forum for debate on issues that Pellerin wanted to 

try out on leaders in the astrophysics community, 

and consequently, it was a continuing platform 

for obtaining advice about the program. Pellerin 

took pride in being able to recruit several Nobel 

Laureates to participate in the Council, thereby 

adding a special degree of stature to the group 

and also remarkable clout. Pellerin recalled that 

on several occasions he was able to call on them to 

help contact senior Agency officials to advocate on 

behalf of the program.7

All four elements of the Great Observatories—Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray 

Observatory, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, 

and Spitzer (infrared) Space Telescope—were 

eventually highly successful missions. Hubble and 

Compton had already entered development phase 

when Pellerin’s group first met, and Chandra and 

Spitzer subsequently won approval from NASA 

and Congress. The birth of the Great Observatories concept and its successful advocacy began 

when NASA convened the 1983 ad hoc gathering 

of outside experts and sought their advice. 

EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCES COMMITTEE: As 

chapter 5 described, NASA officials in the early 

1980s recognized the opportunity to build both 

4. Pellerin interview, p. 9.

5. Diaz interview, p. 9.

6. Pellerin interview, p. 8.

7. Pellerin interview, p. 13.
172 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

a foundation and a rationale for a space-based 

Earth observing system. Growing support for 

such a system came from several sources, including productive workshops on the subject of global 

change and of studies of the global-scale intersections of the geosciences and ecology, encouragement from the Space Science and Applications 

Advisory Committee, Associate Administrator 

Burt Edelson’s interest in establishing an international presence in space applications, and NASA 

Deputy Administrator Hans Mark’s encouragement. NASA’s Director of Earth Science Shelby 

Tilford arranged for formation of an Earth 

Systems Science Committee under the auspices of 

the NASA Advisory Council. The committee of 

16 members was chaired by National Center for 

Atmospheric Research Director Francis Bretherton. 

The committee’s meetings often included ex officio participation by liaison members and observers 

from other interested government agencies and the 

NASA field centers, so the committee’s deliberations were generally open and inclusive.8

 Working 

over a period of more than five years, the committee articulated a compelling scientific definition 

and rationale for studying the Earth as a system 

and developed a set of recommendations on how to 

carry out such a study. 

One of the committee’s most notable and 

enduring products was the so-called Bretherton 

diagram that appeared in the committee’s report. 

The diagram illustrated the complex web of interactions between external forces (from the Sun and 

volcanoes), responses and interactions between the 

physical climate system (the atmosphere, oceans, 

and land) and biogeochemical cycles (chemistry 

of the troposphere, oceans, and terrestrial ecosystems), and their collective impact on and response 

to human activities.9 Thus, this holistic perspective 

and the committee’s substantive report had a major 

impact on creating a major new thrust in studying the Earth as a complex, interactive system, 

and it provided a scientific basis for NASA’s Earth 

Observing System program, which began in 1991. 

Perhaps equally importantly, the committee helped 

change the way that Earth scientists from different 

sub-disciplines saw their field.

Len Fisk, who inherited responsibility for initiating the EOS program when he became Associate 

Administrator, described the ESSC report as follows:

I think its impact was enormous...it 

spawned...[and] really sort of cemented this 

concept of Earth system science. At the time 

most Earth scientists viewed themselves in a 

disciplinary way, whether they were meteorologists or ice people or oceanographers or 

something. But the sort of enlightened people, 

the people that were starting to think about 

the future, said that the real problems are at 

the interfaces between these things. [T]hat 

gave birth to Earth system science as a subject...I think it was in many ways one of the 

seminal events that got the whole concept...

in the community’s mind as the thing that had 

to be done.10

Eric Barron, an oceanographer who joined the 

Penn State faculty in 1986, and who subsequently 

has served in many scientific and academic leadership positions, recalled his impressions about the 

importance of the report:

The Bretherton Committee’s Report...spurred 

all sorts of different activities and focal points, 

8. See Earth System Sciences Committee, Earth System Science, Overview: A Program for Global Change (NASA Advisory Council, 

NASA, Washington, DC, May 1986) p. 48.

9. Earth System Sciences Committee, Earth System Science, Overview: A Program for Global Change (NASA Advisory Council, 

NASA, Washington, DC, May 1986). 

10. Fisk interview, pp. 1–2.
Chapter 15 • Case Studies: Advice Requested by NA

including changing how advice was given to 

the federal government, particularly in the 

National Academy of Sciences. What you saw 

emerging was a Climate Research Committee 

out of the National Academy of Sciences, the 

Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, 

the Committee on Global Change Research...

you had those three groups, and then some 

others, that all began to interact within the 

same arena...I view those committees as the 

ones that stepped in following the Bretherton 

Report specifically to look and evaluate many 

different programs.11

Thus, observers both inside and outside the 

Earth sciences have credited NASA’s Earth System 

Sciences Committee with having a major impact 

on the direction of the field. And for NASA, it led 

to the definition, development, and launch of a 

series of Earth observing satellites that also largely 

defined NASA’s role in the U.S. Global Change 

Research Program.12

DISCOVERY PROGRAM ADVISORY COMMITTEES: NASA formed the Solar System Exploration 

Committee under auspices of the NAC in 1980 (see 

chapter 5) in order to respond to political and budgetary factors that threatened the very existence of 

the planetary science program. It was successful in 

the short term by providing some evidence that the 

community was getting its act together and coming 

up with a scheme for delivering good science more 

cost-efficiently than in the past. But it was not 

especially successful over a longer term, because the 

committee’s proposal to build two series of standard spacecraft designs—Planetary Observer and 

Mariner Mark II—both proved to be impractical 

and still costly. Thus, when former Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory cosmo-chemist Wes Huntress became 

Director of Solar System Exploration in 1992, he 

faced the possibility of a five-year or longer gap in 

planetary mission activity beginning in the late 

1990s. He needed to find a way to increase the 

number and rate of flight opportunities and to 

make the program more affordable. 

One of Huntress’ top objectives when he took 

the helm of the Solar System Exploration Division 

was to start a program of low-cost planetary missions that could be built and launched more frequently than in the past and that could be worked 

into the budget in hard times as well as good 

times. His idea was initially controversial because 

he proposed to create a program of missions that 

would be led and managed by individual principal 

investigators who would be selected through open 

competition. This approach was well entrenched 

in the space astronomy and space plasma physics 

communities where the Explorer program of lowcost, competed, principal-investigator-led missions 

had become a mainstay. The planetary sciences 

community, on the other hand, was accustomed 

to providing instruments that were then integrated 

onto large facility-class spacecraft by a NASA field 

center, such as the Langley Research Center for 

the Viking Mars landers and the Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory for many planetary missions. Thus, the 

conventional wisdom, encouraged by JPL, was that 

planetary missions were too big for NASA to give 

full development responsibility to a single lead scientist outside NASA and too costly to be feasible.13

Huntress patiently turned conventional wisdom 

around by challenging members of the community to convince themselves that a new idea would 

or wouldn’t work. He formed two ad hoc advisory 

committees—one for science and one for engineering—and charged them to evaluate the low-cost 

11. Barron interview, NASA “Earth System Science at 20” Oral History Project, 1 July 2010, p. 6.

12. For a concise history of the program, see National Research Council, Earth Observations From Space: History, Promise, and Reality 

(Executive Summary) (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1995), pp. 4–6.

13. Huntress interview, pp. 5–6.
174 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

mission concept in depth and to specify what 

attributes would be needed to make it work. He 

asked the science panel, “Can you do decent science with a spacecraft that is limited in scope and 

has only a few instruments on it...instead of these 

big Christmas trees you are used to?”14 The engineering panel included people who had significant 

familiarity with low-cost missions (particularly 

from the Naval Research Laboratory and the Johns 

Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory) 

as well others who were known skeptics of the 

small-mission proposal. Huntress recalled how he 

got the results that he hoped for:

And I just let them go at it and have the NRL 

folks and the APL folks kind of teach everybody how to do low-cost spacecraft and people 

experienced in planetary teach the low-cost 

spacecraft guys what the idiosyncrasies of 

doing planetary are. And so we spent a couple 

of years convincing our science community 

‘Yeah, maybe this will work.’ The scientists 

liked the idea of the missions being PI-led and 

proposed, and the engineering community 

became convinced that you could do low-cost 

planetary mission.15

By the end of 1992, NASA had transformed the 

two committees’ deliberations into the Discovery 

program, and the first Discovery mission—the 

Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission—was 

successfully launched in February 1996. Eleven 

missions were launched, with only one failure, 

through December 2012. The planned 2016 

launch of a twelfth mission (to land on Mars) was 

scrubbed (but rescheduled for 2018) due to development problems with the French seismometer 

that was intended to be a key instrument on the 

mission. Overall, however, Discovery proved to be 

a great scientific and strategic success, a source of 

genuinely innovative approaches, and a critical element of NASA’s solar system program. Its origins 

can be traced to the foresight of NASA managers 

who conceived a revolutionary solution to a serious 

gap in the Agency’s set of tools for solar system science and who knew that the best way to sell the idea 

to the community was to engage the community in 

scrutinizing the idea and fleshing it out. From an 

advisory process perspective, two keys to Huntress’ 

success were that he gave his teams adequate time 

to debate and work through the problem and that 

he picked people for the job in whom he was confident about their willingness to listen to competing 

viewpoints.16

MARS PROGRAM INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT: 

When Dan Goldin became NASA Administrator 

in April 1992, he was concerned that NASA science 

missions had grown too large, too complex, and too 

costly. Consequently, he became a passionate advocate for endeavors that would be faster, better, and 

cheaper, and the phrase became Goldin’s mantra 

as he pushed the Agency and its programs to move 

to larger numbers of smaller missions developed 

on fixed schedules and at lower costs. The fasterbetter-cheaper approach also emphasized expanded 

technological innovation, streamlined management with greater delegation to lower levels, and a 

higher tolerance of technical risk. 

Faster-better-cheaper had some notable early 

successes, including Mars Global Surveyor, which 

incorporated some aspects of the idea, the Near 

Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, which was the first 

Discovery-class mission, and the Mars Pathfinder 

lander with its successful airbag lander and highly 

popular Sojourner rover. Nevertheless, the concept 

14. Huntress interview, p. 6.

15. Huntress interview, p. 6.

16. For a more extensive history of the origins of the Discovery Program, see Michael J. Neufeld, “Transforming Solar System 

Exploration: The Origins of the Discovery Program, 1989–1993,” Space Policy, vol. 30, pp. 5–12, 2014.
Chapter 15 • Case Studies: Advice Requested by NA

also had its highly visible stumbles. Mars Climate 

Orbiter failed to go into orbit at Mars in September 

1999 due to a navigation error, which resulted 

from an error in converting propulsion thrust from 

Newtons to foot-pounds. Mars Polar Lander failed 

to land safely in December 1999. A postmortem 

analysis determined the most likely cause of the 

mishap was premature termination of the engine 

firing prior to the lander touching the surface, 

causing it to strike the planet at a high velocity.17

The Mars Polar Lander spacecraft carried a pair 

of small technology development probes, called 

Deep Space 2, that were intended to detach from 

the Mars Polar Lander and penetrate Mars’ surface, 

but they also failed for unknown reasons. 

Understandably alarmed by the rash of failures 

and determined to fix the Mars program as quickly 

as possible, Goldin and his Associate Administrator 

for Space Science, Ed Weiler, recruited space program veteran Tom Young to lead an ad hoc Mars 

program independent assessment team. Young 

was a retired senior executive of Martin Marietta 

Aerospace and Lockheed Martin, and he had 

served earlier in a number of important NASA positions, including Viking Program Mission Director, 

NASA Headquarters Planetary Program Director, 

and Director of the Goddard Space Flight Center. 

He would later serve as chair of the International 

Space Station Management and Cost Task Force 

for Goldin and chair of the two independent review 

teams for NOAA mentioned in chapter 13.

A diverse group of experienced industry and 

government aerospace managers as well as several 

planetary scientists filled out Young’s 17-person 

team. Their charge called for the team to review 

the three failed missions and three similar successes 

(Mars Global Surveyor, Pathfinder rover, and the 

Deep Space 1 technology testing mission), examine 

the roles and relationships of key mission participants (as well as the relationships between their 

institutions), oversee separate Mars Polar Lander 

and Deep Space 2 failure reviews, identify lessons 

learned, and provide advice that would be relevant 

to future missions. The team began its work on 7 

January 2000, and they met their remarkably tight 

deadline by delivering their report to Goldin on 14 

March only slightly more than two months later.

In what became typical of all advisory activities 

carried out under Young’s leadership, the report 

was explicit and direct. It reaffirmed that Mars 

exploration was important and challenging, and 

it went on to conclude that the U.S. space community has what it takes to do it successfully and 

that the FBC approach is viable if properly applied. 

The team found that “there were significant flaws 

in the formulation and execution of the Mars program”18 that included lack of discipline and of 

defined policies and procedures, failure to understand prudent risk, an unwillingness at JPL to push 

back when Headquarters-imposed cost or schedule 

constraints were dangerously tight, and an overall 

focus on cost instead of mission success. The report 

identified numerous best practices from successful 

missions and areas for future attention regarding 

project management responsibility and accountability, testing and risk management and decision 

making, adequate budgeting, and institutional 

relationships, as well as others.19

Goldin shouldered the responsibility for the 

problems, saying that he pushed too hard, cut 

17. Private communication from G. Scott Hubbard to the author. For an extensive account of these Mars missions, see Erik M. 

Conway, Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars (Johns Hopkins University Press, 

Baltimore, MD, 2015).

18. Mars Program Independent Assessment Team, Mars Program Independent Assessment Team Summary Report, (NASA, 

Washington, DC, 14 March 2000), p. 12, available at http://engineer.jpl.nasa.gov/mib/MarsProgram_2000_mpiat_summary.pdf.

19. For press accounts of the Young report and NASA’s response, see Keith Cowing, “NASA Reveals Probable Cause of Mars Polar 

Lander and Deep Space-2 Mission Failures,” SpaceRef.com, 28 March 2000; Warren E. Leary, “Poor Management by NASA 

Is Blamed for Mars Failure,” NYTimes.com, 29 March 2000; William Harwood, “NASA orders sweeping changes after Mars 

failures,” Spaceflight Now, 29 March 2000. 
176 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

budgets too much, and created an environment in 

which managers could not succeed.20

Weiler used the Young report to restructure 

the Mars program, starting with appointment of 

Ames Research Center executive Scott Hubbard as 

Headquarters Mars Program Director and clarifying lines of responsibility and authority between 

Headquarters and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 

where the program was implemented. With the 

benefit of the independent assessment team’s 

advice, Weiler, Hubbard, and JPL were able to get 

the program back on track so that NASA enjoyed 

seven straight Mars mission successes starting with 

Mars Odyssey launched in 2001, and continuing 

through the Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory 

launched in 2011, and the Mars Atmosphere and 

Volatile Evolution orbiter launched in 2013.21

External NASA Advisory Examples

NASA has often also turned to the NRC to carry 

out an advisory study on behalf of the agency. The 

cases below are illustrative of such efforts in which 

the Space Studies Board organized committees to 

advise NASA about a specific topic or area. In one 

case—a Mars rock symposium—the activity was 

actually a joint effort between the SSB and NASA’s 

internal FACA committee. 

SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE 

REPORT:22 In the early 1970s, NASA and space 

astronomy advocates in the scientific community 

were trying to build a case for starting development of the Large Space Telescope. While most of 

the activity focused on design studies for the proposed flight hardware, NASA officials also began 

to consider approaches for operating the telescope once it could be launched. The mission was 

expected to have a 10-to-15-year lifetime during 

which it would operate as a facility that would serve 

many users and produce unprecedentedly large 

volumes of data. Thus, the post-launch scientific 

aspects of the program would be formidable and 

would include activities such as evaluation of proposals for obtaining observing time, establishing 

observing priorities, scheduling telescope operations, and generally serving as the primary interface with the scientific community.

Two competing concepts emerged, and they 

generated lots of heated debate. NASA’s initial 

preference was for scientific operations to be colocated with the engineering control center for the 

spacecraft and telescope at a NASA facility. This 

was the strong, basically unyielding, preference 

of officials at the Goddard Space Flight Center 

to which management responsibility for development of the telescope scientific instruments and 

for flight mission and data operations had been 

assigned. Outside astronomers could play an advisory role, but Goddard people were convinced that 

their experience with earlier multiuser astronomy 

missions, in which NASA had end-to-end control 

and in which outside astronomers participated as 

guests, demonstrated that that was the way to go.

On the other hand, outside astronomers in the 

broader scientific community were equally convinced that scientific operations of the telescope 

should be outside NASA’s control. Many in the 

scientific community felt that NASA could not 

be trusted (See the discussion of tensions between 

NASA and the Astronomy Missions Board in chapter 3.) to work fairly on behalf of all astronomers 

20. Matthew Fordahl, “NASA Chief Blames Self for Botched Missions,” ABC News, Pasadena, CA, 30 March 2000, Alexander doc 

files, NASA History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

21. For more on faster-better-cheaper and the Mars mission failures as a business school case study, see Sean Silverthorne, “Mission to 

Mars: It really Is Rocket Science” (Working Knowledge, Harvard Business School, 1 March 2004), available at http://hbswk.hbs.

edu/item/mission-to-mars-it-really-is-rocket-science.

22. A thorough discussion of the origins of the Hornig report appears in Robert W. Smith, The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA, 

Science, Technology, and Politics (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989), ch. 6, pp. 187–220.
Chapter 15 • Case Studies: Advice Requested by NA

or to remain committed to the long-term scientific 

value of the telescope. So the astronomers’ alternative was an independent scientific institute that 

would be managed by an outside organization 

such as a consortium of universities. This concept 

was not especially new. For example, in 1966 the 

Ramsey Science Advisory Committee had recommended a NASA lunar science institute (see chapter 3), and that idea subsequently led to creation of 

the Lunar Science Institute that was initially managed by the National Academy of Sciences through 

Rice University and then, beginning in 1969, by 

a new consortium of universities—Universities 

Space Research Association. The concept was also 

familiar to astronomers who had experience with 

the Association of Universities for Research in 

Astronomy (AURA) through which the Kitt Peak 

National Observatory complex of telescopes was 

managed for the NSF.

Thus, by the mid-1970s, the terms of a battle 

were clearly drawn. Would scientific aspects of the 

telescope’s operations be controlled by NASA along 

with the rest of the telescope’s operations—possibly with some advice from participation by the scientific community—or would science operations 

be separate from the traditional functions of the 

space mission control center and controlled by an 

independent scientific organization? Astronomers 

outside NASA strongly adhered to the latter, and 

some NASA managers began to warm to that 

approach as well. But others, especially at Goddard, 

held fast to the former, NASA-controlled approach. 

Noel Hinners, who was then serving as Associate 

Administrator for Space Science, already had his 

hands full dealing with challenges posed by the 

program’s budget, a political fight to gain congressional approval for the program, and continuing 

resistance from those astronomers who thought 

the project was too costly compared to the groundbased facilities with which they had always worked. 

He didn’t need another battle with the scientific 

community at this time. Consequently, Hinners 

arranged for the Space Science Board to organize 

a study to examine possible institutional arrangements for the scientific use of the telescope.23

Donald F. Hornig, who had just stepped down 

from being president of Brown University, was 

selected to chair the study committee. Hornig 

was a Harvard-trained chemist who had been a 

group leader in the Manhattan Project and who 

had served as science advisor to President Lyndon 

Johnson from 1964 to 1969. The 17-person committee included experts who had experience with 

the operation of national research centers, including astronomers who had experience with space 

astronomy missions and others who were experienced with the operation of both national and 

privately funded, ground-based, astronomical facilities. The committee met for information collection sessions in Washington, DC, and at Goddard, 

and then they gathered for a two-week work session 

at the NAS study center in Woods Hole, MA. The 

luxury of having a study committee together for 

two straight weeks of discussion and report writing (free of e-mail and cellphones) would be a rare 

luxury now, but it was not uncommon in the 1960s 

and 1970s.

The committee’s report—“Institutional 

Arrangements for the Space Telescope”—was a 

remarkably thorough assessment of plans for the 

Space Telescope, experience with other space and 

ground-based observatories, factors relevant to 

whether an institute was needed, and options for 

the structure of an institute. The committee’s core 

recommendations were unequivocal:

• The productive use of the ST depends 

upon the safe, reliable operation and maintenance of the spacecraft and its associated 

communications and data-processing 

23. For a good view of Hinners’ thinking about the institute, see Hinners’ interview by Rebecca Wright for the NASA Headquarters 

Oral History Project, 19 August 2010, pp. 3–4.
178 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

systems, and upon the quality of the astronomical research that is conducted with it.

• Whereas the operation of the ST and its 

associated systems is best carried out by 

NASA, optimum scientific use of the ST 

requires the participation of the astronomical community.

• An institutional arrangement, which we 

call the Space Telescope Science Institute 

(STSI), is needed to provide the longterm guidance and support for the scientific effort, to provide a mechanism for 

engaging the participation of astronomers 

throughout the world, and to provide a 

means for the dissemination and utilization of the data derived from the ST.

• We recommend that the STSI be operated 

by a broad-based consortium of universities and nonprofit institutions.... The consortium would operate the institute under 

a contract with NASA.

• We recommend that the policies of the 

STSI be set by a policy board of about ten 

people representing the public interest, as 

well as the astronomical community and 

the broader scientific community. The 

quality and independence of the policy 

board is essential to the success of this 

enterprise.24

The report went on to discuss recommended 

scientific and operational functions, structure, governance, staffing, facilities, arrangements for interactions with NASA, and location of the institute. 

NASA largely accepted the Hornig committee’s 

recommendations and incorporated many of the 

ideas from the report in the procurement solicitation document for an institute. After a competition 

to choose an organization to create and manage 

the institute, NASA selected AURA, and the Space 

Telescope Science Institute (STScI) was established 

in 1981. STScI now sits in Baltimore, adjacent to 

the Johns Hopkins University campus and less 

than a one-hour commute from Goddard.

The institute has been enormously successful, something about which both astronomers 

and NASA officials agree. Ed Weiler, who served 

for a long time as NASA Headquarters Program 

Scientist for Hubble before becoming science 

Associate Administrator, was effusive about the 

impact of the Hornig report and the success of its 

recommendations:

That’s actually a good example of some early 

advice that was not only followed for Hubble 

but then followed forever. It wasn’t a decadal, 

but, boy, did it have an impact on the community, you bet! And the Institute has been a 

tremendous success, despite what a few people 

might say, in terms of bringing in the community and making Hubble a national, frankly 

international, presence.25

The Hornig report nicely illustrates an advisory 

effort that met NASA’s needs and provided actionable advice that had a significant lasting impact. 

NASA’s Noel Hinners wanted a way to resolve 

the conflict between Goddard and the astronomy 

community, he wanted independent guidance on 

how to maximize the long-term scientific value of 

the Space Telescope program, and he wanted to be 

able to build a positive relationship with the community that would shore up their willingness to 

be advocates for the program. Hinners probably 

also wanted cover; he had a good idea of what he 

wanted to do, but having a National Academy of 

Sciences committee behind him made his future 

decisions much more palatable.

24. National Research Council, Institutional Arrangements for the Space Telescope: Report of a Study at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, July 

19–30, 1976 (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1976), p. vii.

25. Weiler interview, p. 11.
Chapter 15 • Case Studies: Advice Requested by NA

MARS ROCK EVENTS: The continent of Antarctica 

is a great place to look for meteorites, because they 

stand out distinctly in its pristine environment of 

bare white ice fields and they lay undisturbed for 

long periods of time. In December 1984, NSFsponsored meteorite hunters discovered a specimen 

that had a major impact on an aspect of NASA 

science and, for a while, seemed destined to profoundly impact science much more broadly. 

Named ALH84001 for its discovery site in the 

Allen Hills region of Antarctica, the nearly 2 kilogram rock was one of a class of meteorites that most 

likely came from Mars, because it contains gases 

whose composition is very much like the composition of the Martian atmosphere. On 6 August 

1996, NASA scientist David McKay and collaborators published a paper26 that reported that they had 

found electron microscopic and chemical evidence 

of fossil Martian micro-organisms in ALH84001. 

Needless to say, discovery of life on Mars—even 

primitive life that might have been extinct for a few 

billion years—would be a really big deal.27

Responses to the reported discovery were 

prompt and dramatic. McKay had given a heads-up 

to NASA Associate Administrator Wes Huntress, 

who alerted his boss, NASA Administrator Dan 

Goldin, who alerted the White House. President 

Bill Clinton commented on the discovery as he 

departed the White House for a trip on 7 August:

Like all discoveries, this one will and should 

continue to be reviewed, examined and scrutinized. It must be confirmed by other scientists.... First, I have asked Administrator 

Goldin to ensure that this finding is subject 

to a methodical process of further peer review 

and validation. Second, I have asked the Vice 

President to convene at the White House 

before the end of the year a bipartisan space 

summit on the future of America’s space program. A significant purpose of this summit 

will be to discuss how America should pursue 

answers to the scientific questions raised by 

this finding.... If this discovery is confirmed, 

it will surely be one of the most stunning 

insights into our universe that science has ever 

uncovered. Its implications are as far-reaching 

and awe-inspiring as can be imagined. Even 

as it promises answers to some of our oldest 

questions, it poses still others even more 

fundamental.28

To respond to Clinton’s call to convene a space 

summit to consider how the nation should explore 

the implications of the ALH 84001 paper, Huntress 

turned to his principal advisory bodies—the 

internal FACA-charted Space Science Advisory 

Committee (SSAC) and the external Space Studies 

Board. He asked SSAC chair Anneila Sargent and 

SSB chair Claude Canizares to organize a workshop that would involve a diverse group of experts 

to dig into the state of knowledge of the origins 

of the universe and life and everything in between 

and ponder future research directions regarding these questions.29 In less than three months, 

Canizares and Sargent pulled some 40 scientists 

together to meet, discuss, and prepare a briefing for 

Vice President Al Gore. A subgroup of the workshop organizers and participants met with the Vice 

President in early December for a lively discussion 

26. David McKay et al., “Search for Past Life on Mars: Possible Relic Biogenic Activity in Martian Meteorite ALH84001,” Science, 

273, (5277), 924–930, 6 August 1996.

27. For an extensive discussion of the Mars rock story see Kathy Sawyer, The Rock from Mars: A Detective Story on Two Planets 

(Random House, New York, 2006).

28. “President Clinton Statement Regarding Mars Meteorite Discovery,” White House press release, Office of the Press Secretary, 7 

August 1996.

29. NASA/National Research Council, “The Search for Origins: Findings of a Space Science Workshop” (Space Policy Institute, 

George Washington University, Washington, DC, 28–30 October 1996).
180 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

of what the nation might consider regarding studies of life in the universe.

Canizares recalled the effort:

We pulled together quickly a panel of really 

quite remarkable people...I believe we collectively came up with this idea of an origins 

thrust, and for us origins wasn’t just looking 

for life around other stellar systems. It was literally...pretty much all of space science. And 

it was saying, ‘Really this is a piece of a much, 

much bigger quest.’ And it was kind of a plea 

for trying to look rationally at the whole thing 

and not only start looking for life in meteorites. 

Then we prepared this briefing book...[for 

the Vice President, and] we had a session with 

him where we all went to the Indian Treaty 

room. I think it went on for an hour and a 

half, and he left. Then he came back as everybody was standing around to ask more questions. He was very engaged. 

I think in the end the origins became one 

subset for NASA, so it kind of distorted what 

we were trying to say. But some of the spirit 

I think stayed there, and it at least put things 

into a context.30

Huntress emphasized the impact of the SSBSSAC workshop and briefing to Vice President Gore:

It had the strongest effect of anything that 

NRC did while I was AA. The rest of it was 

kind of in background—‘we need you to 

make sure we are doing our kind of science’—

that kind of stuff. This one was important.

And then when the response to the [Mars] 

rock came, I was summoned up to OMB by 

[the NASA programs branch head] Steve 

Isakowitz, and he said, ‘Okay, now what are 

going to do about this.’ I laid out what we 

called the Origins Program on the table for 

him. Origins had already been part of our strategic planning process, and we were trying to 

draw a thread through all of the disciplines in 

space science having to do with the origins of 

life and looking for life.... You know how hard 

it is to get new [research and analysis] money 

for the agency. So I put a line item for astrobiology in the budget, and he liked that. And so 

the ultimate result was that we got a new R&A 

line called astrobiology, and that allowed us to 

bring the biologists back into the program over 

time. It really worked well.31

McKay’s paper was controversial when it first 

appeared, and it has remained controversial ever 

since. Many other experts put forth arguments 

questioning the conclusions, and McKay steadily 

sought to rebut the skeptics. While the final verdict on whether ALH84001 does or does not hold 

evidence of past Martian life forms may not have 

been rendered, the event was a major milestone 

for NASA and an interesting example of roles of 

its outside advisors. First, the “Mars rock symposium,” as the effort became known, illustrated that 

advisory bodies could act quickly—in just four 

months in this case—in response to a compelling 

government need. Second, the character of the 

activity was unique. It was initiated at the direct 

request of the White House, it was very much a 

joint effort between NASA’s internal advisory 

committee and the SSB, and NASA played a substantive role in preparation of the briefing materials for the Vice President that came out of the 

effort. No one appeared to worry about one body’s 

independence with respect to the other. This kind 

of collaboration was probably possible because the 

activity did not produce formal advice; rather, it 

represented the collective opinions of a group of 

distinguished individuals. Thus, the two advisory 

30. Canizares interview, pp. 6–7.

31. Huntress interview, pp. 11–12.
Chapter 15 • Case Studies: Advice Requested by NA

bodies were fulfilling responsibilities to promote 

communications between the government and the 

scientific community. In the end, those communications—from outside advisory bodies to the 

Vice President and to OMB—provided a highly 

credible foundation upon which NASA was able 

to build a substantial new program in astrobiology 

and to make the concept of origins an integrating 

theme for much of the space science program.

CONNECTING QUARKS WITH THE COSMOS: 

There are many interesting examples of advisory 

studies giving a push to certain scientific areas 

and to missions or mission sets. One stems from a 

1999 request by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin 

to the NRC Board on Physics and Astronomy 

to examine science opportunities and to recommend a strategy for research at the intersections 

of fundamental physics and astronomy. That is, 

what are the key areas where elementary particle 

physics and cosmology share intellectual frontiers, 

and how should we exploit them? The BPA, with 

assistance from the SSB and funding from NASA, 

NSF, and DOE, organized the Committee on 

the Physics of the Universe to carry out this task. 

There were some initial apprehensions that this 

study would stray into competition with related 

decadal surveys. NRC committees are notoriously 

protective of their conclusions and their immutability—“Once handed down, thou shalt not 

meddle!” Consequently, the committee took pains 

to declare its intention to complement the most 

recent surveys in astronomy and astrophysics and 

in physics32 and to build on the priorities identified 

by those studies. 33

The final report—“Connecting Quarks with 

the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the 

New Century”34—outlined an interesting set of 

fundamental science questions that could capture 

imagination and capitalize on the rapid advances 

being made in contemporary physics and astronomy. (One has to wonder whether they tried to 

keep the list to ten and failed, but then decided 

against going for an even dozen.) Then the report 

identified future projects that could help attack 

the questions.

Michael Turner, who chaired the committee, 

recalled the effort fondly:

The legacy is twofold: first, the enormous 

effort focused on dark matter, dark energy and 

the CMB [cosmic microwave background], 

both in the astronomy community and in the 

physics community. Second, our approach has 

been copied a lot: First identify the science. 

This is so important for discovery science. At 

the end of the day, what discovery science is all 

about are the big questions you’re asking. And 

if all you are telling the agencies, Congress, and 

the people is the projects you want to build 

and not the big questions you are struggling to 

answer, you’re in trouble in discovery science. 

Because at the end of the day, your strongest 

suit is wonderment about the universe and our 

big mysteries.... It’s now been copied, everybody starts with the science questions.... And 

I think what’s important is that the questions 

that we are asking, trying to answer, anyone 

can understand them.... So I think that’s what 

we did; we all of a sudden made that popular.35

32. National Research Council, Physics in a New Era: An Overview and Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium (both from 

the National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).

33. Board on Physics and Astronomy, Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century (National 

Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2003), p. ix.

34. Board on Physics and Astronomy, Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century (National 

Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2003).

35. Turner interview.
182 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

The committee’s approach of starting with the 

big scientific questions—painting an understandable picture of the intellectual frontiers and then 

building the arguments for important next steps in 

research from there—was the same approach that 

Charlie Pellerin’s great observatories brainstorming group employed. And just as was the case for 

Pellerin, Turner’s committee outlined ideas that 

had great scientific appeal.

Kevin Marvel recalled that the Turner report 

and its emphasis on the science questions had unintended consequences with respect to the preceding 

astronomy decadal survey:

The 2001 [survey] report really waned in 

influence around 2006. I think that was partly 

due to the release of...the Quarks to the 

Cosmos36 report.... And when Quarks to the 

Cosmos came out, oh man, everybody wanted 

to talk about Quarks to the Cosmos instead 

of the decadal survey. And the reason for that 

was that Quarks to the Cosmos didn’t have a 

shopping list in it. By shopping list I’m not 

being pejorative; it’s just that’s our range of priorities of things that the community needed. 

And some people are much happier with [no 

shopping list] because, they knew what the scientific priorities were, but they weren’t being 

told how much it would cost to fulfill those 

scientific priorities. And so I think that especially the people on the Hill like that more 

than actually having a dollar amount tagged to 

a particular thing.37

Indeed, the committee’s report was initially a 

big hit. The White House Office of Science and 

Technology Policy formed the Interagency Working 

Group on the Physics of the Universe to prepare a 

plan to act on the committee’s recommendations 

and to advise government officials about budgetary 

priorities related to the report.38 The fundamental 

science questions that the Quarks report outlined 

were enduring ones. Many of them found their 

way into the major scientific themes that emerged 

in the 2012 decadal survey for astronomy and 

astrophysics.

Although the 2003 report placed its major 

emphasis on important science questions, it closed 

with a chapter that addressed efforts that federal 

agencies could and should make to attack those 

questions. It gave a special nod to two NASA 

missions that were in the early stages of planning—the Constellation-X x-ray observatory 

(Con-X) and the Laser Interferometer Space Array 

(LISA) for gravitational wave detection, both of 

which had been cited in the astronomy decadal 

survey. The report also endorsed a DOE-backed 

space mission—the Super Nova Acceleration 

Probe (SNAP)—that would investigate evidence 

for dark energy. SNAP wasn’t mentioned in the 

2001 survey, but it had strong DOE interest.39 All 

three future space missions survived, albeit in different guises. None of them managed to break the 

mission and budget approval barrier, due mostly to 

problems not of their making, but they continued 

to stay alive and high in the queue for future space 

astrophysics initiatives. 

36. In spite of the fact that the report title uses the phrase “Quarks with the Cosmos,” it has become popularly known as “Quarks to

the Cosmos” or Q2C.

37. Marvel interview, pp. 4–5.

38. See Interagency Working Group on the Physics of the Universe, A 21st Century Frontier of Discovery: The Physics of the Universe

(National Science and Technology Council Committee on Science, Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC, February 

2004).

39. Board on Physics and Astronomy, Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century (National 

Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2003), ch. 7.
Chapter 15 • Case Studies: Advice Requested by NA

The two NASA mission candidates were part of 

a larger NASA program called Beyond Einstein40

that also included two of the Great Observatories—

the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and the 

Chandra X-ray Observatory—and others. Con-X’s 

blessing by the Turner committee was not enough 

to propel it into new-start status, partly due to its 

likely high cost at a time when NASA was still 

struggling to deal with the costs of the James Webb 

Space Telescope. NASA moved to join forces with 

the European and Japanese space agencies (ESA 

and JAXA) and to replace Con-X with U.S. participation in a European-led International X-ray 

Observatory (IXO) project. The 2012 astronomy 

and astrophysics decadal survey ranked LISA as the 

number 3 priority for large space missions, followed 

by IXO in the number four slot. However, when 

IXO failed to win a go-ahead in an ESA competition for new missions, it was back to the drawing 

board again with ESA initiating a new study of an 

Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics 

(Athena) to replace IXO. NASA kept the phone 

lines to ESA open and continued plans about 

potential ESA-NASA collaboration on Athena with 

a possible launch in the late 2020s. ESA placed 

LISA next in the queue of large space missions after 

Athena and initiated a test mission, called LISA 

Pathfinder, that was launched in December 2015 

to demonstrate critical technologies needed for the 

LISA gravitational wave detection science mission. 

NASA took on a junior-partner role with ESA on 

LISA Pathfinder, just as it did on Athena.41

SNAP, which was intended to study the expansion of the universe via measurements of supernovae, had its own metamorphic history. After being 

initially proposed by the DOE, it was superseded 

by the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), which 

was the product of on-again-off-again discussions of a collaborative NASA-DOE project that 

was to include the SNAP measurements. Neither 

SNAP nor JDEM were granted a priority in the 

2010 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey, 

but the survey did give top priority to a Wide Field 

Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) that would 

incorporate a version of the JDEM instrumentation and accomplish many of the scientific objectives of JDEM. Then in 2012, NASA announced 

that the National Reconnaissance Office—the 

U.S. spy satellite agency—had offered components for two unused, 2.4-meter diameter, space 

telescopes to NASA. Both a NASA and an NRC 

ad hoc science panel declared the proposed gift—

dubbed the Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets, 

or AFTA—to be well-suited for accomplishing 

WFIRST’s scientific mission. However, the NRC 

panel cautioned that the immaturity of aspects 

of the WFIRST-AFTA design concept posed too 

great a technical and cost risk unless and until 

NASA could complete further technology development and design assessments to demonstrate that 

the mission could be accomplished at an acceptable cost.42 NASA initiated preliminary studies of 

a WFIRST-AFTA mission concept in hopes that 

formal mission development could conceivably 

begin in the late 2010s.43

Turner recalled how the Quarks report also had 

an impact on DOE:

And the other legacy of it would be on the 

DoE side. DoE at the Office of High Energy 

40. NASA’s Beyond Einstein program was subsequently renamed the Physics of the Cosmos program.

41. For more details, see Peter B. de Selding, “Lisa Pathfinder’s success boosts likelihood of future gravity-wave observatory” 

(SpaceNews.com, 7 June 2016), available at http://spacenews.com/lisa-pathfinders-success-boosts-likelihood-of-future-gravity-waveobservatory/.

42. National Research Council, Evaluation of the Implementation of WFIRST/AFTA in the Context of New Worlds, New Horizons in 

Astronomy and Astrophysics (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2014).

43. Presentation by Paul Hertz, NASA Astrophysics Division Director, to the SSB Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics, 30 

March 2016, Alexander document folder, NASA Headquarters Archives, Washington, DC.
184 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Physics used to be “accelerators are us.” And 

now they also have the Cosmic Frontier [program], so they have completely bought into 

dark matter, dark energy, [cosmological] inflation, as part of their scientific agenda. And I 

think Quarks to the Cosmos was the foot in 

the door. They realized that their mantra is not 

“accelerators are us,” although accelerators are 

an important tool. Their mantra is, “We are 

looking to understand, at the most basic level, 

matter, energy, space, and time.”44

It shouldn’t be especially surprising that when 

NASA received scientific advice that the Agency 

had explicitly requested the advice was usually 

welcomed and likely to have an impact. The cases 

described above are notable examples of situations 

where there was a particularly interested customer 

or patron inside the Agency, as well as a particularly strong advisory group to respond to NASA’s 

request. But there have been other occasions in 

which someone outside NASA set the advisory 

effort in motion regardless of whether there was 

any interest inside the Agency. The next chapter 

will look at a few examples of these independently 

instigated studies and examine their mixed record 

of success or failure.

44. Turner interview.
185

CHAPTER 16

Case Studies: Advice Initiated from Outside NASA

I

n order to assess the impact of external scientific 

advice to NASA and to try to understand why 

efforts succeeded or failed, we need to distinguish 

between advice that NASA sought and advice 

that NASA may not have wanted, or at least not 

requested. Chapter 15 examined some case studies 

of advisory activities that NASA initiated and that 

were carried out by NASA committees or by NRC 

bodies at NASA’s request. Now we turn to some 

that were conducted by the NRC at the request of 

Congress or simply at the NRC’s own initiative.

Congressionally Mandated Reports

Congress occasionally has directed NASA to obtain 

external advice, and then the Agency has been obligated to seek the advice regardless of whether or 

not Agency officials really wanted it. Sometimes 

the request originates with a single member of 

Congress who wants the Agency to hear from outside experts about a pet issue. On other occasions 

the request may be in response to input from members of the scientific community.1

 And, of course, 

members of Congress and their staffs sometimes 

feel that NASA needs to be forced to pay attention to an issue, and they use mandates (either in 

legislation itself or in reports that accompany legislation) to get NASA’s attention. 

Congressionally mandated advisory studies are not often welcome at NASA, as former 

Congressional Research Service space expert 

Marcia Smith has made clear:

Unless there is something really worthwhile 

in that report, and considering it takes 18 

months to 24 months to get the report out and 

by then things may have changed at NASA, 

then I think they are pretty much not going 

to pay attention to it, they are going to find 

reasons to ignore it.2

Ed Weiler, confirmed this view, saying, “Ones that 

tend to be the least useful are the ones demanded 

by Congress that we didn’t ask for.”3

Nevertheless, a congressional call for an advisory study is powerful, especially when the call is 

incorporated in or accompanies enacted legislation. Such studies get done. The 2005 study on 

options for extending the life of the Hubble Space 

Telescope (HST) and the 2006 report on imbalances in NASA’s science budgets are particularly 

interesting examples.

1. Although there is a popular perception that SSB chairs lobby Congress for mandated studies, the author found that to be rare 

when he was interacting regularly with the chairs from 1998 to 2006.

2. Smith interview, p. 13.

3. Weiler interview, p. 3.
186 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

EXTENDING THE LIFE OF THE HUBBLE SPACE 

TELESCOPE: The disastrous loss of the Space 

Shuttle Columbia and its seven crew members 

in February 2003 prompted much soul searching and reassessment of the U.S. space program, 

both inside and outside NASA. Those examinations led to an expanded emphasis on flight 

safety, development of a capability for in-flight 

Shuttle inspections and possible repairs, provisions for having a second Shuttle ready to conduct 

a rescue mission if needed, and a general increase 

in conservatism about the use of the Shuttle. HST 

had been launched via the Shuttle in 1990 and 

designed to be serviced by later Shuttle visits, of 

which there were four between December 1993 

and March 2002. A fifth servicing mission had 

been planned for late 2005. However, in January 

2004, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe canceled the next servicing mission, saying that for 

safety reasons there would be no more Shuttle 

flights to HST.4

There was an immediate outcry from the astronomical community and even from the general 

public.5 Kevin Marvel recalled an unusual measure of public interest that appeared via a deluge 

of letters to the American Astronomical Society 

from elementary school classes around the country: “I know the congressional offices also received 

these letters.... So the school children of America 

spoke.”6 The astronomers picked up an important ally in Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland 

who had an interest because two key HST institutions—the Space Telescope Science Institute and 

the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center—were 

in her state and because she chaired the Senate 

appropriations subcommittee that handled NASA’s 

budget. Mikulski argued that O’Keefe was wrong 

to make his decision unilaterally.7

Ed Weiler had played major roles in the development and operation of HST throughout his 

career, but he acknowledged that O’Keefe had been 

in a tough spot:

I understood why he made the decision he 

made, because he was responsible for the lives 

of astronauts. He lived through seeing those 

seven astronauts tragically killed. You know, 

if I had to make a decision back then about 

do we plan a servicing mission, I might have 

made the same decision. Luckily I didn’t have 

to make the decision. But I understood his 

decision.8

Nevertheless, if something wasn’t done to replace 

aging components on the telescope, it would be 

expected to die in a few years. The engineering 

team at Goddard, which had been responsible for 

designing hardware used on the Shuttle servicing 

4. Steven Beckwith, “Servicing Mission 4 Cancelled” (Space Telescope Science Institute, quoted by Space Ref.com 16 January 

2004), available at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=11615; Warren E. Leary, “NASA Chief Affirms Stand On 

Canceling Hubble Mission” (New York Times, 29 January 2004), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/us/nasa-chiefaffirms-stand-on-canceling-hubble-mission.html.

5. For example, see Richard Tresch Feinberg, “Hubble Supporters Fight Back,” Sky and Telescope, 23 January 2004, http://www.

skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/hubble-supporters-fight-back/; Brian Berger, “Canceled Hubble Repair the First Victim of 

New NASA Vision,” Space News, 26 January 2004, p. 6; and New York Times editorial, “Premature Death for the Hubble,” 29 

February 2004. 

6. Marvel interview, p. 7.

7. See Leonard David, “The debate over Hubble” (from Space.com quoted at Science & Space, CNN.com, 24 January 2004), 

available at http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/01/24/hubble.funding/; Keith Cowing, “NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope: A 

Fate Far From Certain” (SpaceRef.com, 14 March 2004), available at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=937; and 

Richard Tresch Fienberg, “Senator Vows to Fight for Hubble” (Sky & Telescope Magazine, 23 January 2005), available at http://

www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/senator-vows-to-fight-for-hubble/.

8. Weiler interview, p. 5.
Chapter 16 • Case Studies: Advice Initiated from Outside NA

missions, immediately began to explore robotic 

alternatives for visiting HST.

In March 2004, Senator Mikulski directed 

NASA to engage the NRC for an independent 

evaluation of options for extending the life of HST, 

including Shuttle- and robotic-servicing as well 

as optimization of ground operations, and for an 

assessment of whether the scientific gains to be 

expected from any viable options would be worth 

the risk involved.9 The SSB and the Aeronautics 

and Space Engineering Board jointly organized 

a study committee and recruited physicist Louis 

Lanzerotti to serve as chair.

The organizers made a considerable effort to 

ensure that the panel was a blue-ribbon committee in the truest sense and that its members would 

bring the highest level of stature and expertise to 

the effort. Lanzerotti was not an astronomer, but he 

had been involved in space research throughout his 

career, had been chair of both NASA’s SESAC and 

the SSB, and had served on the National Science 

Board and two White House commissions regarding U.S. space policy. Perhaps more importantly, 

he was respected as a straight shooter who could 

be absolutely trusted to aim to do the right thing. 

Marcia Smith described him as follows:

Lou really has an unimpeachable record.... 

And I don’t think anyone questioned whether 

he was being fair or not, so he was the perfect choice to lead that committee, technically 

competent...full of integrity.10

The committee membership included former senior 

engineering and management experts from NASA, 

the Department of Defense, and industry, including former HST program leaders; robotics and risk 

assessment experts; three former Shuttle astronauts, 

including two who had flown on HST missions, 

plus former NASA Administrator Richard Truly; 

two former senior Shuttle program leaders; and 

three distinguished astronomers, including two 

Nobel Prize winners.11 The 20-member committee was larger than typical NRC committees, and 

that size enabled the group to divide its tasks into 

manageable chunks, dig into each in depth, and 

then subject potential findings and conclusions to 

independent scrutiny in plenary discussions.

At a congressional hearing in April, O’Keefe 

had said that the prospects for carrying out a 

robotic servicing mission were looking more promising than NASA officials had first believed, and he 

was optimistic that this could be an alternative to 

a Shuttle servicing mission.12 Then in June, NASA 

announced that it would formally solicit proposals 

for using a space-borne robot to service Hubble as 

an alternative to a Shuttle mission.13

The process of organizing the Lanzerotti committee began in April. There was considerable 

pressure to provide a report quickly—some officials asked for results as early as September—so 

that NASA could make technical and budget decisions before they would be too late to execute. The 

committee met for the first time in early June and 

prepared an interim report, at NASA’s request, in 

mid-July. The interim report basically said that 

9. “Senators ask NASA to seek another opinion on Hubble” (USA Today, 11 March 2004), available at http://usatoday30.usatoday.

com/news/washington/2004-03-11-hubble-senate_x.htm#.

10. Smith interview, p. 6.

11. Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, Assessment of Options for Extending the Lifetime of the 

Hubble Space Telescope: Final Report, National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005), pp. 

137–144.

12. Brian Berger and Leonard David, “NASA: Robotic repair of Hubble ‘promising’” (Space.com, 27 April 2004), also available at 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/04/27/hubble.repairsII/index.html.

13. NASA Office of Public Affairs, “NASA Considering Robotic Servicing Mission to Hubble,” NASA press release 04-173, 1 June 

2004.
188 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

HST was worth saving, that there were significant 

uncertainties about the feasibility of robotic servicing, and that NASA should take no actions that 

would preclude a Shuttle servicing mission until 

the committee completed its assessment.14

The committee’s final report was completed 

and briefed to NASA and to congressional officials in the first week of December and released 

to the public on 8 December. The 160-page NRC 

report included a discussion of the HST system, 

its past and potential future scientific accomplishments, technical assessments of likely system lifetimes and of the feasibility of robotic servicing, 

considerations relevant to Shuttle servicing, and 

a benefit-risk assessment of servicing options. The 

report concluded that NASA should send the Space 

Shuttle to service HST and that robotic servicing 

was not recommended. The committee explained 

that while there were too many technical uncertainties pertaining to the readiness and risk of 

robotic options, a Shuttle mission to HST was 

not significantly more risky than Shuttle missions 

to the International Space Station, which NASA 

planned to do at least 25 more times. The committee did not rule out eventual use of a robotic system 

to take HST out of orbit at the end of its life and 

send it on a controlled re-entry.15

It was a tough pill for O’Keefe to swallow, but 

the report was well received on Capitol Hill and in 

the scientific community and expansively treated 

in the media. In addition to coverage in many 

major daily papers and news broadcasts, the New 

York Times even published an editorial that cited 

the Lanzerotti report’s “unusually blunt assessment,” characterized NASA’s arguments for favoring Shuttle missions to the Space Station rather 

than to Hubble as “a sham,” and urged NASA to 

get on with an astronaut flight to rescue Hubble.16

Ed Weiler, who was then serving as Director of 

the Goddard Space Flight Center, saw immediate 

impacts from the report:

It was very strong impact, because all the 

money that Hubble had was going toward getting ready for a robotic servicing mission.... 

We had hardware and lots of hardware; robots 

were already built; their containers were being 

built. Our project manager was going nuts 

and building things and spending money, 

I might add. So when the report came out, 

and more importantly when [future NASA 

Administrator Michael] Griffin was in place, 

we immediately switched gears.17

As one might expect for such a complex and 

potentially controversial issue, not everyone was 

pleased with the outcome. Al Diaz, who was 

Goddard Director when the study was initiated and 

then Associate Administrator for Science when the 

report was delivered to NASA, felt that by foregoing robotic servicing of Hubble, the Agency missed 

an opportunity to extend Hubble’s life indefinitely 

and to build robotic servicing capabilities that 

NASA would need in the future: 

I really do think that we could have extended 

the life of Hubble and used it on a continuing 

basis if we just made the investment in developing the robotic servicing capability.... I believe 

that it was not only possible but reasonable to 

think about developing the capability.18

14. Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, Assessment of Options for Extending the Lifetime of the Hubble 

Space Telescope: Final Report (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005), pp. 116–125.

15. Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, Assessment of Options for Extending the Lifetime of the Hubble 

Space Telescope: Final Report (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2005).

16. “A Blow to NASA’s Hubble Rescue,” New York Times editorial, 12 December 2004.

17. Weiler interview, p. 5.

18. Diaz interview, p. 6.
Chapter 16 • Case Studies: Advice Initiated from Outside NA

O’Keefe resigned in February 2005, approximately two months after the Lanzerotti committee delivered his report, and he was succeeded in 

April by Michael Griffin. During Griffin’s first 

year on the job, NASA made good progress in 

demonstrating a capability to have a second Shuttle 

ready to launch a rescue mission and for crews to 

make on-orbit repairs to a damaged orbiter. When 

Congress passed the NASA Authorization Act for 

2005,19 it included language calling for a Shuttle 

mission to HST so long as it would not compromise astronaut safety. In October 2006, Griffin 

reversed O’Keefe’s decision and announced that 

NASA would fly one more Shuttle servicing mission to HST.20

Griffin later said that the NRC report had no 

impact on his decision to approve another Shuttle 

servicing mission, and that he had made his own 

decision independently after having led an assessment of robotic options for Goddard Space Flight 

Center officials before he became Administrator.21

Nevertheless, the NRC report certainly provided 

ammunition for Senator Mikulski who pressed to 

see the telescope refurbished one more time.

The final HST servicing mission in May 2009 

turned out to be a roaring success. The Shuttle 

crew installed two new science instruments and 

upgraded two others. They also installed replacement batteries, new gyroscopes, a command 

and data-handling unit, and made other fixes. 

Consequently, estimates of the likely extension of 

the telescope’s lifetime ranged from at least 2015 to 

possibly the end of the 2010s decade.22

The HST committee effort was notable on 

many fronts. First, the NRC succeeded in recruiting a uniquely distinguished group of experts to 

serve. Uniformly, when people were contacted and 

asked to consider participating, they acknowledged 

the importance of the study in a national scientific 

context and agreed to commit their time because 

the task was important to the U.S. space program 

and to science. Second, the task was controversial, technically complex, and tinged with political interests. Consequently, it demanded that the 

committee’s deliberations be technically credible 

and completely objective. And perhaps most challenging, the committee had to complete its work in 

a short time. They rose to that challenge and delivered their advice in less than eight months—a span 

that amounts to near-record time for NRC studies.

BALANCE IN NASA’S SPACE AND EARTH SCIENCE PROGRAMS: President George W. Bush’s 

January 2004 announcement of his Vision for Space 

Exploration was both a response to the impacts of 

the catastrophic Space Shuttle Columbia accident 

nearly one year earlier and an articulation of a new 

U.S. civil space policy. As chapter 11 explains, it 

emphasized both human and robotic exploration 

missions, and it assumed a growing NASA budget 

to pay for the proposed initiatives. However, the 

administration’s fiscal year 2005 budget proposal 

to Congress raised some immediate concerns when 

it separated NASA science into areas that were 

directly related to the exploration vision—mainly 

planetary science—and practically everything else, 

19. NASA Authorization Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-155), enacted in December 2005.

20. NASA News Release, “NASA Approves Mission and Names Crew for Return to Hubble,” release 06-343, 31 October 2006, 

available at http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/oct/HQ_06343_HST_announcement.html.

21. Griffin interview. Also see “Transcript of NASA Administrator Nominee Michael Griffin’s Confirmation Hearing 12 April 2005” 

(Spaceref.com, 13 April 2005), available at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=16155.

22. For a thorough account of the Hubble servicing episode, see the appendix titled “The Decision to Cancel the Hubble Space 

Telescope Servicing Mission 4 (and Its Reversal)” by Steven J. Dick in Hubble’s Legacy: Reflections by Those Who Dreamed It, Built 

It, and Observed the Universe with It, edited by Roger D. Launius and David H. DeVorkin (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly 

Press, Washington DC, 2014).
190 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

including astronomy (except for searches for Earthlike planets around other stars), space plasma physics, and Earth science, which were deemed “other 

science.” Alarm bells quickly sounded as people 

in the scientific community and their congressional supporters became wary of this partitioning. 

Consequently, Congress inserted language in its 

explanatory report to the fiscal year 2005 appropriation bill, requiring

the National Academies’ Space Studies Board 

(SSB) to conduct a thorough review of the 

science that NASA is proposing to undertake 

under the space exploration initiative and to 

develop a strategy by which all of NASA’s 

science disciplines, including Earth science, 

space science, and life and microgravity science, as well as the science conducted aboard 

the International Space Station, can make adequate progress towards their established goals, 

as well as providing balanced scientific research 

in addition to support of the new initiative.23

Neither NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe 

nor his successor Michael Griffin were particularly 

anxious to get outside advice that might challenge 

the administration’s plans, but NASA duly asked 

the NRC to conduct the required review. The SSB 

produced an initial report in 2005 that served as a 

partial response. It recommended a set of principles 

for NASA to use in making decisions about science 

to be pursued under the new exploration vision.24

For all practical purposes, the answer was, “Let science be your guide, and follow the decadal surveys 

and their counterparts.” While the principles and 

accompanying guidance that the Board outlined in 

its report reinforced ideas that were fundamentally 

important to the scientific community, the report 

had little tangible impact. At least one congressional staff member skewered the report, saying that 

it was devoid of specific, actionable recommendations and that “except as a repository of a few useful 

aphorisms and a source of undiscussed ideas contained in other studies...it’s worthless.”25 Luckily 

for the SSB, they had another time at bat in which 

to try to provide sharper guidance.

The SSB had explained to the congressional 

appropriations committees that it would complete 

its task by reviewing a set of research and technology 

development plans that Administrator O’Keefe had 

commissioned as part of NASA’s implementation 

of the exploration vision. However, when Michael 

Griffin succeeded O’Keefe as Administrator, 

Griffin modified the planning process and the 

expected NRC review of the suite of research and 

technology plans was abandoned.

When NASA’s fiscal year 2007 budget proposal 

went to Congress in February 2006, the alarm bells 

about NASA’s treatment of science under the vision 

sounded even more loudly. The prior assumptions 

for a growing NASA budget did not materialize, 

commitments and costs for operating the Space 

Shuttle and completing the International Space 

Station remained, and planned budget increases for 

new human space exploration systems and for science were sharply reduced. Consequently, the new 

budget would have the space and Earth sciences 

losing ground against inflation and having $3.1 

billion less to spend over the five-year period 2007 

to 2011 than had been proposed a year earlier.26

23. Conference Report on H.R. 4818, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2005, H. Rept. 108-792, p. 1599.

24. Space Studies Board, Science in NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2005).

25. E-mail, “Re New NRC report on Science and Space Exploration,” from Paul Rehmus (Congressional Budget Office) to Joseph 

Alexander (Space Studies Board), 11 February 2005, available in Alexander document file, NASA History Division, Washington, 

DC.

26. For more discussion of the FYs 2005 and 2006 budget issues, see chapter 12.
Chapter 16 • Case Studies: Advice Initiated from Outside NA

After seeing the details of how NASA proposed to 

reallocate science budgets, the SSB elected to complete its congressional charge to “develop a strategy 

by which all of NASA’s science disciplines...can 

make adequate progress towards their established 

goals, as well as providing balanced scientific 

research in addition to support of the new initiative”27 with a new report.

The report—“An Assessment of Balance in 

NASA’s Science Programs”28—is an interesting 

example of how the NRC could leverage a congressionally mandated task to provide advice that 

NASA would probably not have preferred to hear 

but that was clearly responsive to earlier congressional concerns. The report was prepared by an ad 

hoc committee composed of the members of the 

SSB plus one additional expert,29 and it drew on 

input from the Board’s disciplinary standing committees, thereby quickly tapping the full range of 

expertise and experience available to the SSB.

The conclusions in the report were particularly 

concise, direct, and critical of the proposed NASA 

budget for 2007:

Finding 1. NASA is being asked to accomplish too much with too little. The agency 

does not have the necessary resources to carry 

out the tasks of completing the International 

Space Station, returning humans to the Moon, 

maintaining vigorous space and Earth science 

and microgravity life and physical sciences 

programs, and sustaining capabilities in aeronautical research.

Finding 2. The program proposed for space 

and Earth science is not robust; it is not 

properly balanced to support a healthy mix 

of small, medium, and large missions and an 

underlying foundation of scientific research 

and advanced technology projects; and it is 

neither sustainable nor capable of making adequate progress toward the goals that were recommended in the National Research Council’s 

decadal surveys.30

The report was highly critical of NASA’s decision to reduce science budgets, apparently so as 

to provide some funding to the administration’s 

human space exploration initiative in a less-robustthan-expected fiscal environment. In particular, 

the SSB analyzed budget trends for several years 

before the Bush initiative and their projections for 

future years and then presented explicit summaries 

of the impacts of the budget proposals on the likely 

health of NASA’s basic research programs, discipline by discipline. Among the largest impacts, 

according to the SSB analysis, was a deep cut to 

the astrobiology program that had been stimulated by the earlier Mars rock events and that had 

grown to become a significant new element of the 

space sciences.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin explained 

that NASA faced serious budgetary problems with 

completion of the International Space Station 

and the costs of the winding down of the Space 

Shuttle program, both of which had been substantially underfunded.31 He acknowledged that the 

cuts damaged the science program, but said there 

27. Conference Report on H.R. 4818, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2005, H. Rept. 108-792, p. 1599.

28. Space Studies Board, An Assessment of Balance in NASA’s Science Programs (National Research Council, The National Academies 

Press, Washington, DC, 2006).

29. The report was the last one prepared by the SSB itself after the NRC ruled that, due to FACA conflict of interest concerns, 

standing boards could not author reports.

30. Space Studies Board, An Assessment of Balance in NASA’s Science Programs (National ``Research Council, The National Academies 

Press, Washington, DC, 2006), p 2.

31. Griffin remarks at Space Studies Board meeting, 2 May 2006, SSB archives, National Research Council, Washington, DC.
192 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

was nowhere else to turn to find budgetary relief. 

With respect to the cuts to basic research activities, and especially astrobiology, Griffin said that 

it had been his personal judgment that they were 

less important than support for flight missions and 

that academic scientists are too often protective of 

research grants because of their own self-interests. 

Nevertheless, Griffin said he was willing to listen 

to the views of the scientific community.

The 2006 report had an interesting reception. 

Congress responded positively, and the report 

certainly caught attention from the press. House 

Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert 

issued a statement saying, 

The Academy report bears out what I have 

been saying since the Administration budget 

was released in February and what witnesses 

argued at the Science Committee’s March 2 

hearing on NASA’s science programs: NASA’s 

proposed fiscal 2007 budget provides inadequate funding for earth and space science and 

in particular gives short shrift to the smaller 

projects that are necessary to keep science progressing and to train new scientists. I think the 

Academy report gets it exactly right.32

According to members of the staff of the House 

Science committee, there was already bipartisan 

support for a balanced NASA science portfolio, and 

so while the report wasn’t a game changer, it reinforced those views. Most importantly, it provided a 

basis for helping congressional appropriations committee staff members to be supportive of budget 

restorations.33

Journalists who followed NASA and U.S. space 

science had similar takes on the report. Story 

headlines included “Criticism of NASA science 

budget grows,”34 “Study finds money gap at NASA 

grows,”35 “Academy of Sciences bemoans budget 

limits,”36 “NASA underfunded, panel reports,”37

and perhaps most provocatively, “NASA’s lunar 

leap may put other projects in a tailspin.”38

Beyond early reactions to the NRC report, it’s 

a little hard to see where there were specific, tangible responses. NASA space science officials felt that 

their hands were tied, and their immediate reaction 

was to say, “We have our orders.” For example, Paul 

Hertz, who was then Science Mission Directorate 

Chief Scientist, described their situation as follows:

[A]s a NASA employee member of the administration, I have huge opportunities to advocate within the system for what I think is the 

right thing to do, budget-wise and programmatically.... But once a decision is made at 

any of those levels, it’s my job to implement 

that decision even if it’s the exact opposite 

of what I advocated. So you understand this 

balancing act that we do.... That was a time 

where, for one reason or another, the decision that was made had a specific impact on 

the science community. I believe that Mike 

Griffin said in public...that he didn’t like the 

32. House Science Committee Press Office, “Boehlert Statement on National Academy Report on NASA’s Science Budget,” Press 

Release, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC, 5 May 2006.

33. Goldston interview.

34. Maggie McKee, “Criticism of NASA science budget grows” (Daily News, New Scientist, 4 May 2006), available at https://www.

newscientist.com/article/dn9110-criticism-of-nasa-science-budget-grows/.

35. Warren E. Leary, “Study Finds Money Gap at NASA” (New York Times, 5 May 2006).

36. Nell Greenfield-Boyce, “Academy of Sciences Bemoans NASA Budget Limits” (Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 5 May 

2006).

37. Guy Gugliotta, “NASA Underfunded, Panel Reports” (Washington Post, 5 May 2006).

38. Mark Carreau, “NASA’s lunar leap may put other projects in a tailspin” (Houston Chronicle, 5 May 2006), available at http://www.

chron.com/news/nation-world/article/NASA-s-lunar-leap-may-put-other-projects-in-a-1901027.php.
Chapter 16 • Case Studies: Advice Initiated from Outside NA

system we had where scientists advised the 

government on how much money we should 

send to scientists. He thought that was like 

industry advising us on how much money we 

should spend on industry39.... So he was not 

interested in the kinds of advice that might 

come out of that Balance report. And we in 

the Science Directorate already knew it. We 

could’ve written that Balance report ourselves 

because it definitely aligned with what we 

thought appropriate priorities were for handling budget reductions.40

Nevertheless, Mary Cleave, who had to cope 

with the budget cuts as Associate Administrator 

for Science at the time, felt that the Balance report 

was useful to her in trying to explain the impacts 

to interested members of Congress and to lay the 

groundwork for recovery.41 When Alan Stern succeeded Cleave in 2007, he began to rectify some 

of the cuts to the space science base, and he had 

Griffin’s support in making those adjustments. 

Ed Weiler continued to restore critical funding 

when returned to headquarters to replace Stern 

as Associate Administrator in 2008. Perhaps the 

report’s most important longer-term impact was 

to provide both NASA science managers and the 

scientific community with a set of arguments to 

keep the issue of balance and programmatic critical mass in front of congressional and OMB staff 

members and some key members of Congress so 

that they would not let the issue pass without attention. Lamentably, the report’s first finding about 

NASA being expected to do too much with too 

little received basically the same response as many 

other advisory reports that said the same thing—

no relief.

Self-Initiated Advisory Efforts

Since the late 1980s, the costs of SSB advisory 

activities for NASA were covered by means of a 

task-order contract that provided core funding for 

five-year intervals. The core funding included routine operating costs such as staff support, expenses 

for regular meetings of the Board and its standing 

committees, and work associated with preparation 

of letter reports and several study reports annually. Major efforts above and beyond that level of 

effort were covered by adding extra tasks to the 

contract. This core funding arrangement allowed 

for the Board and its committees to initiate new 

studies, and therefore, it gave the SSB considerable 

flexibility. Rather than needing to wait for a specific NASA request, the units could initiate study 

efforts on topics of their own choosing so long as 

they were within the general range of responsibilities for the Board.42 As earlier chapters have indicated, many letter reports and a series of regular 

study reports emerged from the Board under this 

arrangement. Let’s look at some examples of how 

this option played out.

AN EXPERIMENT IN SETTING PRIORITIES: It’s 

interesting to examine advice that no one sought 

explicitly but for which everyone might agree there 

was a need. The Space Studies Board embarked on 

a search for a version of that holy grail in 1992—

namely, to see if a scientific advisory group such as 

the SSB could devise a method to reach consensus 

on priorities across scientific disciplines. The results 

of the Board’s efforts were remarkable for the fact 

that in the end the conclusion was basically “We 

tried and failed.”

39. Griffin made his position clear on multiple occasions, perhaps most thoroughly at a speech to Goddard Space Flight Center 

employees on 12 September 2006; available at http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/157382main_griffin-goddard-science.pdf.

40. Hertz interview, p. 9.

41. Cleave interview.

42. After about 2001, NASA specified that the SSB could no longer initiate its own studies without prior approval.
194 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

The 1986 Crisis report by NASA’s Space and 

Earth Sciences Advisory Committee (see chapter 

5) included a discussion of the committee’s ideas 

for setting cross-disciplinary priorities. That task 

was always a particularly difficult, or even impossible, challenge for advisory bodies. Of course, 

senior Agency managers have to make those decisions regularly. The Crisis report called for decision makers to use “carefully specified” criteria 

that would include scientific merit, programmatic 

implications, and societal benefits in prioritizing 

and selecting future space projects.43

Two key contributors to the SESAC report, 

SESAC chair Louis Lanzerotti and member John 

Dutton of Pennsylvania State University, subsequently joined the SSB. Lanzerotti became SSB 

chair in 1989, and Dutton joined the Board at the 

same time. When the Space Science Board reorganized in 1989 to become the Space Studies Board, it 

embraced a broader portfolio that included much of 

the prior responsibilities of the Space Applications 

Board, which was dissolved at the same time. (See 

chapter 2.) With Lanzerotti’s encouragement, the 

new Board began to consider the issue of crossdiscipline priorities across the width spectrum of 

space sciences that ranged from astrophysics to 

Earth remote sensing to life and physical sciences 

in microgravity. 

The Board proceeded in two stages. First, a 

small task group chaired by Dutton and comprised 

of some SSB members and other experts explored 

the questions of whether scientists should try to set 

cross-disciplinary priorities for space research, what 

would be the arguments for doing so, what would 

be the advantages and disadvantages of such an 

effort, and what principles should guide the effort 

if it were to be attempted. The task force’s report 

concluded that such efforts would be “both necessary and desirable,” and it recommended that the 

SSB go forward to develop a methodology for priority setting.44 The Board agreed, and so the task 

group, and later the whole Board, set out to devise 

a scheme for cross-program prioritization and then 

to test the scheme.

The task group embarked on its methodology 

and testing phase by first developing a formal 

scheme whereby advocacy proposals for new scientific initiatives would be prepared in a prescribed 

format and then competing proposals would be 

evaluated via a semi-quantitative rating tool. Then 

they ran two simulations to test the tool and the 

overall approach, first in mid-1992 with members 

of the task group as participants and then in early 

1993, after revisions, with participation by the full 

Board in the second test. Assessments of the process 

were mixed in both tests, and many participants 

raised a variety of objections to either the design 

and structure of the process or the appropriateness 

of the scheme. After discussing the efforts throughout 1993, the SSB concluded that while the arguments for the need for priority-setting remained 

strong, the task group’s method could not be recommended. The effort was documented45 and put 

to bed. 

Marc Allen, who was SSB Director at the time, 

later summarized the outcome:

In the end the final report was somewhat a 

negative report. It basically said this was very 

difficult. I think this was John Dutton’s phrase 

in the wrap-up: “Perhaps cross-disciplinary 

prioritization is like war. No simulation is the 

43. Space and Earth Science Advisory Committee, The Crisis in Space and Earth Science: A Time for a New Commitment (NASA 

Advisory Council, Washington, DC, November 1986).

44. Space Studies Board, Setting Priorities for Space Research: Opportunities and Imperatives (National Research Council, The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1992).

45. Space Studies Board, Setting Priorities for Space Research: An Experiment in Methodology (National Research Council, The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1995).
Chapter 16 • Case Studies: Advice Initiated from Outside NA

substitute for the real thing.”46...So basically a 

committee composed of reasonable people sat 

down to decide that this was a good thing to 

do, and they agreed that it was, and then they 

tried to do it.... But to try to do it as an exercise just didn’t work. I really drew the conclusion that even if a committee of experts from 

diverse fields tried to actually do it under real 

live ammunition, under real live fire, it would 

be extremely difficult for them to do it.... It 

sort of demonstrated to me that in the end the 

way those kinds of decisions would probably 

be made would be on the programmatic basis, 

and that nobody would try to grapple with 

which science is better than or more important 

than another type of science.47

Perhaps the most important conclusion to be 

drawn from the SSB’s ill-fated effort was that while 

scientists are very good at recommending priorities 

within discipline areas, they are less able to agree 

on priorities across disciplines, because factors 

other than science begin to enter in. At about the 

same time that the Board’s project on setting priorities was reaching this conclusion, a separate SSB 

group was coming to the same conclusion from a 

rather different angle and with a bigger impact. 

To appreciate the latter study, we go back to late 

1992, when NASA Administrator Goldin split the 

Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA) 

to form a new Office of Space Science and an 

Office of Mission to Planet Earth, and he then created a third—the Office of Life and Microgravity 

Sciences and Applications in 1993. Key members 

of Congress had become big fans of OSSA’s strategic planning process in the late 1980s (see chapter 7), and so the reorganization raised alarms on 

Capitol Hill. Senator Barbara Mikulski, who was 

not known to be one of Goldin’s more ardent fans, 

chaired the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee 

that dealt with NASA, and she arranged for the 

report accompanying NASA’s fiscal year 1995 

appropriation bill to include the following directive:

The future of space science—The Committee 

has included $1,000,000 for the National 

Academy of Sciences to undertake a comprehensive and independent review of the role and 

position of space science within NASA. It will 

come as no surprise that the Committee did 

not support or recommend the dismantling of 

the Office of Space Science and Applications. 

The contributions made by that office in strategic planning, cross disciplinary priority setting, and management controls were among 

the best that the Federal Government has ever 

undertaken in any of its many scientific components. Given the administration’s desire to 

reinvent Government, the Committee believes 

the time has come to seriously consider the 

creation of an institute for space science 

that would serve as an umbrella organization within NASA to coordinate and oversee 

all space science activities, not just those in 

physics, astronomy, and planetary exploration. Such an institute could function just as 

the National Institutes of Health now does 

within the Department of Health and Human 

Services. The Committee recognizes that there 

are certain tradeoffs in the creation of any new 

entity. The Academy should look at mechanisms for priority setting across disciplines on 

the basis of scientific merit, better means to 

include advanced technology in science missions, and ways to permit less developed scientific disciplines to have a means of proving 

46. Allen’s recollection was very close; the report said, “It may be that priority setting is like war: simulation, no matter how realistic, 

is not the same as the real thing because of the stakes.”

47. Allen interview, 9 September 2014, p. 6.
196 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

their value, despite skepticism about them in 

the more established scientific fields.48

After NASA formally requested the study called 

for by the Senate, the SSB formed the Committee 

on the Future of Space Science, which was led 

by former IBM Vice President for Science and 

Technology John Armstrong. Armstrong’s steering group formed subordinate task groups for each 

of the three main elements of the congressional 

request—alternative organizations, research prioritization, and technology. The prioritization 

task group was chaired by Roland Schmitt, former 

President of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 

and the group’s membership had no overlaps with 

the membership of Dutton’s priorities task group. 

The final study report included substantial recommendations on a National Institute for Space 

Science (Don’t do it.), responsibilities of the NASA 

Chief Scientist (Strengthen them.), technology 

development (NASA needs a strategy.), and several 

management issues, as well as recommendations 

on science prioritization. On the latter subject, 

the report made crisp recommendations about the 

importance of scientific considerations in setting 

program and mission priorities for space research. 

It emphasized that science should be a factor at all 

levels of decisions, but it recognized that as prioritysetting progresses to involve successively broader 

areas of activity, the extent of participation by scientists may decrease and the necessary participation by senior Agency management will increase.49

In hindsight, the two studies—the SSB’s frustrating experiment in cross-discipline priority setting and the Armstrong committee’s report on 

managing the space sciences—had significantly 

different impacts. The former demonstrated, to 

quote Claude Canizares who was SSB chair when 

the latter report was published, “[prioritizing] 

across different disciplines...[is] very, very difficult 

to do.”50 But beyond that, efforts to employ a quantitative methodology have never taken hold, and the 

report is largely forgotten. The latter report, on the 

other hand, made it clear to the scientific community that while there were compelling arguments 

for keeping scientific considerations and the scientific community involved in the process of setting 

broad program priorities, scientists can only be part 

of the solution as the questions move up the institutional food chain. Perhaps more importantly, the 

Armstrong report met Senator Mikulski’s need for 

ammunition to ensure that Goldin’s new organizational structure did not compromise the scientific 

integrity and vigor of NASA’s science program. 

SPACE PHYSICS PARADOX REPORT: In the 

1980s and 1990s, two standing committees of 

two different boards worked together as a federated body to provide advice to NASA and the 

NSF. Both the SSB’s Committee on Solar and 

Space Physics (CSSP) and the Committee on 

Solar Terrestrial Research (CSTR) of the Board on 

Atmospheric Sciences and Climate shared concerns 

over research about the Sun, the Sun’s influence on 

interplanetary space, and the space environments 

of the Earth and other planets. The two committees routinely collaborated to develop coherent lines 

of advice to the two agencies that were principal 

sponsors of research in those areas. When the two 

committees embarked on a study that went beyond 

their usual scientific range of interests and dug into 

what the study report acknowledged to be “administrative, managerial, and funding”51 aspects of the 

agency’s programs, they may have not realized how 

48. U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on VA, HUD, and independent agencies, report accompanying 

NASA’s FY 1994 appropriation.

49. Space Studies Board, Managing the Space Sciences (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 

1995).

50. Canizares interview, p. 3.

51. National Research Council, A Space Physics Paradox: Why Has Increased Funding Been Accompanied by Decreased Effectiveness in 

the Conduct of Space Physics Research? (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1994), p. ix.
Chapter 16 • Case Studies: Advice Initiated from Outside NA

far they were straying into what a scientific advisory body should view as terra incognita.

Over the decade leading up to the study, 

research funding had grown significantly, and so 

had the size of the research community. In 1991, 

at the request of the SSB, the two committees had 

prepared an assessment of the NSF and NASA programs that was quite positive about recent scientific 

progress, but the report indicated that progress on 

prior NRC programmatic recommendations had 

been slow and that support for small programs 

such as research grants had eroded.52 Thus, the central question for the committee—the space physics 

paradox—was “Why has increased research funding been accompanied by decreased effectiveness 

in the conduct of space physics research?”53 Or to 

put it in slightly different words, “If funding has 

improved, why isn’t everyone happy?”

The “Paradox” report dug into the big-sciencelittle-science debate that was active at the time and 

asked whether a move towards more and more large 

programs was causing the erosion of small research 

activities that the committee referred to as “the 

base-funded program.” The report analyzed trends 

in research funding, community demographics, 

proposal demand and success rates, mission and 

experiment development times and consequent 

flight rates, and various administrative costs. The 

authors concluded that, in spite of overall budget 

increases over the prior decade, a number of factors had sapped the impact of the increases. They 

attributed the problem to increases in time consumed in proposal preparation and review, university overhead costs, and reliance on big programs 

that were intrinsically more complex and slower to 

implement. They also dinged the agencies and the 

research community for failing to produce effective 

strategies and priorities that would support more 

realistic decision making. The report presented a 

set of four relatively broad recommendations for 

the agencies and the community:

1. Increase the size of the base-funded research 

program,

2. Adjust the portfolio to increase the proportion of small programs,

3. Set more realistic priorities in anticipation of 

limited future resources, and

4. Streamline program management.54

These may have been perfectly reasonable ideas, 

but when the report landed at NASA, it was a more 

or less immediate flop. NASA officials considered 

its conclusions to be self-serving and its recommendations to be too short on specificity to be useful. 

George Withbroe, a veteran solar astrophysicist who 

was NASA’s Director of Space Physics at the time, 

found the report to be far afield from what he viewed 

as appropriate territory for NRC committees:

It was basically, or what it read to me as, an 

argument for a WPA program55 for space physics, rather than “Here’s the exciting science we 

want to do. Here are our priorities. Here’s how 

to do it.” The whole tone was WPA program; 

that’s the way I read it. And that’s not, in my 

mind, what the Academy should be doing. 

The Academy should be defining exciting science and priorities among scientific programs 

and not trying to say “Here’s how you keep 

52. Committee on Solar Terrestrial Research and Committee on Solar and Space Physics, Assessment of Programs in Solar and Space 

Physics (National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1991).

53. National Research Council, A Space Physics Paradox: Why Has Increased Funding Been Accompanied by Decreased Effectiveness in 

the Conduct of Space Physics Research? (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1994), p. i.

54. National Research Council, A Space Physics Paradox: Why Has Increased Funding Been Accompanied by Decreased Effectiveness in 

the Conduct of Space Physics Research? (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1994), pp. 77–79.

55. The Work Projects Administration employed millions of unemployed people for public works projects during the Great 

Depression of the late 1930s and early 1940s, and it has since become a metaphor for “make-work” programs.
198 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

space physicists employed in the most costeffective way.” What they are doing is what’s 

most important, not how they’re employed. 

Are they doing exciting science? That’s what 

the government is paying for.... There wasn’t 

any science in the report.56

The two authoring committees—CSSP and 

CSTR—did act on their own advice in one way. 

The “Paradox” report had recommended that “the 

space physics community establish realistic priorities across the full spectrum of its scientific interests,” and the two committees issued a new scientific 

strategy for the discipline in 199557 that began with 

a thorough discussion of the scientific underpinnings and goals for the field and then translated 

them into recommended implementation priorities. 

Perhaps the work that went into the report was 

needed to provide an analytical basis for the priorities that emerged from the new science strategy, 

but as an advisory product, the “Paradox” report 

became notable for its poor reception at NASA. 

————

The brief discussions of advisory efforts in the 

previous two chapters, and in earlier chapters 

as well, might make interesting history, but they 

could have a bigger lasting value if they can teach 

us something about what particular attributes or 

approaches make the advisory process successful. 

Why have some advisory studies had a significant 

impact when others have not? The next chapter 

digs into that question.

56. Withbroe interview.

57. National Research Council, A Science Strategy for Space Physics (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1995).
199

CHAPTER 17

Assessing the Impacts of Advisory Activities: 

What Makes Advice Effective

The long history of interactions between NASA 

and its scientific advisory groups provides a 

rich experience base from which to try to learn how 

and why some advisory efforts have been successful and why others have fallen flat. Earlier chapters 

have mentioned many relevant examples. Chapter 

2 highlights some notable early reports from the 

Space Science Board and its committees, and chapters 3 and 5 sketch parallel, complementary activities by NASA’s internal advisory committees during 

NASA’s first three decades. Chapter 10 describes 

the relatively more recent role of senior review 

panels formed by NASA that have influenced 

NASA decision making, and chapter 11 summarizes the institutionalization of NRC decadal strategy surveys and mid-decade progress assessments 

that have become pivotal in space research planning and priority setting. Finally, chapters 15 and 

16 provide a more extensive discussion of a few 

notable advisory efforts.

Can one make sense out of this ensemble of 

examples? What common attributes or recurring themes can one discern that help distinguish 

between effective efforts and run-of-the-mill communications? In nearly all of the examples, their 

degree of success has depended on four factors that 

characterize the advice and the advisory process 

(Figure 17.1):

• Client interest or need,

• Actionability, 

• Content and packaging, and

• Execution and follow-up.

To be sure, not every case study is likely to 

exhibit fully all of these characteristics. And there 

will always be exceptions or contradictions where 

an advisory effort will deviate from this prescription 

and still be successful and important. Nevertheless, 

the discussion that follows is a synthesis of what the 

majority of cases seem to teach us.

Not surprisingly, most of these success factors 

are relatively obvious in hindsight—they’re not 

profound, they’re common sense. But it’s worthwhile to heed the words of renowned science fiction 

author Isaac Asimov, who wrote, “It is the obvious 

which is so difficult to see most of the time. People 

say ‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’ ” But how 

much of the nose on your face can you see, unless 

someone holds a mirror up to you?”1

 So let’s take a 

look at what the history of advisory efforts tells us.

Client Interest or Need

The first key to effectiveness is whether the advisory effort has an accepted purpose and an intended 

recipient or client who needs and wants advice. Is 

1. Isaac Asimov, “The Evitable Conflict” (I, Robot, Bantam Books, New York, NY, mass market reissue, 2004), pp. 243–244.
200 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

there a problem that needs to be solved or a decision that needs to be made? Does an agency need 

to define a way forward, or is there a question that 

calls for independent expertise? If the answer to 

any of these questions is “yes,” then outside advice 

may be appropriate. But need may not be sufficient. There also has to be a receptive audience that 

is willing to accept the advice or a third party that 

can influence a response. 

FIGURE 17.1 Key factors for effective advice

The decadal surveys are especially good examples of advice to a waiting and receptive audience. 

Once the astronomers demonstrated the strengths 

of the decadal survey approach from the 1960s 

through the 1990s, NASA and congressional 

officials welcomed decadals for all areas of space 

science. The surveys satisfied a clear desire for 

consensus priorities that had the backing of the 

broad research community. Likewise, NASA science program managers wanted the senior reviews 

of space science mission operations, because they 

wanted science-based assessments that could 

guide decisions about which missions to continue and which ones to phase down in the face of 

constrained budgets.

All the advisory efforts discussed in chapter 15 

were requested by interested government recipients, 

and all succeeded in meeting the customer’s need. 

Charlie Pellerin wanted help articulating a scientific case for the Great Observatories; Hans Mark, 

Burt Edelson, and Shelby Tilford wanted the scientific community to help define a major role for 

NASA in studying global change; Wes Huntress 

wanted scientists and engineers to help frame a lowcost planetary exploration flight program or show 

why it couldn’t be done; and Dan Goldin and Ed 

Weiler certainly wanted help to arrest the failures 

in NASA’s Mars program. So in each case, they 

formed an advisory group to address their needs. 
Chapter 17 • Assessing the Impacts of Advisory Activities: What Makes Advice Effecti

Tom Young, chair of the Mars Program 

Independent Assessment Team, summed up his 

views on the importance of having a willing and 

capable audience as follows:

It’s one thing to have a good report and secondly to have someone to deliver it to who 

knows what to do with it.... There were people 

who not only knew what to do with it, but 

were genuinely interested in getting the report 

and wanting to respond to the recommendations.... A good report was developed, but it 

would have just been put on a shelf if there had 

not been competent, capable people to receive 

the report and integrate the recommendations 

that we had, and that happened. And I think 

that happened in a manner that kind of set 

the stage for the Mars Program moving from 

what was clearly a low...to what since then 

has been an extraordinary series of successes.2

Similarly, when government officials have 

turned to the NRC for advice they usually have 

been anxious to hear it and, therefore, receptive. 

Noel Hinners wanted a credible outside group to 

help frame the arguments and define the structure 

for a science institute for the Space Telescope; both 

the White House and Congress wanted advice from 

distinguished scientists on an appropriate response 

to the putative evidence of Martian life in the Mars 

rock; and Dan Goldin wanted to find a NASA role 

in research at the interfaces of fundamental physics 

and cosmology. 

Thus, all of the examples in chapter 15 illustrate 

the point that advice has a better chance of being 

used when the recipient wants it and asks for it. 

Maybe that should be obvious, but it’s still important to emphasize.

Sometimes, the advisee doesn’t seek or want 

advice, but a third party does and insists that 

the process go forward. Often, the advice delivered at the request of a third party turns out to 

be important. For example, in spite of the NASA 

Administrator’s firm preference to stop future Space 

Shuttle missions to the Hubble Space Telescope 

after the Columbia accident, Senator Mikulski 

insisted on a National Academies review of the 

issues. The Lanzerotti report helped turn around 

the decision and pave the way for a very successful extension of the telescope’s life. Similarly, top 

NASA officials had no interest in hearing about the 

scientific impacts of budget cuts proposed in 2005, 

but a congressional call for NRC attention ensured 

that the SSB Balance report would emerge and get 

an airing.

However, independent advice often falls flat 

when no one seeks the advice except the advisors 

themselves. Chapter 16 highlighted two examples of self-initiated advisory products that fizzled. 

NASA had not asked whether scientists should 

try to set cross-discipline priorities or what might 

be a method for doing so, but in the end it didn’t 

really matter. The SSB’s near-simultaneous report 

on “Managing the Space Sciences,” which was 

requested by Congress, produced an alternative 

perspective saying that as decisions reach higher 

and wider levels, scientists need to cede the power 

to other players and other factors. Finally, the 

Paradox report illustrates the principle that if scientific advisors want to be heard, they would be wise 

to base their advice on science rather than to stray 

into what their customer views as its own exclusive 

area of responsibility.

So the central questions are “Will the effort satisfy a need?” and “Will it respond to an appeal for 

outside help?” Successful advice begins by recognizing where there is a need, a problem, or a question and then making the advice relevant to that 

need. Fundamentally, successful advice addresses 

an itch that needs to be scratched. 

2. Project Management Institute interview of Tom Young published 7 November 2013 on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=eiFQIzuFKiw.
202 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Actionability of the Advice

Of course effective advice has to have more than a 

receptive recipient or patron. It has to be actionable. 

One can look at this critical aspect in at least three 

ways. First, does the advice help lead to a change or 

action? Second, is the advice timely and available 

in time to be used effectively? Advisory reports that 

take longer to prepare than the time scale on which 

budgets, key personnel, or institutional interests 

change are not likely to be very useful. Third, does 

the advice have an appropriately lasting effect? 

Fleeting ideas don’t make much of an impact. 

Our poster children for successful reports—the 

decadal surveys—are distinguished by the fact 

that government officials have generally worked 

hard to follow the recommendations. Issues of cost, 

technological complexity, agency budget realities, 

programmatic factors, and politics often impact 

an agency’s ability or willingness to implement the 

recommendations, but the decadals still present a 

standard by which to measure the utility of outside 

advice. However, recent decadals have become vulnerable in terms of timeliness, because the budget 

assumptions on which they were based were out of 

date by the time the reports were completed. (See 

chapter 11.)

Many of the examples in the preceding 

two chapters met the impact test. The Great 

Observatories, Earth system science, Discovery 

program, Space Telescope institute, Mars program 

assessment, Mars rock, and Hubble servicing 

efforts all led to actions that persisted as long as 

the need existed. Explicit responses to the NRC 

Quarks-with-the-Cosmos and Balance reports 

may be a little harder to identify, but in both cases 

the reports’ authors succeeded in communicating 

ideas (in the former case) or issues and principles 

(in the latter case) that remain accepted and relevant today. On the other hand, the SSB’s Priorities 

report and the Paradox report did not lead to visible actions, and so it would be hard to say that they 

were successes. 

Content and Preparation 

of the Advice

Advice can go to a willing audience and address 

important issues and still fall flat. How the advice 

is framed and how it is communicated become very 

important factors in whether the advice is heard 

and considered. The most successful cases of advisory activities discussed in earlier chapters share 

most of the following attributes.

SPECIFICITY: Cogency and specificity are particularly important if advice is going to be useful and 

effective. Is the advice substantive? Does it include 

a clear path for action? Is it convincing and compelling? Is it explicit and free of code words or concepts that befog what advisors really intend? 

The Hornig report on a Space Telescope science 

institute, the Discovery program study teams, and 

the Hubble Space Telescope servicing study all had 

very explicit and well-argued recommendations on 

which NASA could act. Decadal surveys are, by 

their nature, distinguished by their recommendations for explicit priorities.

One speaker at the 26 August 2014 meeting of 

the SSB Committee on Survey of Surveys made 

a point about what kind of advice will get the 

attention of decision makers in OMB as well as in 

Congress. In essence, the more explicit one can be, 

the more likely one can have an impact at OMB. 

Subtle statements don’t often work.

OBJECTIVITY AND CREDIBILITY: Advice also 

needs to be viewed as objective, fair, and credible, 

and these attributes become increasingly important 

when the advice addresses uncertain, complex, or 

controversial topics. Advisors’ clout depends upon 

how people outside the advisory process view the 

process. Are the advisors really experts? Are they 

community leaders? Do they have acceptance in 

the community as being consensus builders? 

There can be a fine line between building consensus around the majority views of a community 
Chapter 17 • Assessing the Impacts of Advisory Activities: What Makes Advice Effecti

on the one hand and the destructive consequences 

of arbitrarily freezing out contrary points of view 

on the other. That’s why an advisory group’s objectivity, fairness, breadth, balance, independence, 

and stature are important to gaining acceptance 

once advice is delivered.

The members of the Hubble servicing study 

and the Great Observatories brainstorming group 

were both notable for the stature and expertise of 

their members. In the former case, the committee 

was led by a chair whose reputation for evenhandedness and demanding standards was exceptional, 

and the committee itself brought extraordinary 

depth of expertise in all the areas that were relevant 

to the topic. Perhaps the most important and lasting impact of the Earth System Science Committee 

was its ability to bring a diverse research community together and to forge a consensus in which 

Earth scientists thought about their fields in a 

new, integrated way. Of course, the success of the 

decadals is very much a consequence of the survey 

committees’ reliance on community leaders who 

undertake a broad outreach effort to build consensus and community ownership of the final product.

Wes Huntress attributed much of the success of 

the two teams that developed the Discovery program of small planetary science missions to the fact 

that the members were able to bring the full range 

of points of view about the concept’s feasibility to 

the debate:

[D]evelopment of the Discovery program 

required a great deal of outside advice from 

not just the science community but from 

the engineering community as well on how 

to craft a program that was not in the experience base, or even the desire, of these communities. An advisory group of engineers with 

members from outside organizations like APL 

and NRL with experience in low cost missions 

had to be brought into the process to counter 

JPL’s flagship-mission proclivities. The science 

advisory group wrestled with their culture of 

vying for space on large missions. The crafting of the Discovery program had to deal with 

a myriad of counter-culture scientific and 

engineering issues.3

Independent outside advice can also play 

another kind of role. Government science officials 

often have to make decisions that are likely to be 

controversial, even though the necessary course is 

clear. But with or without controversy, there’s great 

benefit to be gained from being able to share ownership of a decision with the scientific community. 

Consequently, a key value of advice can be to independently confirm and support a direction that 

officials expect to take. Ed Weiler put the situation 

succinctly when he said, “I like having air cover; if I 

were a General I wouldn’t attack without air cover.”4

There is a rich legacy of SSB reports that assessed 

changes that NASA was considering in order to 

reduce or simplify the scope of planned space missions and where the SSB reviewed and endorsed the 

proposed NASA changes, thereby granting a blessing on behalf of the broad scientific community. 

Sometimes reinforcement can be important.

REALISM AND FEASIBILITY: Among the first questions that government officials ask upon receiving 

advice, even in the most welcoming circumstances, 

are “Do the recommendations define what actions 

are needed?; what will it cost to act on the recommendations and can we afford it?; and are the 

recommended actions within our power and capabilities?” Thus, effective advice has to pass the tests 

of affordability, achievability, and actionability. 

Two of the examples from earlier chapters—the 

senior reviews of operating space missions and the 

Discovery program teams—are notable for the 

3. Huntress e-mail to the author, 1 November 2013.

4. Weiler interview, p. 15.
204 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

fact that they both explicitly address ways to solve 

a problem by reducing costs. The senior reviews 

(see chapter 10) start with NASA guidelines for 

expected budget ceilings or allocations, which 

are invariably constrained, for a suite of missions, 

and then they are charged to recommend steps or 

options to make the overall program fit within 

those constraints. The Discovery advisory group 

experience provides an interesting contrast to the 

Solar System Exploration Committee (SSEC) that 

tackled affordability issues a decade earlier. The 

SSEC temporarily arrested the nearly disastrous 

free-fall of the planetary science program by recommending two new mission classes—Planetary 

Observers and Mariner Mark II. However, neither 

scheme proved to be feasible or affordable in practice, and they both went away shortly after initial 

attempts to pursue them. Discovery, on the other 

hand, proved to be a continuing success because of 

its affordability and associated scientific and management strengths.

The Great Observatories brainstorming group 

was a straightforward example of realism and feasibility. Pellerin asked his advisors to articulate a 

scientific basis for integrating four astronomical 

spacecraft into a single unifying framework, and 

they did so ably and at no added cost to the program. Of course, it helped that Pellerin already had 

a workable vision. 

The decadal surveys are an interesting, and 

so far unresolved, on-the-one-hand-on-the-otherhand example here. First, each of the surveys issued 

in 2011 and 2012 included some version of decision rules that advised what to do if unforeseen 

budget, programmatic, or scientific developments 

interfered with agencies’ ability to implement the 

recommended priorities. They also often included 

“tripwires” that described when an agency or the 

community should reassess priorities in the event 

that programs ran over their expected budgets or 

schedules in a way that would impact the health 

of the rest of the program. These aspects of the 

surveys were introduced in response to experiences 

with implementation of prior survey priorities, and 

the new measures were viewed as being realistic 

and responsive to uncertainties about the future. In 

spite of those efforts, the 2011–2012 surveys all ran 

into problems due to mismatches between budget 

scenarios and/or recommended mission cost estimates that were out of line with emerging budget 

and project realities. Consequently, some of the 

newer decadals almost immediately found themselves up against a wall with respect to the utility of 

the decision rules and tripwires.

A classic case of scientific advisory committees 

losing touch with reality relates to recommendations to reorganize the government. After considering feasible solutions, or perhaps failing to focus 

on feasible solutions first, many committees lunge 

for the idea of recommending a reorganization and 

reassignment of responsibilities within or across 

government agencies as their preferred solution. 

Such recommendations rarely, if ever, succeed. The 

1985 Space Applications Board report that recommended moving NOAA out of the Department of 

Commerce (see chapter 2) comes to mind. Advisors 

who are technical experts usually understand the 

complexities of technical issues, but perhaps they 

have trouble appreciating that obstacles posed by 

established bureaucracies can be even more formidable and beyond the advisors’ reach.

The 2001 study on NASA-NSF astronomy 

programs (see chapter 13) provides an interesting example of a sort. After discovering that the 

two senior physics and astronomy officials in the 

two agencies never talked, the committee recommended that the agencies form a coordinating committee for cross-agency programs. Congress put the 

recommendation into law, and the duly appointed 

FACA committee continues to operate today in 

spite of growing uncertainty about its utility and 

value. Aside from recommending that NASA’s and 

NSF’s astronomy programs not be merged (which 

was certainly a critically important conclusion), the 

report had little other impact.
Chapter 17 • Assessing the Impacts of Advisory Activities: What Makes Advice Effecti

CONCISENESS: The appropriate length of an advisory report and the amount of detail that is needed 

to back up advisors’ recommendations can be 

complicated, but the bottom line is almost always 

“Keep it crisp, concise, and to the point.” Senior 

agency officials at NASA and OMB and congressional staffers have generally argued that the most 

useful reports are short, focused, and prompt. Such 

pieces of advice only include as much data and 

elaboration as is needed to make the case, and no 

more. Senior officials don’t have time to read long 

documents, and furthermore, they often don’t have 

time to wait for an answer—or so the story goes. 

Let’s look at a few examples of conciseness 

before getting to the exceptions. The letter reports 

that were prepared by the SSB and its standing 

committees before 2007 were usually only a few 

pages long, and they rarely ran over 20 pages. They 

seldom required discussion of data or analytical 

efforts to support their conclusions; rather, they 

often pointed to prior work by the same advisory 

bodies to underpin the conclusions. The Hornig 

committee report on Institutional Arrangements 

for the Space Telescope was loaded with quite specific points about the rationale, roles, and structure 

of an institute, but the authors covered it all in just 

30 pages plus a few appendices. Tom Young’s Mars 

Program Independent Assessment Team distilled 

their findings down to a 13-page narrative summary and a set of 65 incisive briefing charts. 

Under Charles Bolden’s tenure as NASA 

Administrator, the NAC’s standing committees 

followed a prescribed format to forward advice to 

the NAC. Each recommendation from the committee to the Council included a brief statement 

of the recommendation, a paragraph summary of 

the major reasons for the recommendation, and 

a similar summary of what the committee saw as 

the potential consequences of no action on the 

recommendation. If the NAC concurred, the recommendations were sent to the Administrator 

with the same information as in the committee’s 

report. NASA provided a brief response back to 

the Council for each recommendation sent to 

the Agency. 

The Mars rock activity did not include a formal 

report at all. Instead the group of experts that was 

assembled for the task developed a simple, but 

handsome, briefing package to advise the White 

House about the implications of putative evidence 

of relic life on Mars. 

So when might brevity not be a virtue? When a 

subject is particularly complex or far-reaching, there 

are clear reasons, indeed there may be compelling 

needs, for the advice to be accompanied by more 

detail than can be shoehorned into a brief report. 

Sometimes detail is necessary to provide an evidentiary basis or in-depth analysis or simply to outline 

the background for conclusions in adequate detail. 

There are also occasions when an advisory report is 

written for multiple audiences, and in those cases 

the level of appropriate detail may differ from one 

audience sector to another. This is usually the case 

for decadal surveys and other major scientific discussions where the advisory report is intended to be 

read and appreciated both by students and members of the scientific community, who will want 

substantial scientific detail, and also by program 

officials and policy decision makers, who will want 

to get to the bottom-line advice. In these cases, the 

structure of the advisory report becomes especially 

important.

The greatest pressure is on the decadal surveys, 

which need to be sufficiently clear and concise in 

making recommendations about program priorities so that OMB budget analysts and congressional staffers can turn to the core recommendations 

for priorities and implementation decision rules. 

Nevertheless, the reports need to simultaneously 

develop the scientific and technological basis for 

those conclusions so that members of the scientific 

community understand how their survey committee colleagues reached those conclusions and so 

that scientists can understand how to link proposals for future space missions to the scientific goals 

outlined in the surveys. Of course, the same depth 
206 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

is important to anyone who wishes to be able to 

explain it clearly to others. 

The authors of the decadals have employed 

similar approaches to respond to this need for 

multitasking reports. The 2007 Earth science and 

applications decadal survey report ran to more 

than 380 pages, but the text was divided into three 

parts, which successively presented an integrated 

strategy, followed by a discussion of recommended 

missions, and then the collected reports of the survey’s individual study panels. The 2010 astronomy 

and astrophysics survey report, at roughly 260 

pages, may have looked lean and mean, but it was 

accompanied by a roughly 500-page collection of 

focused panel reports. The 2011 survey report on 

solar system exploration approached the challenge 

by providing both a summary of the whole report 

and a briefer executive summary, all followed by a 

full report of nearly 300 pages. The 2013 report 

by the solar and space physics survey committee 

approached the problem via a report of somewhat 

more than 320 pages that was divided into a report 

by the steering committee, with all the priority 

details, and then a separate part 2 with the reports 

of the disciplinary panels. 

Two other examples are interesting. The 

Earth System Science Committee, under Francis 

Bretherton, took its time to complete its work—five 

years in fact. But the committee didn’t make the 

world wait for its final report. Instead, it first prepared a very succinct summary of the emerging 

Earth systems science concept that was basically a 

brochure called an “Overview.”5 It then followed 

later with a document of about 30 pages—called 

“A Preview”—that was more or less the equivalent 

of an extended executive summary. Finally, the full 

report—“A Closer View”—appeared.6 The ESSC 

was working to bring along the relevant scientific 

communities, and so taking some time to develop 

and articulate the arguments in depth was probably a good strategy.

The Hubble servicing report, which Lanzerotti’s 

committee prepared in only about six months, is 

an example of a different sort. The committee had 

the daunting task of analyzing all the dimensions 

of the problem—value of Hubble, projected lifetime of Hubble, maturity and outlook for robotic 

servicing, outlook for Space Shuttle performance, 

and absolute and comparative risks—and giving 

NASA and the Congress a timely assessment. The 

committee’s report did so in a document of only 

about 110 pages plus appendices. The study was a 

heroic effort, both in scope and turnaround time, 

and went well beyond what the NRC can ordinarily accomplish.

The important point here for all the examples of 

longer advisory reports is not that, given the challenge, scientific advisory committees can filibuster 

ad nauseam. No one disputes that. Rather, there are 

times when deeper discussion can be essential, and 

substantive elaboration counts. When that happens, volunteer advisors can and often do commit 

extraordinary time and effort to that job. This 

is also a particularly notable distinction between 

most NASA FACA committees and committees 

established via the NRC. The former usually don’t 

have the time or resources to dig into topics with 

the same depth as the NRC committees, albeit at 

the expense of a longer NRC gestation time.

CONSISTENCY: Collections of celebrated quotations on the subject of consistency offer many 

witty and sometimes wise aphorisms, both lauding but often belittling the attribute. So what are 

advisors to make of consistency? Well, for starters, 

the National Academies make a big deal of consistency. While there may be no formal policy, there 

is an expectation that new advice rendered by an 

5. Earth System Science Committee, Earth System Science: Overview, a Program for Global Change (NASA Advisory Council, 

NASA, Washington, DC, May 1986). 

6. Earth System Science Committee, Earth System Science: A Closer View (NASA Advisory Council, NASA, Washington, DC, 

January 1988).
Chapter 17 • Assessing the Impacts of Advisory Activities: What Makes Advice Effecti

Academy advisory committee will be consistent 

(or at least not inconsistent) with prior Academies 

advice on the same subject. This shouldn’t be too 

hard in general; if a committee gets things right 

the first time, then a later properly reasoned study 

should get the same answer. NRC committees 

often cite prior advice in the course of justifying 

conclusions in a new study. This kind of consistency can have a substantial impact on the credibility of the advice when an audience can see an 

historical chain of data and reasoning on which 

new conclusions are drawn. Certainly, the converse situation—advice that changes direction or 

appears to be unstable—will not instill confidence 

that today’s position won’t change again tomorrow. 

So as a general rule, consistency in advice can be 

a virtue.

But the environment in which advice is developed and offered isn’t static. To the contrary, new 

scientific or technological developments can lead to 

compelling new scientific opportunities and possibly 

new priorities. Likewise, the political and programmatic environment can change and thereby change 

the boundary conditions that define what is practical and feasible and what is not. For example, a large 

investment in a project to pursue a high-priority 

scientific question may become so costly in a newly 

constrained budget environment that it is either no 

longer affordable at all or not affordable without 

doing significant damage to the rest of the scientific 

program. This is basically the situation in which 

the organizers of decadal surveys found themselves in the 2010s, and the debate about how to 

marry consistency and pragmatism became serious. 

For instance, should future midterm assessments 

between decadal surveys avoid any tinkering with 

priorities recommended by the surveys and accept 

them as gospel? Should new decadal surveys accept 

priority missions and projects from the prior survey 

as gospel or should they all be fair game for revision?

Certain key aspects of the decadal surveys and 

their predecessors have been highly consistent from 

one version to the next. For example, the major 

scientific goals articulated by the authors of SSB 

discipline-oriented science strategy reports in solar 

system exploration and in solar and space physics that were issued in the decades before decadal 

surveys were introduced in those areas comprise a 

reasonably consistent train of scientific priorities. 

Fundamentally all NRC science strategy reports 

going back to the beginning and all parallel advisory documents from NASA’s internal committees 

have emphasized a handful of critical issues concerning the health and robustness of the space sciences. These recurring themes have included the 

need for a balanced portfolio of small, mid-sized, 

and large missions; balance between investments 

in missions and facilities and in basic research 

and enabling technology; vigorous flight rates 

that reduce gaps between missions; and development of the technical workforce to sustain a strong 

space research program. Thus, one can readily find 

threads of consistency in advisory history even 

while practical realities and new scientific discoveries have caused priorities and approaches to evolve 

and adapt over time.

Execution and Follow-Up

The fourth key factor in influencing the effectiveness of advice—after considering audience interest 

and the utility and the content of the advice—

relates to the process itself. “How was the advice 

developed and delivered; was the process open and 

consultative; did it emerge from serious deliberation 

and did it represent a clear consensus; and was it 

communicated appropriately?” These aspects of the 

execution of the advisory process all depend heavily 

on having an established process and a strong chair 

or other leader of the group of advisors.

Both NASA’s own committees and the 

National Academies have processes that have 

been established over decades, as earlier chapters 

have explained. The NASA process follows FACA 

requirements, which include providing for balanced advisory group composition, open meetings 
208 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

and deliberations, and a committee structure that 

is established or reaffirmed every few years by the 

NASA Administrator. In the case of the NASA 

senior reviews, the panel participants, who are 

drawn from the relevant scientific communities 

and who have relevant breadth of expertise, work 

from explicit NASA guidelines about the envelope 

in which the budgets for operating missions must 

fit. The NRC process follows the dictates of FACA 

section 15, as interpreted by the NRC, including a 

rigorous committee member appointment process 

that follows FACA and institutional guidelines 

and a rigorous peer review process for its advisory 

reports. The NRC process stands in contrast to 

NASA’s own for its internal committees, not only 

because it may be more rigorous but also because it 

is usually, and significantly, more time-consuming 

and slower to deliver answers. The most successful advisory products also have had systematic 

approaches for gathering data, information, and 

outside points of view. 

The Hubble Space Telescope servicing committee is a particular example of where the commitment of the committee members had a key impact. 

Indeed, the importance of the topic was critical to 

being able to recruit such a distinguished study 

committee. In describing the study to the SSB at 

its March 2004 meeting, SSB chair Len Fisk told 

the Board that this would “be a defining moment 

for the current Board” and that they needed committee members who would have “the highest level 

of stature and expertise” and who would “play it 

straight.”7 Here the SSB and the NRC succeeded.

Strong chairs have been crucial to many 

important advisory activities, and indeed, most 

of the particularly successful advisory studies 

highlighted earlier benefited from having strong 

chairs at the helm. The best chairs have been able 

to command respect and to lead their colleagues 

to consensus through an approach that has been 

accepted for its fairness, rigor, and realism. The 

best chairs also have used an array of tools, including writing op-ed columns and arranging private 

meetings with members of Congress, to get their 

message out about the scientific community’s views 

and advice. One particularly active past chair has 

referred (positively) to these tools as opportunities 

for “misbehaving,” but so long as the chair respects 

the integrity of the advisory institution and knows 

where to draw a line, a chair who isn’t afraid to push 

the envelope can have an extraordinary impact. 

The business of chairing an advisory activity can 

be time-consuming, especially in NRC studies, 

and so it requires genuine commitment. 

Marcia Smith emphasized the singular importance of a chair for an NRC study as follows:

[T]he key to almost everything is the chair of 

the committee. And if you have a chair who 

is really widely respected to begin with, the 

committee members are going to defer to that 

person and that person is going to know how 

to get a decent consensus and, yet, still have 

strongly worded recommendations. So I think 

the chair of the committee has a lot of influence on what actually comes out even through 

the review process.8

Tom Young, who himself has earned an 

extraordinary reputation as a leader of important 

advisory studies, recalled the impact of one legendary member of the SSB in the 1970s, Caltech 

geophysicist Jerry Wasserburg, who led the Board’s 

Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration. 

Young felt that the committee’s influence was 

largely a consequence of the fact that Wasserburg 

stayed engaged with NASA leadership, especially 

the Administrator.9

7. Alexander document file from 16 March 2004 SSB meeting.

8. M. Smith interview, p. 20.

9. Young interview, p. 1.
Chapter 17 • Assessing the Impacts of Advisory Activities: What Makes Advice Effecti

In his 1992 book, The Advisors: Scientists in the 

Policy Process,

10 Bruce Smith makes an important 

point about how the committee chair plays a crucial role in an environment in which high-level 

policy makers often get most of their input orally:

The chairman’s role is so critical in part 

because of the almost exclusively oral tradition that operates in the higher reaches of the 

federal government. Policy makers in general 

read almost nothing beyond the short summaries and briefing papers prepared by staff. 

They derive their impression of the advisor’s 

message from what the chairman tells them or 

from oral updates of the panel’s progress given 

them by staff.... Thus the personal interaction 

between the official and the advisors—most 

commonly the chairman of the formal committee—remains the critical variable. 

This may be a bit of an overstatement as far as 

NASA science advice is concerned, because such 

advice is often directed to more than a single official. Nevertheless, the communications impact of 

the committee chair remains especially important.

Finally, our list of key success factors must 

include follow-up. An advisory group’s work is 

rarely completed just by tossing its advice over to 

a government official and declaring success. The 

advisory ecosystem is sufficiently complex and 

multifaceted that more often than not there are 

multiple audiences—not only agency program 

managers and senior officials but also other executive branch staff members, members and staff from 

Congress, and the research community—that 

have a stake in the implications and implementation of the advice. Consequently, the most effective 

advisory groups ensure that there are provisions for 

communicating their advice widely. 

Follow-up also can involve longer-term stewardship of the advice. For example, most of the 

members of Pellerin’s Great Observatory brainstorming group stayed engaged when the group 

morphed into the Astrophysics Council, and 

members of Bretherton’s Earth System Science 

Committee built momentum throughout the scientific community for the committee’s new way of 

looking at the Earth sciences. In what has been typical for many independent advisory studies, Tom 

Young testified at a congressional hearing about 

the results of his team’s Mars program assessment, 

and the chair and several members of the Hubble 

Space Telescope servicing committee gave extensive 

congressional briefings about their findings. The 

chair of the 1991 decadal survey for astronomy and 

astrophysics, John Bahcall, took his job so seriously 

that he famously committed himself to watch after 

the survey’s recommendations for the full decade 

following its completion. In contrast, advice that 

has been shipped quietly to “current occupant” has 

rarely had any impact.

Does Advice That Fails to Meet 

These Tests Sometimes Still Have 

an Impact?

As chapter 16 illustrated, there are times when the 

immediate recipient of advice may not welcome 

it or even want it at all, but developing advice on 

the subject at hand may be important and impactful nonetheless. The 2005 report “Assessment of 

Options for Extending the Life of the Hubble Space 

Telescope” and the 2006 report “An Assessment of 

Balance in NASA’s Science Programs” are relevant 

examples of this point. In the case of the former, 

the NASA Administrator had already decided on 

a course for Hubble that would not use the Space 

Shuttle, but pressure from Senator Mikulski gave 

the Agency no choice but to seek a wider independent assessment. The SSB’s Balance report 

made recommendations that would be hard, if not 

impossible, for mid-level NASA science officials to 

10. Bruce L. R. Smith, The Advisers: Scientists in the Policy Process (The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 1992), ch. 9, p. 190.
210 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

implement on their own. But in this case, the report 

was addressed to a wider audience that included 

Congress; thus, the report helped build a wider 

base of support for remedies to science budget cuts 

that the science office was able to administer in the 

ensuing years.

The second of the four keys to success described 

above emphasized that advice needs some specific 

utility or value, but sometimes there can be longterm value even when there is no specific short-term 

impact. Additionally, sometimes the value of the 

advice can emerge slowly when given a chance. The 

Quarks-with-the-Cosmos report is a case in point 

(see chapter 15). When the report was published in 

2003, it was lauded for its science-first approach, 

but its highlighted space missions never got to the 

head of the queue. Nevertheless, the broad ideas of 

organizing part of NASA’s and DOE’s astrophysics programs around the interfaces between fundamental physics and cosmology struck a chord 

that was embraced in the OSTP Physics of the 

Universe report,11 and that persisted in NASA’s 

Beyond Einstein program, which then morphed 

into the Agency’s Physics of the Cosmos program. 

The Quarks report’s favorite space missions are like 

the character named Not-Dead-Fred early in Act 1 

of the musical Monty Python’s Spamalot—they’re 

not dead yet.

What Leads to Failure?

Besides analyzing the attributes of successful advisory efforts, one can look at whether there have 

been notable aspects of unsuccessful attempts to 

provide advice. The obvious answer is that efforts 

that don’t embrace the success factors above will 

be candidates for failure. But let’s examine a few 

examples in more detail.

LACK OF AN INTERESTED SPONSOR OR 

PATRON: The 1994 Paradox report is an example 

of an advisory study for which there was no government customer or recipient who wanted the advice. 

As chapter 16 explains, the SSB initiated the study 

pertaining to NASA and NSF programs in solar and 

space physics because of concerns voiced by members of that research community about declining 

robustness of the field in spite of apparently healthy 

agency budgets. While many of the study report’s 

recommendations were fundamentally sound, they 

strayed into management and administrative areas 

that NASA officials viewed as being inappropriate 

for the NRC. Thus, the report offered advice that 

NASA didn’t seek or especially want. Furthermore, 

the report struck the same NASA officials as being 

whiny and self-serving. 

SUPERFICIALITY: Advice that lacks substantive 

or actionable recommendations is usually on a 

short path to oblivion. As the discussion above has 

noted, advice recipients want to see a clear plan 

for action and a sense that taking action has the 

potential for a beneficial impact. The SSB’s 1995 

Priorities report was unable to meet those tests 

because the study committee was unable to convince itself or others that the committee’s approach 

to producing viable cross-disciplinary priorities 

was workable. As chapter 16 indicated, the best 

that the committee could do was to reaffirm that 

the general priority-setting criteria that the SESAC 

Crisis report had outlined nearly a decade earlier 

were appropriate but that, alas, the actual task of 

establishing cross-discipline priorities would not be 

easy. To their credit, however, the SSB and its priorities committee were willing to say so and go on 

to other, more tractable issues.

The SSB’s 2005 report on science in the context of the Bush Vision for Space Exploration 

11. Interagency Working Group on the Physics of the Universe, A 21st Century Frontier of Discovery: The Physics of the Universe

(National Science and Technology Council Committee on Science, Executive Office of the President, Washington, DC, February 

2004).
Chapter 17 • Assessing the Impacts of Advisory Activities: What Makes Advice Effecti

(see chapter 16) was notable for its high principles and lack of hard-hitting conclusions. After 

at least one congressional staff member skewered 

the report, the SSB had another chance to try to 

provide sharper guidance. That second at-bat produced the 2006 Balance report, which had a better 

long-term impact.

PREACHY OR PEDANTIC STYLE OR SUBSTANCE: Certainly a good way to handicap even 

sound advice is to deliver it in a fashion that annoys 

the recipient. While neither the Paradox report nor 

the Science in Exploration reports cited above were 

intended to be preachy, they struck some important readers that way. As the discussion above just 

explained, that style and lack of new substance 

helped lead to those reports being largely ignored.

OBSOLESCENCE: Delivering advice after the 

need has passed or when the clock is running out 

on time available to act is a surefire route to irrelevance. This is a problem that is less of a risk for 

NASA’s internal committees, where the interactions between advisors and advisees can be more 

direct and where NASA can exercise more control. 

On the other hand, it has been a persistent threat to 

the effectiveness of NRC advisory activities.12

The SSB’s 2004 report, “Plasma Physics of the 

Local Cosmos,” is a notable example of an advisory report that only marginally survived its long 

gestation period. The study was conceived in 1999 

when the Board’s Committee on Solar and Space 

Physics sought to prepare a report that would discuss and assess the character and state of science 

at the interfaces between space plasma physics and 

related areas of astrophysics and laboratory plasma 

physics. The study was also intended to assess the 

adequacy of resources to support work in these 

areas and to develop programmatic recommendations for the future. After beginning the study and 

even writing a draft report, the study was put on 

hold while the committee helped organize the first 

decadal survey for solar and space physics. After the 

decadal survey was completed in 2003, the report 

that had its roots in 1999 was resurrected, and it 

finally appeared in 2004.13 Because the decadal 

survey report had included resource priority recommendations for the whole program for both NASA 

and NSF, the 2004 report only addressed the scientific aspects of the original charge and included 

no recommendations. Thus, while the report may 

have had value for scientists and students interested 

in plasma physics, its ultimate advisory value was 

modest at best. 

A 1995 Science magazine article14 described the 

NRC’s efforts to cope with government officials’ 

desire for timely advice and prompt responses to 

requests for advisory studies, on the one hand, and 

the often-conflicting demands imposed by the 

institution’s standards for quality and its administrative procedures. The article’s author, Andrew 

Lawler, compared two studies—one that was completed in just seven months and a second, which 

required execution of a new contract with NASA, 

that took 17 months from the time of NASA’s 

request (or 11 months from the time of contract 

award) to report delivery. The latter study (see the 

chapter 16 discussion of the congressionally mandated Future of Space Science study) stretched over 

a two-year span from the time of the Senate request 

for advice.

12. To be realistic, the NRC is not always in full control of factors that affect timeliness. Delays in government contract awards, 

conflicting schedules and priorities of key committee members, inaccessibility of necessary data or information, and even 

departure of government officials who requested a study can seriously impact the timely utility of a report. 

13. Space Studies Board, “Plasma Physics of the Local Cosmos” (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2004).

14. Andrew Lawler, “NRC Pledges Faster Delivery on Reports to Government,” Science, vol. 270, p. 22, 6 October 1995.
212 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

More recently, Marjory Blumenthal, who was 

a long-time NRC board director before becoming 

Associate Provost at Georgetown University, wrote 

about the urgent need for the NRC to become 

more responsive to government demands for timely 

advice. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary 

of the National Academy of Sciences, Blumenthal 

argued that the time had come for the institution 

to become “more nimble.” She added,

As politics become more contentious, policymakers are seeking faster advice, and organizations that offer advice are proliferating. 

Twenty-first-century realities demand that the 

NAS provide expert advice more quickly and 

do a better job at explaining its value.15

Advice versus Advocacy versus 

Special Pleading

It is natural, and for that matter important, for 

someone on the receiving end of advice to ask 

whether the advice is objective and credible. 

Likewise, others who might want to assess the 

advice may well ask whether the advice represents 

the special interests of the advisors or the broader 

scientific and programmatic context of the subject 

of the advice. To put the issue in different words, 

When does advice become advocacy? Is advocacy 

necessarily a bad thing? And when does advocacy 

become special pleading? 

First, almost all advisory studies have an element of advocacy. Former Chief of Staff of the 

House Committee on Science David Goldston 

has pointed out that the space community is such 

a small community that basically everyone has an 

interest in the outcome of the advice that it provides and that even the authors of the decadals 

have an interest in benefiting from the effort.16

No one expects a decadal survey committee to say, 

“This scientific field isn’t worth it; don’t pursue it.” 

Instead, the surveys are organized on the premise 

that they address important scientific areas that 

are worthy of support. Thus, the members of a 

survey committee are, at a basic level, advocates for 

the field. That should be accepted as given when 

viewed in the context of the breadth of the subject about which they are charged to advise. There 

have been exceptions that we’ll get to shortly, but 

in general, advocacy isn’t necessarily a bad thing in 

and of itself. Special pleading, on the other hand, 

can occur when its proposers take a position so 

narrowly that objectivity is lost. One can argue 

that when advocacy becomes special pleading, it 

is no longer credible as advice. That should be a 

no-brainer.

Two characteristics help distinguish the former 

from the latter. The first relates to the breadth of 

the topic of the advice (and of the advisors) and the 

diversity of possible advisory conclusions that could 

be presented. For example, all decadal surveys span 

a broad range of sub-disciplines and topics within 

their particular scientific field. Astronomers weigh 

the importance of studying stars, novae, dust, galaxies, and many other kinds of cosmic bodies, and 

they consider a great range of both ground-based 

and space-borne tools to conduct their studies. 

Solar system exploration survey committees consider competing arguments for research on rocky 

planets in the inner solar system; icy gas giants 

in the outer solar system; and a host of primitive 

bodies and material such as comets, moons, asteroids, and interplanetary debris. Those committees 

also assess the merits of focusing the research from 

differing perspectives such as geology, geophysics, atmospheric science, or plasma physics. The 

surveys for solar and space physics and for Earth 

science have a similarly daunting range of perspectives and areas of concentration to consider. In 

15. Marjory S. Blumenthal, “Move with the times,” Nature, vol. 494, p. 423, 28 February 2013.

16. Goldston interview.
Chapter 17 • Assessing the Impacts of Advisory Activities: What Makes Advice Effecti

each case, the survey committees bring together a 

diverse group of experts who can collectively discuss and debate all of the areas under the survey’s 

purview. Individual committee members might be 

major movers and shakers in just one aspect of the 

field, but as a group, the participants create a very 

broad and deep assessment of the whole field. That 

assessment usually presents an eloquent advocacy 

document for the field, but the process also protects 

the results from becoming narrowly self-serving for 

just one point of view or idea for the future direction of the field. In other words, there are enough 

opportunities for conflicting opinions within the 

membership of the group to prevent special pleading to prevail. 

Ed Weiler, like most of those who came before 

him and after him as heads of NASA’s science program, took the same approach in dealing with his 

principal NASA FACA science advisory committee:

As individuals they might not be independent, 

but if you select them carefully as a group they 

would be. You would ensure that you had the 

advocate for Mars, advocate for Europa, advocate for Hubble, advocate for JWST, advocate 

for Solar Probe, etc. Then you had enough 

people on there who had really bad conflicts of 

interest, but the very nature of their conflict of 

interest was good because it meant they could 

give advice in other areas where you know it 

wasn’t conflicted, if that makes any sense. If 

everybody has a conflict, nobody has conflict; 

that’s another way of looking at it. And by the 

way I demanded that we have a big enough 

group—I always wanted a minimum of 12 

and a maximum of 15.17

Another example of the power of breadth 

is the Hubble Space Telescope servicing study. 

This chapter and prior chapters have taken note 

of the broad range of expertise that was available 

on Lanzerotti’s committee, with several experts 

each in ground-based and space astronomy, Space 

Shuttle and Hubble Telescope engineering and 

operations, robotics technology, and risk assessment. Consequently, the committee members were 

in a position to challenge one another and not let 

one point of view prevail. The Hubble servicing 

study is also the exception where advocacy was not 

a given. We’ll return to this in a moment, but the 

point is that the committee’s charge allowed for a 

possible conclusion to be “Hubble isn’t worth it; 

don’t fix it.” They were not charged to be advocates 

for Hubble unless that conclusion emerged from 

their analysis.

The second important distinction between 

objective advice and special pleading relates to 

making choices. When advisors weigh alternatives, assess competing positions, and rank their 

recommendations, then it becomes very hard to 

be persuasive about a single topic in the absence 

of a larger context. Our poster children of effective advice—the decadals—meet this distinction by debating and recommending explicit 

priorities after weighing a large menu of competing choices. 

The 2012 decadal survey for solar and space 

physics18 provides an interesting extreme example of making choices. Most surveys provide lots 

of attention, and burn a lot of energy, considering 

recommended investments for future spaceflight 

missions. The mission priorities often get frontpage attention while smaller investment lines for 

supporting activities get their blessings after one 

reads farther into the document, on the inside 

pages, so to speak. Instead, the 2012 space physics 

survey gave its highest priority to new investments 

for a package of low-cost augmentations to the base 

17. Weiler interview, p. 19.

18. Space Studies Board, Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society (National Research Council, The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2013).
214 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

program of research and data analysis grants, smallscale flight activities, and technology development. 

The committee then recommended pursuing the 

survey’s other priorities only after the priority for 

small, low-cost activities could be implemented. 

That represented a real choice.

Returning to the example of the Hornig Space 

Telescope Science Institute study, the committee’s 

report analyzed a number of options, including 

the need for a standalone science institute, relationships to NASA, siting, governance, roles, 

staffing, and facilities. The committee not only 

made a choice but also outlined specific aspects 

of how they preferred that the choice be adopted. 

Likewise, the Hubble servicing committee had to 

make real choices in answering questions about 

whether Hubble was worth saving, whether robotic 

servicing was technologically feasible, what were 

the risks of servicing Hubble via the Space Shuttle, 

and whether the risks were acceptable. 

Finally, there have been efforts that have skirted 

the fuzzy line between objectivity and self-interest. 

The Balance report of 2006 (see chapter 16) was 

clearly a report in which the SSB objected to cuts 

in NASA’s space research funding. It avoided the 

self-interest penalty by emphasizing a choice that 

NASA could make—and had failed to make—

between supporting spaceflight missions in a 

time of austerity versus sustaining the intellectual 

and manpower base that would be needed when 

times improved via supporting the basic research 

and analysis program. The 1995 SSB Priorities 

report avoided the special-pleading tag, because 

it acknowledged that the study committee could 

not agree on how to make real choices, thereby 

accepting the fact that choices are not always 

straightforward. The Paradox report earned a special-pleading reputation at NASA, because it was 

unable to convincingly recommend choices that 

should be made.

The discussions above of independence, timeliness versus obsolescence, and so forth touch on 

some significant differences between advice from 

NASA’s internal committees and advice from the 

National Academies. How important are those distinctions, and will they still matter? The next chapter explores the distinctions between the two sets of 

advisory bodies in more detail. 
215

CHAPTER 18

Assessing the Differences between Internal and 

External Committees

As one looks across NASA’s history, one observes 

that the roles and the operating styles of the 

Agency’s internal and external advisory bodies have 

been distinctly different in some ways but alike in 

others. While their roles have remained relatively 

unchanged, their ways of doing business have 

evolved over time. In addition to NASA’s formally 

recognized bodies, there have been other, more 

informal, sources of advisory input (and pressure) 

that one should not ignore. This chapter explores 

many of those distinctions.

Principal Differences between 

Internal and External Advisory 

Bodies

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: One of the earliest and most enduring distinctions relates to where 

the locus of roles and responsibilities rests for the 

two advisory entities. Almost from the very beginning, NASA officials made it clear that they would 

rely on Academy bodies for long-term, strategic 

advice and would turn to the Agency’s own committees for advice on short-term, tactical issues. 

NASA made this expectation clear in its tasking 

letter to the SSB in 1960 (see chapter 1), saying that 

the Board would be expected to provide “thoughts, 

ideas, and recommendations...on the broad overall objectives” and that “guiding principles are 

needed, rather than a detailed program formulation.”1

 Newell reaffirmed the division of labor in 

his 1973 memo, in which he indicated that NASA’s 

Space Program Advisory Council was expected to 

“go more in depth than the Space Science Board on 

matters of programing and NASA in-house planning and studies.”2

NASA science Associate Administrator John 

Grunsfeld described the distinction between 

NASA and NRC committee advice, circa 2014, as 

being the difference between near-real-time, informal, tactical feedback for the former; of the latter, 

he said:

for strategic advice I think of longer-term 

deliberation, of much broader engagement of 

the community, and some time for fermentation, and that’s what the National Research 

Council Space Studies Board does for us.... 

[W]ith the NASA Advisory Council we ask 

questions that are more time-critical and 

for which they can use the various analysis 

groups.... [W]e want the subcommittees of 

1. Quoted in John E. Naugle, First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, NASA History 

Division, Washington, DC, 1991), ch. 5, p. 72.

2. Homer E. Newell, “NASA Advisory Structure,” memo for the record, 30 May 1973, Historical Reference Collection folder 17481, 

History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
216 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

the NASA Advisory Council and the Science 

Committee to provide the kind of view that 

addresses this inside-the-beltway problem.... 

We can talk to them and say “Hey, here is what 

we are doing and here is what we are thinking” 

and get the perspective from folks who can just 

answer off the cuff and observe things that we 

don’t observe—sort of the principle of executive coach.... So they develop observations, 

findings, in some case recommendations that 

are actionable immediately in principle.3

Certainly, NASA’s committees also have offered 

long-term, strategic advice, especially in the early 

decades, and the NRC has delved into more tactical issues. The NASA Astronomy Missions Board’s 

1969 Long-Range Program in Space Astronomy 

report4 is a prime example of the former (see chapter 

3). However, science strategies have been the mainstay of the SSB and its committees, starting with a 

continuing series of reports in the 1960s (see chapter 2 for examples) that recommended long-range 

scientific priorities. Those advisory studies evolved 

into the decadal survey reports of the 2000s and 

beyond. But there are also plenty of NRC reports 

that provide specific advice on more tactical or 

operational issues—for example, on the downsizing of spaceflight mission science instrument payloads, or on specific standards and protocols for 

planetary protection, or on Space Shuttle versus 

robotic servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope.5

When NASA has turned to SSB committees for 

more tactical advice, there usually has been a clear 

need for either deep expertise, or an extra degree of 

independence, or a connection of the tactical perspective to particular strategic advice embodied in 

prior SSB studies. 

One could make an argument that the NRC’s 

strategic advice serves policy makers—officials 

who are thinking about the long view—while 

NASA’s committees serve managers—officials 

who are dealing with the alligators at their ankles 

rather than planning how to drain the swamp. 

It’s the latter advice that often demands the most 

attention inside NASA on a day-to-day basis, 

because the managers cannot avoid pressing nearterm issues and survive. NASA Advisory Council 

chair and former decadal survey chair Steven 

Squyres described the distinction by saying that 

NRC committees are “the voice of science for the 

nation”6 and, therefore, speak to the White House 

and Congress as well as NASA, but that NASA is 

the NAC’s sole customer. Alan Stern, who served 

as science Associate Administrator from 2007 to 

2008, saw this reflected in differences in impact 

inside NASA:

[I]t’s just my impression that with the exception of the decadal survey the NASA committees were generally more effective in producing 

results than the NRC committees. By results, 

I mean changes in behavior or outcomes as a 

result of what the committee did in a directly 

traceable way. The NRC committees are generally providing more analytically based academic 

advice as opposed to operational policy advice.7

3. Grunsfeld interview.

4. “A Long-range Program in Space Astronomy, Position Paper of the Astronomy Missions Board,” NASA, edited by Robert O. 

Boyle, Harvard College Observatory, July 1969, NASA SP-213, reproduced in Logsdon, John M., ed., with Amy Paige Snyder, 

Roger D. Launius, Stephen J. Garber, and Regan Anne Newport. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the 

U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume V, Exploring the Cosmos (NASA SP-4407, NASA History Division, 2001), p. 602.

5. The subject of planetary protection has strategic dimensions as well when one examines the fundamental purpose of planetary 

protection or how relevant policy is established. However, the emphasis of most past studies has been on implementation rather 

than on motivating principles and policy.

6. Squyres interview.

7. Stern interview, p. 4.
Chapter 18 • Assessing the Differences between Internal and External Committe

RELATIONSHIPS: NASA’s relationships with its 

own committees and NRC committees have always 

been different, and the differences have affected 

both the way the two advisory entities have operated and how their products have been viewed by 

the outside world. 

The SSB had considerable freedom to define 

the tasks of its self-initiated studies until NASA 

required prior approval for all new SSB tasks 

beginning in the 2000s. More generally, however, 

the tasking for NRC studies has reflected mutual 

agreement between NASA and the NRC, which 

has allowed the NRC complete independence to 

select and appoint study committee members. On 

the other hand, NASA officials select the members 

of internal advisory bodies and define their tasks.

Once an advisory activity is under way, the 

degree of independence is also different for NASA 

committees and NRC committees. FACA regulations require a NASA official to sit in on all of 

its FACA committee meetings and deliberations. 

That official has authority to “call, attend, and 

adjourn committee meetings [and] approve agendas.”8

 Thus, NASA officials remain continuously 

informed about the committee’s progress. In contrast, NRC committees expect to operate entirely 

independently of NASA once a formal advisory 

study has begun, and the Agency has no control of 

or insight into the committee’s deliberations outside of what the general public sees during FACAmandated, open committee meetings until the 

study is completed. To be clear, the firewall applies 

to access by NASA and the public to internal NRC 

committee discussions as a committee debates 

conclusions in a formal advisory study. General 

information-gathering meetings and informal discussions by standing boards and committees are 

always open.

While the extent of NASA’s control over its 

own committees vis-à-vis NRC committees affects 

their relative independence, the difference in how 

FACA regulations dictate the openness of committee deliberations can impact the directness and 

candor of the advice the advisory bodies deliver. 

When NRC committees deliberate to reach consensus, they are permitted to conduct their discussions in closed sessions. However, all NASA FACA 

committee discussions and deliberations must be 

conducted in sessions that are open to the public. 

For the NASA committees, this can lead to the 

watering down of a committee’s advice that Marcia 

Smith saw in the operations of the NASA Advisory 

Council (see chapter 12).

NASA officials’ occasional misunderstandings 

of this difference in operating independence have 

led to some interesting experiences. A prime example was the case described in chapter 2 when NASA 

Administrator Fletcher appealed to NAS President 

Philip Handler to not appoint Richard Goody 

as SSB chair and Handler completely ignored 

Fletcher’s entreaty.

NASA officials’ also may have misread the independence of Academy studies during the run-up to 

the Lanzerotti committee’s study on options for 

extending the life of the Hubble Space Telescope. 

At about the same time that the committee was 

being organized, SSB Chair Len Fisk had gone to 

a NASA Advisory Council meeting in Houston, 

and he had asked the Chief of Staff to NASA 

Administrator O’Keefe if he could hitch a ride 

back to Washington on the Administrator’s plane 

after the meeting. Fisk saw that as an opportunity 

to meet O’Keefe and strike up a relationship. Let 

Fisk pick up the story here:

[O’Keefe] comes back, and he welcomes me 

with open arms.... And it turns out O’Keefe 

wants to convince me that he is right about 

Hubble and the servicing...his idea was that 

he had to convince me that he was entirely 

8. NASA Advisory Council Charter, approved by NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr., 21 October 2015, available at http://

www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nac_charter_renewal_2015_tagged.pdf.
218 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

correct and so on. I listened patiently and 

sipped my scotch all the way home.9

Fisk never relayed the conversation to Lanzerotti, 

and aside from helping recruit committee members, Fisk let the committee do its own thing.

Another instructive example of the relative 

independence of NASA and NRC committees 

comes from the operation of the NASA Advisory 

Council when Michael Griffin was Administrator. 

Chapter 12 recounted the abrupt retirement of 

three scientist-members of the NAC in 2006 when 

they ran crossways with Griffin and the NAC 

Chair Jack Schmitt. The scientists had been vocal 

about the deleterious impacts of cuts to NASA’s science program budgets, and that line of advice was 

not welcome at the highest levels of NASA.10 The 

members of the NAC serve at the pleasure of the 

Administrator, and so Griffin was within his rights 

to remove the unwelcome members. However, the 

episode exacerbated strains between NASA and the 

scientific community and undermined the credibility of the NAC process. 

By way of contrast, there is a formal process for 

incorporating minority positions in NRC advisory 

reports. Study committee chairs and staff members 

work hard to help a committee reach consensus—

maybe occasionally at the cost of watering down 

some conclusions—but when agreement becomes 

impossible, the contrary views are included. 

The flip side of independence is accessibility. 

NASA committees are generally more accessible 

to NASA officials, and they offer more options 

for interactions. An especially notable example 

from the distant past was NASA’s Management 

Operations Groups (MOWGs, see chapter 4), 

which were exempt from FACA and which worked 

intimately with NASA managers and program 

scientists. Ed Weiler recalled that “they [were] 

almost part of the staff. I mean your MOWG 

chair was like your best buddy.” Charlie Pellerin 

gave the system his highest praise, saying, “I don’t 

think there’s any system anywhere to get as close 

to this aspect of customers in any business I’ve 

ever seen.”11 Lamentably, MOWGs no longer exist 

at NASA, and the analysis groups that succeeded 

them are not permitted to give formal consensus advice. Nevertheless, Grunsfeld’s comments 

quoted above illustrate the close, informal relationships that NASA still expects with its internal 

committees.

Just to muddle the picture a bit, there are 

instances where NASA officials and NRC committees have been able to straddle the line between 

independence and accessibility, albeit in the now 

distant past. Charlie Pellerin recalled how he 

was able to work closely with his Academy advisors, especially the decadal survey committee, in 

the 1980s: 

By the way, I think things worked very differently for me than the way they work today. I 

was hand-in-glove with all these things that the 

Academy was doing. We talked to each other 

all the time about what was going on. Today 

it seems that people—division directors—are 

more likely to go off and let these boards just 

complete. But for everything of that nature, 

I liked working with the outside team all 

along.... And so [decadal survey committee 

chair] George Field would consult with me on 

everything, because what they understood was 

that they need to make recommendations that 

were programmatically achievable.... I had 

9. Fisk interview, p. 17.

10. See David Kastenbaum, “Budget Cuts Trigger NASA Resignations” (National Public Radio, All Things Considered, transcript, 

18 August 2006), available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5671708; Andrew Lawler, “NASA Chief Blasts 

Advisors” (Science Magazine, 22 August 2006), available at http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2006/08/nasa-chief-blasts-advisors.

11. Weiler (p. 18) and Pellerin (p. 5) interviews, respectively.
Chapter 18 • Assessing the Differences between Internal and External Committe

very, very close dialogue with the leadership in 

our community.12

Former science Associate Administrator Al 

Diaz offered an important alternative way of looking at the differences between NASA’s committees 

and NRC committees, and this is a key point. He 

described the relationships not in terms of how 

NASA viewed them but from the perspective of 

how the two sets of advisory bodies appear to view 

the relationships. Diaz recalled that the two different perspectives also led to different levels of stress 

or cohesion when he was leading the program:

This goes back to this question about whose 

resources are they that NASA is using to do 

science missions. I think there was a very clear 

belief in the NRC that these are resources that 

are being entrusted to NASA to benefit the 

scientific community. The MOWGs and the 

[NASA] advisory committees were involved in 

advising NASA on how to conduct what were 

clearly NASA missions. And as a consequence 

I think there was a much better working relationship between the internal advisory committees and NASA itself.13

Finally, it’s fair to ask whether any advisory 

relationships have been truly independent or 

whether there is always an element of allegiance or 

dependence that influences advisory conclusions. 

Certainly, advisors’ recommendations often have 

aligned with NASA’s preferences. For example, 

the SSB’s 1975 endorsement of the Large Space 

Telescope14 and the astronomy and astrophysics 

decadal survey endorsements of an x-ray observatory in 198215 and an infrared observatory in 199116

(see chapter 11) coincided with NASA managers’ 

hopes. There also have been cases in which advisor-agency relationships would be considered cozy 

in today’s world. For example, consider the participation of senior NASA officials in SSB meetings in 

the early 1970s mentioned in chapter 2 or Pellerin’s 

description above of his coordination with the 

decadal survey committee chair in the early 1980s.

On the other hand, the history of advisory relationships provides ample examples of when advisors have taken contrary views and challenged the 

Agency. Consider Goody’s appointment as SSB 

chair in spite of Fletcher’s objections (chapter 2), 

SSB pans of draft NASA strategic plans (chapter 

8), Earth science decadal survey criticism of the 

U.S. Earth observations program (chapter 11), the 

SSB Balance report (chapter 16), the HST Shuttle 

servicing mission report (chapter 16), and others. 

Usually the contrary findings do reflect the positions of the scientific community even when they 

are not what NASA might prefer, and that’s the 

proper task of advisors.

The important point is that advice that agrees 

with the Agency does not necessarily mean that 

advisors are not independent. Neither NASA nor 

advisors make up their ideas ab initio. They all 

stem from ideas born in the scientific community, polished and developed via community and 

Agency discussions, and then tested to see what 

rises to the top. NASA listens and advisors listen. 

While no doubt there have been exceptions, outside advisors have largely sorted out priorities independent of what NASA has requested, even when 

12. Pellerin interview, p. 2.

13. Diaz interview, p. 7.

14. National Research Council, Opportunities and Choices in Space Science (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1975), 

p. 40.

15. National Research Council, Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980’s, Volume 1: Report of the Astronomy Survey Committee (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1982), p. 15.

16. National Research Council, The Decade of Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics (The National Academies Press, Washington, 

DC, 1991), p. 3. 
220 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

the resulting viewpoints agree. The advisors’ job 

has usually been to review, assess, and recommend. 

History shows that when done well, that process 

has added value because the job was conducted by 

people who were objective and not directly under 

NASA control. When they agreed with NASA, it 

was often because NASA already had been doing 

its job well. 

OPERATIONAL FACTORS: Practical differences in 

the way internal and external advisory bodies conduct their work can have a significant impact on 

the overall advisory process. Perhaps the two most 

important factors translate into time and money.

The issue of turnaround time has popped up 

time and time again. Chapter 17 highlighted the 

effects of timely delivery on the utility of advice, 

and Grunsfeld’s comments above illustrate how 

NASA prefers to go to its own committees when 

a prompt answer is needed. NASA can turn to its 

internal standing committees essentially immediately or at least put an issue before them at their 

next regularly scheduled meeting. Then the committee can respond at once, so long as the Agency’s 

provisions for vetting advice through the NAC can 

be handled (see chapter 12). 

One disadvantage of the NAC Science 

Committee’s near-real-time approach to advisory 

activities is that it rarely has time to dig into topics 

in depth and to substantively assimilate and integrate what it hears from its disciplinary subcommittees. This was evident, for example, in an extended 

discussion at a Science Committee meeting in July 

2012. Members of the committee were debating 

how to handle recommendations from some of its 

subcommittees about a perennial issue—i.e., relative priorities and balance between small and large 

spaceflight missions in an overall science program. 

After considerable give and take that led to tabling 

the question, committee members expressed frustration that the meetings lacked time for adequate 

investigation and deliberation.17

The SSB always has had to first ensure that 

adequate funding for a study was available and to 

secure formal go-ahead approval from the NRC 

Governing Board, and those steps could take weeks 

or months. After the NRC’s adoption of FACA 

section 15 compliance procedures that practically 

prohibited standing boards and committees from 

providing advice (chapter 9), NRC studies also 

were required to go through a formal process of 

nominating and appointing an ad hoc study committee before the work could begin. Then, once an 

NRC study committee completed a draft consensus report, there was a period, usually a few weeks 

to a few months, for independent peer review of the 

report conducted under the auspices of the NRC 

Report Review Committee.18

NASA committees, on the other hand, rarely 

add the independent review stage for advice 

developed by the committee. The process of vetting committee and subcommittee recommendations by the NAC that was introduced under 

Administrator Griffin could be viewed as an independent review stage, but the process is quite different from NRC report review. NRC studies, which 

are very probably more rigorous than NASA committees’ quick-response advice, come at a cost of 

turnaround time that is often measured in months.

The other significant operational factor is monetary cost. NRC advisory activities are conducted 

under a contract that covers the costs of travel and 

logistics for committee meetings, salaries and benefits for the NRC staff members who organize and 

support all aspects of the studies, and production of 

the study reports. A typical 18-month NRC study 

conducted by a 12-person committee can easily 

cost half a million dollars. On the other hand, the 

17. NASA Advisory Council Science Committee meeting minutes for 23–24 July 2012, available at https://smd-prod.s3.amazonaws.

com/science-green/s3fs-public/mnt/medialibrary/2012/10/22/NAC_Science_Committee-July2012-Minutes-121018-FINAL.pdf.

18. For a description of the National Academies study process, visit http://www.nationalacademies.org/studyprocess/index.html.
Chapter 18 • Assessing the Differences between Internal and External Committe

operations of NASA’s internal committees require a 

smaller staff load; the time span per piece of advice 

is shorter; there is no report review phase for the 

staff to coordinate; advisory report production is 

often, but not always, a smaller aspect of the activity; and some internal administrative costs are 

absorbed in other administrative budgets that are 

not labeled as being related to advisory activities. 

Budgeting for internal NASA committee activities 

is probably easier to plan and control, because the 

NASA committees can be constrained to a prescribed budget while demands for NRC may pop 

up at any time during a budget year. Consequently, 

there is a net cost advantage for NASA committees 

compared to NRC committees.

Ed Weiler summarized the choices posed by the 

differences in timeliness and cost when he was science Associate Administrator as follows:

I have two views. I have the rational side of me 

and irrational side of me. The irrational side of 

me: why does it take the Academy two years 

to make an obvious decision...? On the other 

hand, I can’t believe that, and I also say the 

reason the Academy reports are so respected is 

because they are done carefully. If you want it 

quick, you will pay for quick, and it won’t be 

very good.... Sure, the Academy is expensive, 

but you pay.... And if it takes a little longer, 

it’s worth it.

Now there are times, and this is a problem 

we have had a lot, in which we need a decision 

quickly. And one then has to ask the question is 

it really a strategic decision or tactical, because 

the definition of tactical is quickly.... [W]e 

were never in my time able to crack that nut as 

to what happens to the things that don’t really 

fall into the decadals, and they were probably 

a little higher level than [NASA’s FACA committee]. What’s that middle ground?19

STATURE AND CREDIBILITY: The extent to which 

audiences are inclined to respect and accept outside advice often depends on perceptions of the 

stature of the advisors and the credibility of the 

advice. Stature depends on both tangible factors, 

such as advisors’ seniority, experience, and recognition, and on intangibles such as institutional reputation. Both NASA and the NRC strive to select 

members of advisory groups who bring the relevant 

tangible credentials to the enterprise. NASA probably engages more relatively junior scientists on its 

lower-level committees and analysis groups. Len 

Fisk has often joked that NASA’s internal committee structure offered a career path for advisors, 

starting with membership in MOWGs and progressing upward to division-level subcommittees, 

then to the committee to advise the Associate 

Administrator, and ultimately to the NAC.20

NRC committees and reports have an edge in 

the intangibles because of their association with 

the National Academies. The same edge applies to 

NRC advice when it comes to credibility. Thanks 

to the rigor with which NRC advice is developed 

and peer-reviewed and its association with the reputation of the Academies, NRC reports are often 

viewed as being more credible compared to advice 

from NASA committees, which have to overcome 

a burden of skepticism because of their association 

with NASA.

Weiler recalled that during his time as Associate 

Administrator for Space Science in the late 1990s 

his NASA committee chairs didn’t pull their 

punches:

When I was AA I had some pretty independent SSAC chairs. I had Steve Squyres and 

Anneila Sargent. Anneila sent me some letters 

that I didn’t necessarily want to get; she was 

probably one of the most independent of the 

people I had. Steve was a close second. I didn’t 

19. Weiler interview, p. 12.

20. Fisk interview, p. 4.
222 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

always agree with SSAC, and I didn’t always 

like the advice I got.21

Nevertheless, Weiler was quite direct, and possibly overly generous, in describing his confidence in 

the power of the National Academies’ reputation:

[T]he way I look at it is as a person experienced with congressional testimony. Knowing 

the self-interest of any particular congressman 

or congresswoman, if I go up there and some 

congressman from some state says, “Dr. Weiler, 

why did NASA choose to do this mission from 

Texas or this mission from California; why 

didn’t they do it in Arkansas or whatever?”...

[T]here are two ways to answer that. I could 

say, “Well, because I decided to do it” or “I 

personally like that mission.” Or I could say, 

“I got the most respected scientific body on 

Earth to give me priorities, and that’s why, sir.” 

Which one do you think would shut them up 

better?... I can’t tell you how many times I 

gave that answer on the Hill.... I like having 

the full weight and authority of the most 

respected body of scientists on Earth behind 

the decisions I make.22

NASA Chief Scientist and former NRC committee member Ellen Stofan saw a similar situation 

some years after Weiler’s time as a NASA science 

leader:

OMB [and] Congress...pay more attention to 

what the community thinks—via the NRC—

than they do to what NASA thinks.... The 

NAC can say whatever the NAC’s going to 

say.... But our stakeholders view it as, “That’s 

your internal committee; you appointed 

them.” Whereas the NRC is an outside voice, 

and to some extent they disagree with that at 

their own peril.... [The] internal committees, 

I think, in general are not taken as seriously.23

American Astronomical Society executive and 

Washington science policy expert Kevin Marvel 

described the contrast in terms of relative independence of the two families of advisors:

But with the internal advisory committees, 

it was never clear to me if they were, quote, 

allowed to have a contrary view compared to 

NASA Headquarters perspectives. They sometimes did, but from my remembrance of all 

the documents and advisory group reports 

and what not, they never went too far astray 

from what I would call NASA internal dogma 

at some level. Whereas the external advisory 

committees had much more freedom to speak 

broadly and give contrarian advice to what was 

going on internally.24

One longtime staff member of the House of 

Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and 

Technology had a similar perspective:

I would say that the kind of perception of 

the NASA Advisory Council has kind of 

waxed and waned over time. It has varied in 

terms of [whether it is] seen as captive of the 

Administrator, and you’re not going to expect 

them to break new ground. Whereas we see 

the [National] Academies as where you’re 

going to get a more independent examination 

of the issues.25

21. Weiler interview, p. 19.

22. Weiler, p. 2.

23. Stofan interview.

24. Marvel interview, p. 3.

25. Obermann interview.
Chapter 18 • Assessing the Differences between Internal and External Committe

A case in point that reinforces those impressions 

comes from the March 2012 meeting of the NAC 

Science Committee. In opening the meeting, committee chair Wes Huntress commented that a major 

concern at that meeting would be how NASA could 

cope with cuts in the Agency’s proposed fiscal year 

2013 budget that would wreak havoc on the planetary science program. Huntress noted that the cuts 

would include an overall 21 percent reduction in 

planetary science funding, curbs on planning for 

future missions to the outer planets, and NASA’s 

withdrawal from a Mars program partnership with 

the European Space Agency. When NASA’s John 

Grunsfeld spoke to the committee, he reminded 

the members that they serve as Special Government 

Employees,26 and he urged them to 

measure their public statements in order to send 

the message intended. Messages can be misunderstood by the public, and used as a headline 

out of context to damage the science program.27

Changing Styles and Blurring Lines

One of the most significant aspects of the evolution of the advisory ecosystem over time relates to 

changes in institutional perceptions and responses 

to conflicts of interest. The most effective advisors 

are most often individuals who are well-informed 

and experienced in the topics at hand, and when 

it comes to space research that means that the 

best advisors are usually active researchers. But 

if active space scientists are going to be advising 

NASA about space science, how can the advisory 

process maintain its credibility with respect to the 

potential for conflicts of interest when the practitioners are advising the Agency that supports their 

practice? NASA has always been aware of the need 

to mitigate potential conflicts, just as the NACA 

was in the more distant past. A standard approach 

has always been to ensure that committee members 

understand their colleagues’ interests and potential for conflicts so that nothing is hidden and to 

ensure that the composition of an advisory committee is sufficiently broad that potential individual 

conflicts are balanced by the perspectives of other 

members. That system of checks and balances has 

been largely effective throughout NASA’s history. 

The enactment of the Federal Advisory 

Committee Act in the early 1970s made the process 

of mitigating conflicts of interest more formal and 

systematic than it had been in NASA’s early years. 

Nevertheless, even then senior managers would not 

let a new formal process handicap their efforts to 

obtain the best advice they felt they could get. For 

example, in recalling the era when Noel Hinners 

led the space science program in the 1970s, Tom 

Young noted Hinners’ approach to advisors’ 

competence:

But Noel’s advisory group was a group that 

he appointed. One of the anecdotal things I 

remember about it was there were some comments [from] the Chief Counsel or someone...

that Noel had too many people on his advisory 

group that had a conflict. And I remember 

Noel’s reaction, which was characteristic of his 

strength as a leader. His common reaction was 

that his program was too important to trust to 

people who did not have a conflict, meaning 

who did not understand his program.28

26. Members of NASA FACA committees who are not federal employees are appointed as Special Government Employees. As such, 

they serve as temporary employees and are subject to certain ethics and conflict of interest provisions.

27. NASA Advisory Council Science Committee meeting minutes for 6–7 March 2012, available at http://science.nasa.gov/media/

medialibrary/2012/05/11/SC-Minutes-Mar2012-Signed-120509c.pdf.

28. Young interview, pp. 1–2.
224 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

However, Agency lawyers have become increasingly rigorous in their approach to dealing with 

perceptions of conflicts of interest. In contrast 

with his experience through the 1990s, Len Fisk 

described an example of NASA’s conflict-ofinterest approaches in the 2000s when he served as 

an ex-officio member of the NAC by virtue of his 

being the chair of the SSB:

I think they made good use of FACA in the 

sense of using it for their purposes. I mean they 

over-interpreted the FACA laws. The FACA 

law...had been in existence for a long time, 

since 1972. It didn’t interfere with anything 

that you and I did when we were there. But 

they decided to interpret it in the most outrageous of ways. There was a case where they had 

this young professor [who] was a good guy, 

but he got in all sorts of trouble because he 

authored a statement on the bad things about 

cutting the R&A [research and analysis] program, which was going on at the same time. 

And the lawyers decided he was not entitled to 

do this [because] he had an R&A grant.29

NASA’s shift from using its old informal advisory MOWGs, which were not considered to be 

subject to FACA regulations because their advice 

pertained to specific program operations rather 

than to policy or decision making, was another 

important change in the internal advisory committee landscape. The new analysis groups that 

replaced the MOWGs were also established outside of formal FACA constraints, but they were not 

permitted to provide formal advice or any kind of 

consensus views. They could only develop findings

and report the opinions of individuals rather than 

of the group as a whole. As chapter 12 describes, 

this change undercut one of the major strengths of 

NASA’s prior network of advisory bodies. NASA 

Administrator Bolden modified the policy in late 

2013 to permit NAC committees to communicate advice directly to their program Associate 

Administrators as well as to the NAC, and that provided a partial solution but not a return to the more 

highly integrated advisory network of earlier times.

Nevertheless, NAC chair Steve Squyres saw 

two important advantages to the analysis group 

arrangement:

They do provide a forum in which the community can gather together.... If you go and you 

listen to one of these meetings, you get a pretty 

good sense of what’s the pulse of the community on this issue or that issue.... At the same 

time they are completely unfettered by FACA, 

which is a good thing in some ways.... I’ve 

heard some people argue that they would love 

to see the AGs be a formal part of the advisory process, and my response has always been, 

“You don’t want to deal with FACA. Trust me, 

you don’t want to deal with FACA.” I mean...

FACA exists for a very good reason. But at the 

same time it makes conducting the business 

of a group very much more complicated. And 

so I think the AGs serve a useful function in 

that they give the community a voice.... They 

are very town-meeting–like. When we did the 

[NRC decadal survey in planetary science] we 

had a number of ways in which we reached out 

to the community.... [We] had what we called 

town-hall meetings. So we would go to a [scientific society] meeting...and there would be 

hundreds of people in the room and we’d go 

on for hours. And it was a chance for people 

to get up and have their say.... And the AGs 

serve a similar role. The decadal once every 

10 years is very much a strategic function; the 

AGs sort of provide a similar venue in a tactical 

timeline.30

29. Fisk interview, p. 16.

30. Squyres interview.
Chapter 18 • Assessing the Differences between Internal and External Committe

After amendment of the FACA legislation in 

1997 to expand the law to cover NRC advice to 

the government, the NRC began to implement 

changes in its procedures intended to prevent advisory committee conflicts of interest. These changes 

developed more or less concurrently with NASA’s 

apparent tightening of conflict-of-interest controls. 

As earlier chapters have discussed, NRC officials 

moved to prevent standing boards and committees 

from authoring advisory reports unless they were 

independently chartered for the subject of the new 

report. Coming during the same period that the 

science committee and its subcommittees under 

the NASA Advisory Council were being restrained 

from advising program officials without first sending their advice through the NAC for clearance 

meant that NASA science program officials had no 

one to turn to for expert answers to questions on a 

short time scale. Instead, the whole advisory infrastructure went into a sort of slow motion.

Former Associate Administrator for Science 

Alan Stern saw that change in the way both bodies 

operated as being more significant than any intrinsic differences between the two advisory tracks:

[M]y experience more or less practically, runs 

from ’89 to ’07, during which I saw a strong 

temporal evolution in how much less direct 

and much more restricted [were] the types of 

commentary, the way that people interacted 

with committees, the way that conflict of 

interest was perceived and actually mitigated. I 

think all those things from my perspective are 

the strongest signal, if you will, versus whether 

they were internal or external.31

Informal Advice

There is a form of advice that straddles the line 

between informal and formal and that depends 

almost entirely on personal relationships. Chapter 

17 noted how an advisory committee chair plays 

a particularly important role in ensuring that 

advice has an impact. A chair’s or key committee 

member’s relationship with a senior official on the 

receiving end of the advice has often been pivotal 

in this sense, and in some notable cases, that relationship has helped make the advisory process 

uniquely effective. Charlie Pellerin recalled how 

intense debates with his most outspoken committee member enhanced the advisory process, “[We] 

would go nose to nose, so nothing short of fisticuffs, 

but at the end of the day we liked each other.”32

When he was a senior manager of the astrophysics 

program, Ed Weiler also valued a similarly close 

relationship with the chair of the SSB Committee 

on Astronomy and Astrophysics in the 1990s:

[We] were like close buddies, even though we 

were independent of each other, and would 

meet on the Hill in little restaurants and have 

private conversations about what was going 

on, and that was a really, really tight relationship I had to CAA.33

One of the most interesting examples of close 

and effective working relationships comes from 

the 1980s when Tom Donahue was SSB Chair and 

Frank McDonald was NASA Chief Scientist. The 

two were scientific colleagues who had interacted 

often throughout their research careers. Donahue 

had been elected to the National Academy of 

Sciences in 1983, and McDonald was elected in 

1986. Although Donahue’s SSB was often sharply 

31. Stern interview, p. 2.

32. Pellerin interview, p. 8.

33. Weiler interview, pp. 12–13.
226 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

critical of NASA, he and McDonald stayed in very 

close touch. While it might be a stretch to say that 

they collaborated, they certainly coordinated in 

preparing formal communications between NASA 

and the NRC. That coordination is evident in a 

careful reading of Administrator Beggs’ 1984 letter 

requesting an SSB long-range study of space science in the period 1995 to 2015 (see chapter 2) and 

in a subsequent 1984 Beggs-to-Donahue letter34 in 

which Beggs confirmed their prior conversation in 

which he committed to protecting funds for space 

science and applications.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of 

these examples of close relationships between advisors and advisees is that they rested on a solid balance of respect, cooperation, and independence. 

All of the discussion of science advice to NASA 

up to this point has focused on formal mechanisms, mainly via committees created either by 

NASA or the NRC. But the situation is not quite 

that simple, especially because there have always 

also been informal efforts by individuals or independent ad hoc groups. Most of them have taken 

on more explicit advocacy roles and have not tried 

to present themselves to be otherwise. Even though 

such efforts have wrapped themselves in the cloth of 

“What’s good for NASA science,” at their core they 

have been lobbying activities. To put it in terms of 

the discussion of advice versus special pleading in 

chapter 17, they fail the breadth test.

Let’s look at two especially notable cases. The 

first example relates to sustained advocacy for what 

may be the longest-running gestation history of a 

single satellite mission. Two physicists—George 

Pugh from MIT in 1959 and Leonard Schiff from 

Stanford in 1960—came up with an idea to test 

aspects of Einstein’s theory of general relativity using a space-based gyroscope. Schiff and his 

Stanford colleagues William Fairbank and Robert 

Cannon submitted a proposal to NASA in 1962 

to build a satellite that could carry out the experiment, and the proposal was funded in 1964 to 

begin to develop the technologies that would be 

needed to make the satellite experiment possible. 

The project was anointed “Gravity Probe B”35 or 

GP-B in 1971.36

Fairbank had recruited physicist Francis Everitt 

to join the Stanford team in 1962, and Everitt 

became leader of the GP-B effort in 1981, as the 

project was transitioning from its status as a technology R&D effort to the early stages of a real 

flight project. GP-B was finally launched in 2004. 

That the mission had to follow a four-decade 

path from conception to technology R&D to entry 

in the flight mission queue and eventual launch 

was due to at least two factors. First, the requisite 

technology was so challenging that much of it had 

to be invented in the course of the project. This 

included a satellite-within-a-satellite so that the 

main system could be isolated from effects of drag 

due to residual atmosphere and solar pressure at 

the satellite’s orbit, a thermos-bottle-like container 

that would keep the system to within 2 degrees of 

absolute zero, and four fused-quartz golf-ball-size 

gyroscope spheres that would be the most perfectly 

round objects ever made. If the spheres really had 

been golf balls, the dimples would have had to be 

less than 40 atoms deep. After the Space Shuttle 

Challenger accident in 1986, the original spacecraft 

design that had been intended for launch from the 

Shuttle had to be downsized to be compatible with 

a launch on an expendable rocket.37

34. James M. Beggs to Thomas M. Donahue, 9 May 1984 letter in reply to 5 March 1984 letter from Donahue, NAS Archives, 

Washington, DC.

35. Gravity Probe A was a test of the gravitational redshift effect by flying a hydrogen maser clock in orbit and comparing it to an 

identical clock on the Earth’s surface in 1976.

36. The Stanford University web site for GP-B has much information about the project, including a thorough history of its inception, 

all available at http://einstein.stanford.edu/index.html.

37. See the Stanford University Web site for GP-B at http://einstein.stanford.edu/index.html.
Chapter 18 • Assessing the Differences between Internal and External Committe

GP-B’s second obstacle, beyond the technological hurdles, was that the mission lacked a champion either in NASA or in the outside scientific 

community beyond the Stanford team. The scientific thrust of the mission did not fit comfortably 

in any of space science’s traditional subdisciplines 

such as astrophysics or space plasma physics. GP-B 

was never directly included or addressed in any 

decadal survey. It was like a probably brilliant but 

eccentric uncle at a family reunion. It couldn’t be 

ignored, but it was hard to understand and didn’t 

quite seem to fit in. 

Francis Everitt became the driving force that 

ensured that GP-B couldn’t be ignored, and furthermore, that the project would not die. He 

was an advocate extraordinaire—almost a fixture on Capitol Hill and in the halls of NASA 

Headquarters and OMB, where he would argue 

tenaciously about the merits of GP-B. After being 

on the receiving end of Everitt’s penetrating stare 

and quiet eloquence as he enumerated points about 

fundamental scientific importance, technological accomplishment, scores of doctorate degrees 

earned, and hundreds of undergraduate and high 

school students touched, it was hard for anyone to 

ignore GP-B. 

As the cost for GP-B grew over time, to eventually reach more than $700 million, NASA tested 

the project’s staying power and Everitt’s perseverance many times. There were regular project milestone reviews, an ad hoc review by outside scientists 

commissioned by Len Fisk in 1991, and an SSB 

review of the project in 1995, all of which gave it 

passing grades.38 Due, in part, to GP-B’s esoteric 

nature and the cost growth that accompanied the 

continuing technical challenges, NASA sought to 

cancel the program on three occasions between 

1989 and 1995. Thanks in no small measure to 

Everitt’s effective interactions with Washington, 

DC, policy makers, especially in Congress, GP-B 

stayed alive.39

The successful 2004 launch gave the Stanford 

team good reason to celebrate, but the celebration 

was rather short-lived. Unexpected system noise 

and unexpected wobble in the gyroscope rotors 

created major problems with analysis of the flight 

data. In fact, after the mission passed its nominal 

operating lifetime without producing convincing 

results, an astrophysics senior review ranked GP-B 

dead-last, putting it in the number 10 slot out of 

10 missions being reviewed.40 That could have 

spelled a bitter end, but Everitt once again found 

a way to save the day. First, he obtained modest 

private funding that NASA and Stanford agreed to 

match to keep the data analysis going temporarily, 

and then he obtained a substantial award from the 

King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology 

in Saudi Arabia. With that funding, the team was 

able to identify and remove the effects of the wobble 

and complete the data analysis. In 2011, the team 

announced that GP-B had confirmed the general 

relativity theory’s predictions of the gravitational 

distortion of space-time.41

GP-B’s damsel-in-distress survival story is 

a remarkable example of how an independent 

advocate, undergirded by competent technical 

38. See National Research Council, “Review of Gravity Probe B” (The National Academies Press, Washington DC, 1995). The 

review committee did not reach consensus, but instead found that a majority of its members favored completing the project while 

a minority felt that the mission was too narrowly focused compared to other scientific missions. 

39. Dennis Overbye’s “52 Years and $759 Million Prove Einstein Was Right,” available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/

space/05gravity.html?_r=2&ref=science.

40. See Jeff Hecht, “Gravity Probe B scores ‘F’ in NASA review” (New Scientist, 20 May 2008), available at https://www.newscientist.

com/article/dn13938-gravity-probe-b-scores-f-in-nasa-review/; “Gravity Probe B comes last in NASA review” (21 May 2008), 

available at http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2008/may/21/gravity-probe-b-comes-last-in-nasa-review.

41. Andrew Grant, “Final chapter published in decades-long Gravity Probe B project: Details sum up tests confirming Einstein’s 

general relativity,” Science News, vol. 188, no. 13, 26 December 2015, p. 7; Dennis Overbye, “52 Years and $759 Million Prove 

Einstein Was Right,” available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/space/05gravity.html?_r=2&ref=science; Robert Lee 
228 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

and management expertise, can work outside the 

nominal advisory system. Everitt received little 

help from the mainstream community, but he succeeded in keeping his ideas alive in an environment 

that didn’t know quite how to deal with it.

Our second example of out-of-the-loop advice 

that was successfully delivered to NASA as advocacy is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). 

The AMS story is different from GP-B in that it 

took considerably less time to accomplish, but it’s 

similar in that it addresses equally esoteric science 

for which there was no champion in the mainstream space science community, and it succeeded 

in large measure thanks to impressive sales efforts 

by its principal advocate.

Nobel Prize winning MIT physicist Sam Ting 

went to NASA Administrator Dan Goldin in 1994 

to propose an experiment to search for antimatter 

signatures in high-energy cosmic rays in space. 

Goldin was enamored of the idea of having a Nobel 

Laureate using the International Space Station 

(ISS), and so he bypassed NASA’s long-standing 

practice of submitting any spaceflight science project to independent peer review. Instead Goldin 

committed to fly the AMS on the Space Station. 

One of Ting’s selling points was that he could draw 

on a team of hundreds of scientists from more than 

a dozen countries and that the partners, including 

the U.S. Department of Energy, would pay for the 

instrument so that NASA only had to cover the 

launch cost.42

A test version of the AMS instrument was 

flown on the Space Shuttle in 1998, and the 

full-up instrument was slated to be launched on 

another Shuttle flight to the Space Station in the 

early 2000s. After the Shuttle Columbia accident 

in 2003, launch plans were delayed, and at one 

point NASA took the AMS completely off the 

Shuttle launch manifest. This was a time when 

some credible critics questioned whether this rather 

speculative experiment was worth the cost and 

the impact on the overall NASA Shuttle program. 

The Bush White House’s Office of Management 

and Budget was adamantly opposed to adding a 

Shuttle flight to deliver the AMS hardware. Ting 

reacted energetically to the threats to prospects for 

AMS’s launch to the Space Station, and members 

of Congress, especially in the Senate, responded by 

directing NASA to add a flight for the AMS in the 

post-accident Shuttle manifest. The nearly 7,000 

kg AMS magnet and detector assembly was subsequently launched and installed in 2011. It continues to operate as of this writing.43

The experience with AMS, like the one with 

GP-B, illustrates the fact that regardless of the 

weight of tradition and stature that are integral to 

NASA’s advisory ecosystem, there are still independent routes by which NASA can be influenced to 

Hortz, “Good Thinking Einstein: Researchers Spent $750 million—and 52 Years—Affirming the Theory of Relativity,” Wall 

Street Journal, 5 May 2011, available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703849204576303393134261736; 

Eugenie Samuel Reich, “Troubled probe upholds Einstein: General relativity vindicated, but was the mission worth it?,” Nature 

Magazine, vol. 473, 10 May 2011, pp.131–132, available at http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110510/full/473131a.html.

42. For good summaries of the scientific and political history of AMS, see Nature Magazine, “Particle physics: Sam Ting’s last 

fling,” Nature, vol. 455, 5 October 2008, pp. 854–857), available at http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081015/full/455854a.

html; Dennis Overbye, “A Costly Quest for the Heart of the Cosmos,” New York Times, 16 November 2010, available at http://

www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/science/space/17dark.html?_r=0; and Charles P. Pierce, “Samuel Ting’s space odyssey,” Boston 

Globe Magazine, 10 April 2011, available at https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2011/04/09/samuel-adventure-space-odysseyunlocking-deepest-billion-university-nearly-decades-mysteries-universe-later-physicist-hatched-plan-finally-bold-experiment-space/

EqmSUjLVuDmZTjgV9Xo7NK/story.html.

43. For information about early results from the experiment, see CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) press release, 

“Latest measurements from the AMS experiment unveil new territories in the flux of cosmic rays, “ 18 September 2014, available 

at http://press.cern/press-releases/2014/09/latest-measurements-ams-experiment-unveil-new-territories-flux-cosmic-rays#overlay-context

and NBC News, “AMS Space Experiment Sees Hints of Dark Matter Particles,” 18 September 2014, available at http://www.

nbcnews.com/science/space/ams-space-experiment-sees-hints-dark-matter-particles-n206411.
Chapter 18 • Assessing the Differences between Internal and External Committe

act. Although not always as dogged or esoteric as 

the advocacy for GP-B and AMS, such freelance 

appeals to NASA and to Congress for priority and 

support were common into the mid-1980s. The 

introduction of a space and Earth science–wide 

NASA strategic planning process under Lennard 

Fisk in the late 1980s and then the subsequent 

adoption of decadal survey planning across all 

disciplines in the 2000s helped tamp down those 

efforts. One long-time congressional space policy 

expert noted that there seemed to be fewer individual end runs around the established, communitybased planning system:

The other thing that [decadals have] been 

helpful with is [that] I haven’t seen as much in 

recent years of the interested company, interested researcher, interested university pushing 

their own project or [a] subgroup of the science community saying “I’ve got this important project, and I can’t get NASA interested in 

it.” And I just haven’t seen as many of those...

over the last five years.... I think the decadals 

had a positive impact on that, because...it’s 

easier to say “Well, how come you’re not in the 

decadal?” and you’ll get “Well, it’s a different 

area that kind of fell through the cracks and 

it wasn’t....” But you don’t hear that much 

anymore.44

This chapter has looked back over previous discussions of the advisory process to compare three 

different systems or approaches: formally chartered bodies established by NASA, formally chartered bodies established by the National Research 

Council, and informal contacts between individuals and government officials. While there are 

some relatively clear distinctions between the two 

formal systems, the distinctions are not absolute or 

universal. Furthermore, all three approaches have 

their own relative advantages and handicaps, and 

so when an agency official has a choice of which 

alternative approach to use, the choice is often a 

matter of a customer’s needs.

NRC advisory committees, including those of 

the Space Studies Board, have often proven preferable when the advice depends on in-depth analysis, 

strategic or long-term perspectives, a nearly impeccable pedigree, and the highest degree of independence. NASA’s own committees have been well 

suited to tasks that depend on a quick response, 

direct interaction, and guidance on more tactical 

or operational topics. In recent years, both systems 

have appeared to grow more rigid in their handling 

of conflicts of interest, all in the name of FACA. 

Informal advisory contacts offer the greatest flexibility and freedom from procedural constraints, 

but they lack the power of advice developed in 

public view by multiple experts who integrate a 

balanced range of perspectives to reach consensus.

The next chapter takes a step back to look at the 

big picture. What can we learn from nearly 60 years 

of NASA’s use of outside scientific advice? What 

have been its overall strengths and weaknesses? 

44. Obermann interview.

231

CHAPTER 19

The Big Picture—Lessons Learned 

All of the history, case study examples, and 

summaries of recurring themes in the pages 

up to now might make for an interesting diversion 

for a few dedicated space policy wonks, but they 

do have a more ambitious purpose. Let’s take a step 

back and ask a few big questions: Why (or when) 

does, or should, an agency such as NASA seek outside scientific advice? What good is the process or 

the advice? Has it really made a significant impact 

and, if so, in what way? This chapter will take one 

last look at what one might learn from the past as a 

springboard to contemplate the future. 

Why Seek Outside Advice?

Nearly sixty years of experience with NASA’s 

sometimes-testy-but-more-often-cordial relationships with outside scientific advisory groups provide good reasons to nurture the process. First, 

it’s simply a fact that a relatively small group of 

dedicated managers, even very scientifically and 

technologically smart ones, cannot have all the 

answers about how to plan, organize, and execute 

an enterprise as complex as space research. The task 

has too many dimensions and too many unknowns 

and alternative paths, and the pace of new developments is moving too rapidly to keep up without outside perspectives. It is a business where two heads 

are often better than one. This is not an argument 

that negates former NASA Administrator Griffin’s 

point that as public officials agency managers must 

be ultimately responsible and accountable for their 

decisions. The point is that getting good outside 

advice does improve the product.

Second, there is also a fundamental question 

to consider: Should the government seek advice 

that essentially helps manage science? (i.e., Can 

or should science be planned?) The discussion of 

advice to the NSF in chapter 13 noted that there 

are proponents of a basic research program in the 

NSF that is less constrained by outside advice 

and more guided by the innovative thinking of 

individual members of the scientific community. 

However, for mission agencies such as NASA or 

DOE, or NOAA, the situation is different. Mission 

agencies have to weigh large capital investments 

and commitments to both long development times 

and long operational lifetimes, all in the context 

of constrained budgets. Consequently, these agencies have no choice but to plan and manage the 

scientific undertakings they support. Given that 

reality, it is much better to have outside scientific 

advice available to the agency managers as they, 

and Congress, make decisions about priorities and 

allocations of resources.

Third, the processes of inviting and delivering 

outside advice have been powerful means of promoting communication between NASA, which is 

responsible for mounting the nation’s civil space 

program, and the scientific community, which 

plays the principal role in conducting the scientific 

research. Indeed, it works both ways. Scientists 
232 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

better understand NASA as a consequence of their 

interactions via the advisory process. Consequently, 

the outside scientific community is more likely to 

take ownership of Agency decisions and Agency 

programs, because the members have had a role 

in helping influence the decisions and programs. 

Even in hard times, the decisions are more likely to 

be accepted.

In a sense, the process of getting outside scientific advice creates the benefits that competition 

creates for customers in the private sector. That is, 

because NASA is the dominant, and very nearly

only, provider of programs in space science in the 

United States, there are no substantial competitors 

in the marketplace for customers to make comparisons in terms of quality or efficiency or relevance. 

Consequently, the process of inviting and considering independent advice helps keep NASA focused 

on its customers—the scientific community—

from whom the advice flows. This is the point that 

Pellerin made when he said, “I don’t think there’s 

any system anywhere to get as close to this aspect 

of customers in any business I’ve ever seen”1 (see 

chapter 6).2

Finally, to be pragmatic, the advisory process 

provides top cover. In an environment that can be 

contentious or politically tinged, an agency official 

can be in a stronger position when the official’s 

actions are backed up with credible, independent, expert advice. Recall former NASA science 

Associate Administrator Ed Weiler’s observation, “I 

like having air cover; if I were a General I wouldn’t 

attack without air cover.”3

There is an aspect of the process of obtaining outside scientific advice, at least in the NASA 

system, that is hard to categorize but impossible 

to ignore. Namely, it’s possibly the best bargain 

in town. Some of the nation’s most distinguished 

and experienced scientists, engineers, and technologists are willing to donate their time at no cost 

to the government, except for their travel expenses, 

to provide their knowhow and ideas for the betterment of the space program. MIT astrophysicist 

and administrator Claude Canizares made the 

point clearly: “I don’t think the public really knows 

that the scientific community is actually providing 

a huge amount of pro-bono consulting advice to 

the government.”4

What Has Advice Accomplished?

Given those reasons to pursue outside scientific 

advice, it makes sense to ask whether the system 

has delivered on expectations. The collection of 

cases in earlier chapters does offer positive answers 

to that question. They include examples of advice 

that propelled major scientific accomplishments, 

created opportunities for the United States to play 

international leadership roles, underpinned arguments to secure government policy-maker support, 

and garnered international respect.

The decadal surveys may have been lauded 

to the point of exhaustion, but the fact remains 

that this course of advisory activities has had an 

indelible impact on the direction of U.S. space 

science. Their power lies in the broad participation and input drawn from the relevant scientific 

community, reliance on a set of fundamental scientific questions as a foundation for program recommendations, and consensus recommendations 

on explicit priorities for future Agency programs. 

In essence, this approach is an application of the 

principles of peer review to the highest level of 

scientific planning. 

However, the impacts of an active advisory 

process go beyond the decadals. Starting with the 

1. Pellerin interview, p. 4.

2. The author is grateful to one of the NASA History Division’s peer reviewers for highlighting this point.

3. Weiler interview, p. 15.

4. Canizares interview, p. 15.
Chapter 19 • The Big Picture—Lessons Learn

earliest SSB science strategy reports in the 1960s 

(see chapter 2) and complementary efforts such as 

the NASA Astronomy Missions Board’s long-range 

plan for space astronomy in 1969 (see chapter 3), 

outside advisors have defined programs that made 

U.S. space research a major success story. Each scientific field has moved forward in amazing ways by 

leveraging the combined talents resident in the scientific community and NASA to pursue the recommendations of advisory groups to advance scientific 

frontiers. Examples of important programmatic 

milestones abound, both in terms of their scientific 

impact and their evidence of international leadership roles. The cases discussed in earlier chapters, 

such as the conception and eventual realization of 

the Great Observatories, the impetus for Mission 

to Planet Earth, and the kick to start the Discovery 

Program are just the tip of the iceberg. The unique 

kind of partnership between NASA and the scientific community in which NASA has been open to 

outside advice and the community has been willing to commit time, energy, and ideas to frame the 

advice has been a critical factor in enabling this 

record of accomplishments. 

Attention from, and action by, senior administration and congressional policymakers provides 

a relatively tangible measure of the effectiveness 

of advisory activities, and here there is ample positive evidence. Congress has embraced the use of 

decadal surveys, midterm progress assessments, 

and senior reviews and has folded them into legislation, thereby mandating that those advisory 

products be used regularly. Congress used the 2004 

Hubble Space Telescope servicing report as ammunition to direct NASA to give serious consideration 

to a Shuttle flight to extend the telescope’s life, and 

the 2006 Balance report gave congressional staffers 

clear arguments for restorations of science budget 

cuts in 2007. 

Outside advisory activities have sometimes 

played a lifesaving role by evaluating, and occasionally devising, options for restructuring programs that were in trouble so that they could be 

rescued and put back on track. Such was the case 

with assessments of proposed reductions in scope 

of the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (later 

launched as the Chandra X-ray Observatory),5 the 

Cassini mission to Jupiter,6 and the Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (later launched as the 

Spitzer Space Telescope),7 all in the 1990s, as well 

as the Mars Program Independent Assessment8 and 

an evaluation of reductions to the Next Generation 

Space Telescope (now called the James Webb Space 

Telescope) in 2001.9 In every case, an independent 

outside assessment of proposed corrective actions 

helped decision makers agree to move ahead after 

reshaping programs that had become too complex 

or too costly. 

Of course, advisory committees’ revival efforts 

have not always succeeded in riding in at the last 

minute to rescue the damsel in distress. Notable 

efforts that fell short include NASA committees’ appeals to save the U.S. spacecraft for the 

International Solar Polar Mission in the 1980s10

5. National Research Council, On the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility: Letter Report (1993) (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 1993).

6. National Research Council, On the Restructured Cassini Mission: Letter Report (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 

1992).

7. National Research Council, On the Space Infrared Telescope Facility and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy: Letter 

Report (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1994).

8. National Research Council, Assessment of Mars Science and Mission Priorities (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 

2003).

9. National Research Council, Scientific Assessment of the Descoped Mission Concept for the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST): 

Letter Report (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2001).

10. Alexander document files, NASA HRC.
234 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

and then calls to save the Comet Rendezvous and 

Asteroid Flyby mission in 1990.11 Both missions 

ultimately were canceled. These examples remind 

one that scientific advisors are mere mortals after 

all, and that scientific arguments are not the 

only relevant considerations for big program and 

budget decisions. Experience with the Solar System 

Exploration Committee in the 1980s provides an 

example of how advisors can deflect a crisis temporarily but not necessarily for the long term. The 

SSEC was able to help avert Reagan administration 

attempts to kill NASA’s planetary science program 

by crafting an apparently more affordable approach, 

but their Planetary Observer and Mariner Mark-II 

spacecraft lines proved infeasible and the program 

had to be rescued again with the help of Huntress’ 

Discovery program teams in the 1990s.

Finally, the fact that the broad participation 

of outside advisory groups in the United States is 

much respected in the international research community provides an independent measure of the 

impact of the system. Ed Weiler described how he 

saw this in his dealings with ESA: “When they talk 

about doing priorities [they say] ‘Well maybe we 

should adopt some of the methods of the National 

Academy of Sciences in the U.S.’ ”12

Can NASA’s Experience Be Readily 

Transferred to Other Agencies?

With the exception of the comparisons between 

NASA and other agencies in chapter 13, all of 

our attention up to this point has been focused 

on NASA’s advisory process. But before turning 

to look at what the future might hold for NASA, 

it makes sense to detour briefly to the question 

of whether lessons from NASA’s experience are 

applicable to other agencies. Certainly the factors 

cited above that characterize most cases of effective 

advising should be more broadly applicable, and 

maybe even universally so. 

If one accepts that NASA’s advisory experience 

has been largely a success story, then the question 

to ask is what kinds of tests one might apply to see 

if the NASA approach is transferable. First, NASA 

has the advantage of a long tradition of working 

with outside advisors. That aspect of the Agency’s 

culture has been important in helping weather the 

inevitable tensions between NASA and the scientific community that have appeared from time to 

time. In a different environment where that tradition is not already part of the culture, players may 

need to be especially sensitive to how to create 

and sustain an atmosphere of openness to advice. 

Agency officials will need to be able to gain the 

trust of the stakeholder community. One way to 

test for this trust is to ask if the advisory process 

leads to decisions for which the stakeholder community shares a sense of ownership—“Whether 

we like it or not, we know the agency heard our 

advice, and we understand its decision.”

Second, NASA’s experience should be most 

applicable in other government settings when the 

issues are free of political spin and when the process is nonpolitical. When scientists and engineers 

attack technical questions, even ones that have 

societal or political implications, their approach is 

most often based on evidentiary measures rather 

than beliefs. When special interests or concerns 

about representing interest groups may overshadow 

scientific considerations, then the utility of NASA’s 

experience as a model becomes less straightforward. 

Third, NASA has used a range of advisory fora, 

including formal internal bodies established under 

FACA, internal ad hoc committees, and formal 

external committees established by the National 

Academies among others. All agencies have the 

same ability and authority to engage outside 

11. National Research Council, On the Scientific Viability of a Restructured CRAF Science Payload: Letter Report (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1990).

12. Weiler interview, p. 12.
Chapter 19 • The Big Picture—Lessons Learn

advisors, and all agencies have done so. The choice 

of which platform to use will depend on several factors. When an issue is urgent and an agency needs a 

quick response to a (usually) tactical or operational 

question, then an internal body is most likely to 

be the way to go. When the issue requires a body 

with a particularly high level of expertise and recognition—i.e., the blue ribbon committee—the 

National Academies do not necessarily have a 

monopoly on the approach, but they are most often 

likely to be the best option. The same probably also 

applies when the advisory process needs to be (and 

needs to be viewed as) especially independent and/

or able to deal with a particularly contentious technical issue. 

The next chapter turns attention back to NASA 

and takes a look forward at some issues, relationships, challenges, and fundamental principles 

that are likely to affect the advisory process in 

the future.

237

CHAPTER 20

The Big Picture—Future Challenges

Earlier chapters’ tours of NASA’s advisory history should be able to open a window through 

which to peer into the future. Given past experiences and trends, can one count on the process 

working as well in the future, or are there obstacles 

to be anticipated and overcome? How might, or 

should, the advisory ecosystem adapt to be an asset 

to space research in the future? Finally, are there 

any fundamental principles that need to be heeded 

going forward? This chapter will deal with each of 

those questions, more or less in order. 

Future Advisory Ecosystem 

Challenges and Threats

Chapter 6 introduced the idea of a NASA science 

advisory ecosystem and described it in terms of six 

key aspects at the end of NASA’s first thirty years. 

Chapter 14 revisited those perspectives and examined how they had evolved as NASA approached 

its 60th year. Let’s take another look, this time in 

terms of what contemporary or emerging stresses 

might affect the future.

CULTURE OF ACCEPTANCE OF OUTSIDE 

ADVICE IN AN ENVIRONMENT OF CONSTRUCTIVE TENSION: These two factors—openness 

and conflict—are so interrelated that they are 

best considered together as two sides of the same 

coin. Chapter 1 noted that involving outside expert 

advice was woven into the very fabric of NASA’s 

predecessor, the NACA, and that independent 

experts played key roles in the early framing of a 

national space research program before NASA 

was established. Later chapters traced the continuing influences on NASA’s approach to building a 

space and Earth science program. Dan Baker put 

this aspect of NASA’s culture in metaphorically 

genetic terms: 

My belief is that in the very DNA of NASA 

the government-academic partnership was sort 

of built in. I think a lot of the founders...recognized that it was just absolutely crucial to 

the vitality of the disciplines to have this strong 

academic involvement, the constant refreshment and turnover. And so this aspect got built 

into NASA’s very being.... And in fact I think 

that the lack of...a natural way to include the 

academic advice and insight and review, really 

has been detrimental to many non-NASA 

agencies. The different government agencies, 

institutions, all suffer arteriosclerosis to some 

extent or another. But I think it’s hastened in 

the case where you have this insular attitude.1

Likewise, constructive tension has been an 

enduring element of NASA’s relationship with its 

1. Baker interview, p. 6.
238 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

scientific advisors and the broader scientific community. Such tensions were evident all the way back 

to NACA days; they appeared in the earliest SSB 

efforts and in the 1966 Ramsey committee’s proposal to provide management guidance to NASA; 

and they charged the atmosphere during conflicts 

with the Astronomy Missions Board and the Lunar 

and Planetary Missions Board in the late 1960s 

(see chapter 3). Homer Newell’s advice to James 

Fletcher in 1971 to nurture a climate of openness, 

stay true to prior commitments, and establish close 

communications and working relationships with 

outside advisory bodies was precipitated in part by 

tensions between NASA and its advisors.2

As chapter 19 noted, outside advice and criticism provide a kind of market competition in a situation where there is only one source—NASA—of 

goods or services. When there are multiple offerors, competition pushes suppliers to meet or exceed 

customers’ expectations. Since NASA is fundamentally the only supplier of opportunities for 

space science, the scientific advisory process pushes 

NASA to respond.

Al Diaz observed that one reason for the tension stemmed from how the scientific community 

appeared to view its relationship with NASA:

[I]t was more than simply the community 

advising NASA. It was really the community 

determining what the course of the program 

should be and NASA being the trustee that 

provided the capability to get it done. And 

while NASA was dedicated to achieving mission success—it really wasn’t [NASA’s] program, it was the community’s program.3

Scientists have always set the bar high and pushed 

the Agency to do more and to move faster than has 

generally been possible with the resources NASA 

has been able to secure. And at times, scientists 

have been particularly critical of the Agency and 

even naïve about what they can influence and what 

NASA can control. But by and large, the relationship has been positive and productive.

Two issues—one longstanding and another 

rather recent—are relevant to this relationship. 

The first relates to the questions of how much 

advice is too much advice and where the line should 

be drawn between when the scientific community 

should expect to have a say and when NASA should 

be left to proceed on its own. NASA Administrator 

Mike Griffin raised this issue in his dialog with the 

scientific community over his expectations of advisory bodies during the debates over science budgets 

in 2005 (see chapter 12). He argued that as public 

servants, NASA managers had to be expected to 

take responsibility and be accountable for their 

decisions and not become reliant on advisors to tell 

them what to do.4

Lennard Fisk drew a line in 1988, when he 

developed a strategic plan for NASA’s science program that was based on scientific priorities from 

the SSB and its committees, but he considered 

responsibility for translating those science goals 

into program plans and priorities to be NASA’s job. 

According to Fisk,

The strategic plan was, of course, based upon 

Academy reports. It had its footprints there. So 

you could say that was the influence that the 

Academy reports had on the NASA strategic 

plan—a foundation for the strategic plan. At 

no point did we ask the Academy to review the 

strategic plan and to comment on it.5

2. “Relations with the Scientific Community and the Space Science Board,” Homer E. Newell memo to James C. Fletcher, 

3 December 1971, Historical Reference Collection folder 4247, History Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

3. Diaz interview, p. 2.

4. Griffin interview.

5. Fisk interview, pp. 20–21.
Chapter 20 • The Big Picture—Future Challeng

In fact, this is basically the same conclusion that 

the SSB reached in its 1995 report on managing 

the space sciences (see chapter 16) when it concluded that as the span of a decision expands from 

being relevant to a single discipline to affecting the 

full program, the decision-making process moves 

beyond being purely scientific.6 It may be fine for 

scientific advisors to articulate their views on the 

scientific aspects of a decision, but they need to 

understand that the final decision will rest on integrating across other dimensions as well. 

Furthermore, even if all the advice that flows 

to NASA is somehow relevant, the mere appearance of too much advice can compromise the advisory ecosystem. Michael Griffin’s restructuring 

of the NASA Advisory Council directly reflected 

his opinion that NASA officials were getting too 

much advice from too many, sometimes conflicting, directions. Science policy expert Kevin Marvel 

saw evidence of a similar attitude in his interactions 

with congressional staffers: “And one joke that I 

heard a staffer say at one point is ‘The Academy 

produces a report every day, which one am I supposed to read?’ So they are a little bit jaded.”7

Although Marvel was describing congressional 

reactions to the totality of NRC advisory reports 

and not just ones for NASA, the idea is still relevant: Can the advisory system dilute its utility and 

impact by saturating the audience? At what point 

will the targets of advice just stop listening? 

Such concerns may reflect a mismatch between 

perceptions and reality. In the years 2013 to 

2015, the SSB delivered only half as many advisory reports (13) as it did between 2003 and 2005 

(26). Part of the reason for the drop may be the 

tightening of NASA budgets, which constrains 

funds available for advisory studies along with 

everything else, as well as a growing sense inside 

NASA that less advice is needed. Since the enactment of the National Academies amendments to 

FACA in 1997, there has also been an increase in 

government requests across the NRC for convening 

activities (e.g., workshops), which do not require 

organizing a formal advisory committee, instead of 

study committees to prepare consensus reports.8 In 

any case, this is something that the scientific community and the advisory mechanisms that it uses 

need to consider.

The second, more recent and more troubling, 

issue relates to the propensity of high-level government officials outside NASA’s science office to 

ignore outside advice. Ed Weiler observed that after 

the early 2000s OMB officials were less inclined 

to be responsive to advice from the National 

Academies and were possibly even covertly disdainful of decadal survey priorities.9

 A senior congressional science committee staff member had a 

similar impression, noting that OMB had become 

less attentive to outside advice, especially when the 

advice was contrary to what OMB wanted. This 

staffer added that OMB didn’t want to hear advice 

that the Administration felt it couldn’t afford 

to implement. 

Tom Young, who has accumulated vast experience in leading and assessing space programs, 

saw this development as a serious threat to space 

research:

The one thing that’s different today...is the 

interaction with the Administration. Largely 

OMB [and] to a lesser extent OSTP are much 

more involved today. There is no question but 

today, for all organizations including NASA, 

the epicenter of power, if that’s the way to say 

6. National Research Council, Managing the Space Sciences (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 1995).

7. Marvel interview, p. 3.

8. Peter D. Blair, “The evolving role of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in providing science 

and technology policy advice to the U.S. government” (Palgrave Communications 2, Article number: 16030, 7 June 2016).

9. Weiler interview, p. 14.
240 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

it, is really more at the OMB level, than it is at 

the NASA level.... [I]t complicates interactions 

with the outside scientific community, because 

there is such a strong influence on the civil 

space program from arenas where science is not 

necessarily the priority, but other factors play. 

Starting towards the end of [the 1990s]—and 

it’s been true both for the republican administration and now the democratic administration—there’s a new player. I happen to think 

it’s stronger today than ever...there’s a new 

player who’s playing a much broader role. As 

a result, I actually think that the capabilities of 

organizations like NASA, and NOAA too, are 

not playing as significant a role in leadership of 

the civil space program. I assume it’s because 

the OMB et al. has usurped that role.... And 

my personal view is that it’s a negative trend.10

OMB has always been a major player in ensuring that agency programs and budgets reflect and 

implement administration priorities. That responsibility, of course, engenders tensions as OMB 

ultimately recommends approval or disapproval 

of agency proposals and sometimes even gives an 

agency specific policy direction. The new aspect 

of the tension seems to be about who controls the 

priorities and the message embodied in NASA’s science program. Should scientific considerations and 

the scientific community play a major role in determining the scientific content and priorities? If so, 

then scientific advisory bodies should be nurtured 

and heard. Or should the administration have control and expect that its priorities define the directions of the science program? In that case, perhaps 

the scientific community should be humored but 

kept in check. 

The fundamental problem, even in the likely 

case that the answer falls in between those two 

alternatives, is that when decisions are made in 

NASA, outside advisors and NASA still can have a 

dialog about the situation. But when the decisions 

and priorities are set at and handed down from outside NASA (i.e., at OMB as Tom Young observed) 

then there is no opportunity for dialog with the scientific community. Such seemed to be increasingly 

the case starting in the late 2000s.

THE SSB, NASA’S INTERNAL COMMITTEES, 

AND FACA: Four other factors—(1) the power of 

the SSB, (2) evolution of NASA’s committees, (3) 

the division of labor between the two, and (4) the 

impacts of FACA—have become so closely coupled that they also are best considered together. 

Three issues tend to dominate the picture. First, 

budgetary and programmatic environments appear 

to be more dynamic and to be changing much 

more rapidly than in the past. It has become very 

hard for advice with a decadal horizon to cope with 

five-year budgets that change in one year. Even the 

midterm reviews that are now conducted between 

decadal surveys may be occurring at intervals that 

are too long to keep up with the pace of changes in 

the programmatic and political landscape. 

Second, flat or even declining budgets extended 

into the 2010s. How does an advisory process adapt 

to be responsive to a changing environment where 

past optimistic assumptions or options appear to 

be dead on arrival? Ed Weiler described this as an 

especially important time for good outside advice: 

“Now that the budget is really getting tighter I 

would argue that the need for tactical and strategic 

advice is even greater.”11

Third, FACA has turned out to be a fine example of the law of unintended consequences. The 

legislation was meant to improve the transparency 

of the advisory process, and while that has happened, implementation of FACA has also limited 

the efficacy of the advisory process. Agency lawyers’ conservative approaches to complying with 

10. Young interview, p. 8.

11. Weiler interview, p. 15.
Chapter 20 • The Big Picture—Future Challeng

conflict-of-interest constraints seriously handicapped NASA’s internal committees in the 2000s. 

In examining scientific advice all across the federal government, Bruce Smith has written about 

the problem of overly zealous conflict-of-interest 

protections:

[C]onflicts of interest in the narrow sense are 

a vastly overstated danger for most advisory 

committees. The group dynamics of committees of distinguished citizens mitigate against 

any member seeking to influence government 

policy to advance narrow personal or institutional interests. The clash of different interests 

and perspectives ensures that no single narrow 

interest will dominate a committee’s deliberations. Moreover the concept behind FACA is 

that the public interest is protected through 

competition among points of view and that 

the decision makers benefit from the interchange and know when and whether to accept 

advice from outsiders.

The government should not of course be 

beholden to, or overly dependent on, any 

group of advisers. Ever more stringent rules 

and regulations do not, however, contribute 

to the goal of protecting the public interest. 

Rather, the search for the last ounce of protection by assailing the advisory apparatus all 

too often is a sideshow that merely confuses 

the public and feeds the populist illusion that 

all government is corrupt. The inner check 

of professionalism rather than the legislature 

acting as external policeman is the better route 

to high ethical standards and good performance in the executive branch.12

At NASA, managers’ traditional internal source 

of tactical advice nearly ground to a halt in the 

2000s. Earlier chapters have noted that the boundaries between internal tactical advice and external 

NRC strategic advice have never been rigid and 

that the NRC has offered programmatic advice on 

many occasions. But in what some have called a 

perfect storm, the NRC’s implementation of FACA 

section 15 put new constraints on whether and 

how NRC committees could continue to respond 

to urgent requests for advice. New procedural 

requirements prolonged the turnaround time in 

which the SSB might respond to an important 

question identified either by NASA or the Board 

itself. Letter reports in particular, which had often 

been prepared to address an urgent, narrowly 

focused issue, were eliminated except in rare circumstances. Furthermore, the policy effectively 

emasculated the Board and its standing committees, which were no longer permitted to provide 

advice themselves. In effect, the NRC committees 

found themselves hamstrung.

In Dan Baker’s opinion, recent expectations 

about the division of labor between internal NASA 

committees and the NRC have become misaligned: 

I think more and more is being asked of the...

NRC to provide tactical advice, which I don’t 

think it should be doing and it’s not well suited 

to be doing. I think it’s really important that 

we as a nation look at how...one gets appropriate advice fed back into the agencies and 

how that advice is dealt with. But it fundamentally starts with making sure that you have got 

good internal advice for tactical matters and 

that you have got a very strong and deliberate 

kind of strategic advice from the...Academies 

and from the [NRC] boards.... [W]hen that 

gets out of whack and when you try to get the 

boards to deliver immediate, instantaneous, 

tactical advice it just doesn’t work.13

12. Bruce L. R. Smith, The Advisers: Scientists in the Policy Process (The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 1992), p. 198.

13. Baker interview, p. 7.
242 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

In essence, Baker was calling for a return to a division of roles that is closer to Newell’s original call 

for the SSB to concentrate more on “guiding principles...rather than a detailed program formulation.”14 (See chapter 1.)

NEED FOR LEADERSHIP: The final element of 

the advisory ecosystem involves leadership and 

how participants in the advisory process contribute to the overall leadership of U.S. space and 

Earth science. There are plenty of examples of 

how strong and timely leadership has made a difference. Consider the vision and insight of senior 

NASA science leaders such as Noel Hinners, who 

saw the value of creating the Hornig committee 

to formulate an approach for a Space Telescope 

Science Institute; Charlie Pellerin, who focused 

the imaginations of some top astrophysicists on 

how to market the Great Observatories concept; 

Shelby Tilford and Burt Edelson, who established 

the Bretherton committee that transformed the 

future of Earth observations from space; Len Fisk, 

who framed the first science strategic plan; and 

Wes Huntress, whose Discovery mission study 

teams defined a new and enormously successful 

approach to planetary science missions. On other 

occasions NASA leaders took actions that ensured 

that engagement of outside advisors would become 

a regular, recurring process. For example, consider 

Guenter Riegler, who devised the senior review 

process; Wes Huntress and Carl Pilcher, who initiated regular SSB reviews of NASA science strategic 

plans; and Ed Weiler, who expanded decadal surveys to cover all space science.

Members of Congress, and their key staffers, 

understood the value of regular advisory activities, and they played a leadership role by providing a formal legislative mandate for the expanded 

decadal surveys, midterm progress reviews, and 

mission operations senior reviews.

As these pages have mentioned earlier, the scientific community plays a critical leadership role 

by serving on advisory bodies. The process is a tremendous bargain for NASA and the U.S. taxpayer, 

because hundreds of top experts in space science 

and technology serve as consultants without being 

compensated by the government for their time. 

Regardless of whether their service is entirely altruistic or out of self-interest, the members of NASA’s 

and the NRC’s committees and task forces lend 

their experience and expertise to analyzing complex issues and crafting recommendations for ways 

to ensure that space and Earth science activities 

address the most compelling scientific questions of 

the day and do so effectively.

In spite of the strengths and benefits of stakeholder leadership noted above, there are some worrisome soft spots and vulnerabilities. They hint 

that the system may not be as robust or effective 

in the future as it was in the past. We will look at 

them as follows, in ascending order of complexity:

1. transience of congressional familiarity with 

the advisory system,

2. increasing workloads and diminished availability of volunteer advisors,

3. committees’ ability to do their jobs, and

4. the NRC’s business model.

The first concern has been around forever, so 

one must simply acknowledge it and compensate. 

Both the members of key congressional committees and their staffs have a relatively high turnover 

rate, and so there is a need for continuous education about space research and about the character 

and role of outside advice. It’s not unusual for a new 

member of one of the congressional space committees to never have heard of a decadal survey or the 

NAC. And the same can be true for many new, 

extremely bright but green, political science majors 

14. See John E. Naugle, First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, NASA History 

Division, Washington, DC, 1991), ch. 5, p. 72.
Chapter 20 • The Big Picture—Future Challeng

who join the Hill staff. Consequently, NASA, its 

advisory entities, and the scientific community all 

need to regularly explain how the scientific community interacts with the Agency and how outside 

advice gives decision makers access to independent, 

expert perspectives. The need is even more acute 

at a time when public support for science and the 

concept of using measurements and data to test 

a hypothesis or establish a factual foundation are 

increasingly vulnerable due to the politicization of 

the acceptance of science. The tradition of openness 

to outside advice is sustained by corporate memory 

inside NASA, but that kind of corporate memory is 

much less prevalent in the halls of Congress. 

The second problem pertains to the availability 

of members of the scientific community to serve on 

advisory bodies. Space research professionals have 

become increasingly busy and therefore less able or 

inclined to take on substantive responsibilities on 

NASA or NRC committees. The typical university 

professor’s plate is already full with teaching, graduate student mentoring, serving on university committees, preparing new research proposals, contributing 

to journal article peer reviews and agency research 

proposal review panels, and of course, conducting his 

or her own research projects. Experts from industry 

and government laboratories have their own comparably demanding set of “day-job” responsibilities. 

For relatively junior scientists, all these roles become 

essential metrics on their résumés as they compete 

for permanent jobs and tenure. For more senior 

scientists, the demand for their time just increases. 

Consequently, recruiting good candidates to serve on 

advisory committees has become a real challenge. 

Serving on a single NASA or NRC advisory 

committee might entail at least three trips per year 

to meetings of a few days each, and serving as a 

committee chair will often require twice as many 

trips in order to represent the committee in the next 

body up the advisory chain. NRC study committee members are expected to spend additional time 

outside of meetings helping prepare their committee reports. The very productive one- or two-week 

“summer studies” of the 1960s and 1970s have 

become virtually impossible. 

There is also a danger of advisor fatigue—that 

is, if too many advisory committee activities are 

undertaken, the scientific community can become 

exhausted by being asked to donate too much time 

and energy. The net result of this situation is that 

many members of the research community find 

themselves becoming too busy to take on volunteer 

roles as members of advisory bodies. Committee 

organizers continuously struggle to recruit the 

best-qualified candidates and to coerce the members that they do recruit to meet commitments on 

study deadlines. (The recruitment problem was 

exacerbated when NASA committee members felt 

that they were reined in under the restructuring 

of the NASA Advisory Council committee system 

and when NRC standing committees felt that they 

were disenfranchised by NRC FACA policies that 

prevented standing boards and committees from 

writing advisory reports.)

One key attribute of an advisory project can 

neutralize the problem of recruiting very busy 

people, and that is when the advisory task is widely 

understood to be especially important. The higher 

the visibility and the greater the potential impact 

on space research, the easier it becomes to secure 

participation by the best people. For example, this 

was the case for the study on alternative approaches 

to extending the life of the Hubble Space Telescope 

where the NRC succeeded in forming an extraordinarily capable committee. The decadal surveys 

are another prime example of where members of 

the community are willing to commit large blocks 

of their time to the effort because they consider the 

surveys to be crucial to the future of their fields.

The third leadership problem area relates to 

whether NASA’s internal and external advisory 

bodies are properly empowered to do their respective jobs. Earlier chapters have often lamented the 

structural and procedural changes in both the 

NAC and the NRC that have impacted their ability 

to fill NASA’s needs. Changes to NAC committee 
244 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

and subcommittee reporting relationships that 

were introduced in the 2000s compromised the 

value of subsidiary advisory units to Agency managers below the level of the Administrator or 

Associate Administrator, especially on tactical 

issues. Nearly simultaneously, the NRC FACAcompliance policies made it practically impossible 

for NRC committees to pick up the slack, especially given the NRC’s more deliberate pace driven 

by its long-standing standards for in-depth analysis and report peer review. Ed Weiler saw this as a 

problem from inside NASA: 

So that’s still a hole in the system. Where do 

you get that kind of—maybe when we use the 

word “advice” we are making the mistake, but 

“input”—where do you get that input that’s 

semi-strategic and semi-tactical but leans more 

toward the quick and dirty?15

As recently as 2015, the NRC committee to 

review lessons learned from recent decadal surveys 

found that the system was still dysfunctional: “The 

current advisory structure does not adequately 

provide for short-term tactical advice on strategic 

programs.”16 Dan Baker’s comment above points to 

the need for each player to do its job. The remarkable successes of Tom Young’s independent review 

teams on NASA’s Mars program (see chapter 15) 

and on NOAA’s environmental satellite program 

(see chapter 13) demonstrate that outside experts 

can provide timely, actionable tactical advice. But 

one has to ask why that can be accomplished only 

by ad hoc groups and not by long-standing bodies 

of the NAC or the NRC.

The fourth, and probably knottiest, problem on 

the advisory leadership horizon can be captured in 

one question: Does the NRC need a new business 

model? Evidence of the problem comes in at least 

two forms. First, government officials seem to be 

increasingly anxious for faster and more readily 

available outside advice that they can use to address 

important problems that demand more immediate solutions. NRC officials point to increasing 

requests for workshops and roundtables rather than 

traditional advisory studies, because the former can 

be produced relatively quickly. However the NRC 

is careful to note that workshops and roundtables 

lack the strengths that come from formal consensus conclusions and reports that carry the full advisory imprimatur of the National Academies.17 That 

is, a government agency cannot point to a workshop report as the formal position of the National 

Academies. While the Lanzerotti committee’s 

review of options for extending the lifetime of 

the Hubble Space Telescope did produce a solidly 

argued consensus report in a relatively short time, 

one must ask “Why did it have to be such a heroic 

effort that it cannot often be replicated?” 

The other aspect of the problem that may argue 

for a new business model for the NRC relates to 

the possibility that NRC managers have become so 

driven by the business side of the institution (i.e., 

keeping the cash flowing) that its advisory activities risk being diluted by producing too much 

product. Board directors are almost constantly 

thinking about how to keep their staffs employed 

and how to generate enough business to keep their 

units financially stable. Consequently, there can 

be temptation to propose or accept advisory tasks 

that cannot reasonably satisfy chapter 17’s criteria 

for effective advice. The NRC’s Governing Board 

Executive Committee reviews and approves every 

proposal for a new study activity, and so there is a 

15. Weiler interview, p. 13.

16. National Research Council, The Space Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and Best Practices (National Academies of Sciences, 

Engineering, and Medicine, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2015), p. 3.

17. Workshop reports usually contain no recommendations, findings, or statements of consensus, and they typically include a 

statement that the views contained in the report are those of individual workshop participants and do not necessarily represent 

the views of the workshop participants as a whole, the planning committee, or the NRC.
Chapter 20 • The Big Picture—Future Challeng

mechanism for filtering out low-priority, low-addedvalue projects. However, given that NRC board 

directors are generally more substantively knowledgeable about a particular agency’s programs and 

interests than a typical governing board member, 

an adept board director could slip an earnestly 

argued proposal through the review process even 

when the proposal might not pass a chapter-17 test. 

Senior leaders at the National Academies are 

well aware of these issues, and they have attempted 

to address them. In addition to making government agency officials more aware of a menu of 

faster advisory products such as workshop reports, 

which can summarize the individual opinions of 

collected experts but not present more formal consensus recommendations, the NRC has revisited 

so-called fast-track studies. In one approach to 

speed an advisory study, the entire information collecting and deliberative phase of a study was compressed to a single meeting. This occurred in 2013 

following a Presidential Executive Order regarding 

firearm violence and a subsequent request from 

the Centers for Disease Control for the National 

Academies to recommend a research agenda on 

public health aspects of firearm related violence—

and to complete the effort in three months. The 

expert committee established for the task held 

a single meeting that included a two-day public 

workshop followed by a two-day session to prepare the committee’s report. After going through 

a full NRC peer review, the report18 was completed 

on time. In a second fast-track approach, all elements of the NRC collaborated to shorten the time 

required at the startup and concluding stages of a 

study—including, for example, contract negotiations, committee formation and appointment, and 

report peer review—so that those phases could be 

accelerated while not attempting to rush the committee’s deliberations towards consensus conclusions in response to its charge. An example of this 

kind of fast-track study was a 2014 study to evaluate 

U.S. signals intelligence practices at the request of 

the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 

which was operating under Presidential direction 

to quickly address issues raised by the unauthorized 

release of data collected by the National Security 

Agency. By pulling out all stops to get the effort 

under way quickly and keep it moving briskly, a 

study committee was able to begin work in June 

2014, meet over a four-month period, and deliver 

its report by the end of the calendar year.19 Thus, 

the institution proved again that the Lanzerotti 

committee’s Hubble study wasn’t a fluke, but that 

it does take a serious effort to change the culture to 

accomplish fast-track studies. The 2013 and 2014 

cases are notable for the fact that both of them were 

in response to requests that originated in the White 

House. That kind of backing does get an institution’s attention.

The National Academies are also making 

efforts to create a more stable funding environment 

at a time when funding from traditional sponsors, 

and the government in general, appears to be especially tight. Throughout most of the institution’s 

recent history, funding for advisory activities has 

come from a few federal agencies, particularly the 

Departments of Defense, Transportation, and 

Health and Human Services, and the National 

Science Foundation. According to Bruce Darling, 

Executive Officer of the NRC, the institution’s 

leaders are making efforts to become more engaged 

with other agencies, especially ones that have not 

turned to the National Academies much in the 

past, and also to increase private sector support, 

18. Committee on Priorities for a Public Health Research Agenda to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence, Priorities for 

Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2013).

19. Committee on Responding to Section 5(d) of Presidential Policy Directive 28: The Feasibility of Software to Provide Alternatives 

to Bulk Signals Intelligence Collection, Bulk Collection of Signals Intelligence: Technical Options (Computer Science and 

Telecommunications Board, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2015). 
246 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

which has historically been below 20 percent of 

the institution’s total revenue.20 One interesting 

potential source of new funding stems from a 

precedent set by legal settlements after the 2010 

Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill in 

the Gulf of Mexico. As part of the settlement, the 

National Academies are administering a 30-year, 

$500 million activity to address issues regarding 

oil system safety, human health, and environmental resources.21 NRC and government officials have 

had discussions about whether the Gulf Research 

Program might be a model for how the Academies 

could serve in other cases where the government 

takes action to seek recovery from environmental 

abuses and can benefit from expert scientific and 

technical oversight. 

In working to help move forward on new ways 

for the National Academies to meet the government’s needs for independent scientific and technical expertise, Darling made it clear that while 

he and other NRC leaders will be willing to 

experiment selectively to find new and improved 

approaches and products to serve the institution’s 

mission, they would go into such experiments only 

when they could be confident that the National 

Academies’ standards for quality and independence would not be compromised. This very probably means that the federal government will have to 

accept that there will always be limits to what the 

NRC can deliver and that when an agency needs 

a technical answer to a tactical question “immediately or sooner,” the answer will have to come from 

somewhere else. 

The Advisory Ecosystem 

of the Future

Our analysis of NASA’s use of outside scientific 

advice up to this point has sought to extract some 

lessons about the strengths, impacts, and challenges inherent in the process. Now we turn briefly 

to what may lay ahead. Let’s examine four likely 

factors that will influence the future:

1. The decadal surveys will continue to play 

fundamentally important roles and set a 

standard for outside advice, but they will 

need to evolve to stay relevant and useful. 

2. Continuing, and possibly accelerating, internationalization of space and Earth science 

programs will call for advisors to pay more 

explicit attention to international perspectives.

3. Certain recurring themes that have characterized outside advice throughout NASA’s 

history will be just as important in the future 

as in the past; they cannot be ignored.

4. Every stakeholder has a leadership role, all of 

which depend on staying true to a few key 

principles.

Let’s look at each of those four factors in turn.

DECADAL SURVEYS. As chapter 11 explained, 

the SSB’s 2015 review of experience with the most 

recent decadal surveys concluded that “[T]he 

decadal survey process has been very successful. 

Indeed, decadal surveys set a standard of excellence 

that encourages the hope that similar processes 

could be applied more widely across the nation’s 

science programs. While it has no major flaws, the 

survey process can, and should, improve and evolve. 

The remarkable record of decadal surveys makes 

the committee optimistic that useful changes can 

and will be made.”22 The changes that were recommended for future surveys included ways to 

provide state-of-the-science assessments that could 

give survey committees a running start on their prioritization of future science goals, approaches for 

20. Darling interview.

21. For information about the Academies Gulf Research Program, see http://www.nationalacademies.org/gulf/index.html.

22. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Space Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

(The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2015), p. 6.
Chapter 20 • The Big Picture—Future Challeng

weighing program proposals against more realistic 

budget scenarios than in past surveys, and ways 

to sharpen decision rules that could help agency 

managers respond in the event that large programs 

run into trouble and threaten to create havoc for an 

entire program.23

One of the most problematic aspects of the 

decadal surveys conducted in the early 2010s 

revolved around the cost and technical evaluation 

(CATE) process that consumed lots of energy and 

effort by both the survey participants and NASA 

but that too often was either misinterpreted or 

overtaken by events. No one seems to doubt 

the importance of such a process. For example, 

former planetary science survey committee chair 

Steve Squyres put his belief in the need for CATEs 

quite directly: 

I’m a huge fan of the CATE process. The way 

I would put it is that we do these audacious 

things where we fling these spacecraft out into 

the universe and we try to do nearly impossible things. And plans like that really should be 

devised by people who are by nature optimists, 

because...you need optimists who are going 

to have the vision. But your costing should be 

done by pessimists.24

While agreeing that CATEs are necessary elements of decadal surveys, the 2015 SSB report 

made three key points about how the process of 

identifying and evaluating future mission concepts 

should evolve:

• [D]ecadal surveys, in pursuit of ever more 

accurate cost estimates, may dig too far 

into implementation details.... [M]issions 

described in the survey’s recommendations 

might best be considered as “reference missions,” except for the concepts that have been 

studied for many years—where committees 

explicitly state their intention to recommend 

a specific implementation approach.25

• Future CATEs could...initially run a 

much larger number of candidate missions 

through a faster but coarser “cost-box” analysis, to provide a sense of scale for initial 

consideration. This extra step would reserve 

the full-CATE process for missions that are 

likely to become part of the recommended 

program—that is, those that require more 

detailed estimates.26

• [A] reliable CATE process is crucial for the 

largest, most ambitious missions...where 

cost growth can threaten the health of a 

whole set of activities over a discipline, and 

beyond.... [F]uture surveys [should] exercise greater attention and care in assessing 

and recommending potentially “discipline 

disrupting” programs.27

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES. Research in 

space and Earth science has always been an international endeavor. The first post-Sputnik U.S. efforts 

were tied to the International Geophysical Year, 

and NASA soon forged partnerships with many 

other countries. Currently active international 

23. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Space Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

(The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2015), pp. 3–6.

24. Squyres interview.

25. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Space Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and Best Practices,

(The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2015), p. 4.

26. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Space Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and Best Practices,

(The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2015), p. 6.

27. Ibid.
248 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

cooperative agreements in NASA’s Science Mission 

Directorate number in the hundreds. While the 

United States was clearly the international leader 

in the space sciences well into the 1970s and early 

1980s, the scope and competence of other nations’ 

space science programs have grown steadily. Other 

nations are quite capable of carrying out major science missions entirely on their own.

Advisory committees have generally been cognizant of the international dimensions of their topics. 

The SSB serves as the U.S. National Committee 

of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) 

of the International Council for Science, which is 

the principal international scientific body for communication about and promotion of space research. 

The SSB also has long maintained liaison with the 

European Space Science Committee, which is the 

closest analog to the SSB in Europe. However, 

international considerations have not been major 

factors in the advisory ecosystem.28 Some recent 

decadal surveys did arrange to obtain perspectives 

from outside the United States. For example, the 

2007 Earth science and applications survey had a 

European scientist on the steering committee and 

non-U.S. scientists on two of the survey’s topical 

panels,29 and the 2011 planetary science survey had 

European scientists on two of its topical panels and 

also enlisted two European report peer reviewers.30

Nevertheless, one can argue that long-range scientific planning demands an even greater awareness 

of international points of view. As proposed future 

space missions become increasingly complex and 

costly, they will also become impossible for a single 

nation to afford and conduct. Comprehensive 

observations of the Earth from space, future 

advanced space telescopes, and Mars sample return 

missions are notable examples of where scientific 

goals may exceed the grasp of any one space agency. 

If that is so, then international cooperation will 

offer the only way forward. Therefore, planning 

for such ambitious international projects must consider international input and participation in the 

planning process. How, then, should this consideration affect the advisory process?

There are several obstacles to integrating international input into planning for the space sciences. 

First, there is no close counterpart to the NRC 

Space Studies Board in other nations and no counterpart to the independently developed, broadly 

based decadal surveys. Individual space agencies 

have their own planning processes that involve 

outside scientists, but the results do not often carry 

the same political clout as the decadals do in the 

United States.

Secondly, the planning cycles of other national 

space agencies are almost always out of phase with 

those at NASA. The same problem usually exists 

with respect to decadal surveys in the United 

States and science planning abroad. NASA’s John 

Grunsfeld found that this was a particularly tough 

problem in trying to do joint planning with the 

European Space Agency: 

Right now they have their vision process, we 

have our decadal surveys, and they are out 

of phase by five years. We have talked about, 

“Well, is there any advantage to syncing them 

up and cooperating?” The answer is that [my 

ESA counterpart] has enough challenge trying 

to get 20 or more member countries...all to 

agree to work together on the same time scale. 

Not that it is cantankerous, but it is difficult. 

28. For three notable exceptions, see the SSB reports “U.S.-European Collaboration in Space Science” (1998), “Approaches to Future 

Space Cooperation and Competition in a Globalizing World: Summary of a Workshop” (2009), and “Review of the MEPAG 

Report on Mars Special Regions” (2015), all from the National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

29. National Research Council, aEarth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond”(The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2007), pp. v–ix.

30. National Research Council, “Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013–2022” (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2011), pp. v–vi and xi.
Chapter 20 • The Big Picture—Future Challeng

Trying then to incorporate something out of 

the European Union, out of the European 

Space Agency context, with the U.S., which 

has its own big communities and struggles, 

would be nearly impossible.31

Astronomer Marcia Rieke saw the phasing problem with the Europeans firsthand when she served 

on the 2010 astronomy decadal survey committee:

But the fact of the matter is then when it 

comes time to do something like a decadal 

survey or they do their planning, they are not 

done at the same time. There isn’t a convenient 

way to coordinate things. What happened to 

[the 2010 astronomy and astrophysics survey] 

is a good example where our [priority] numbers two and three required European cooperation or collaboration at fairly deep levels. And 

because the Europeans didn’t choose either one 

of those next...there we are out on the street.32

Rieke concluded that, given the difficulty in 

synchronizing or coordinating interagency planning, “It may be that one just has to work at the 

scientist-to-scientist level and come up from the 

bottom.”33 This view was shared by many of the 

author’s interview subjects.

COSPAR undertook one approach to international grassroots planning in the early 2010s. 

Groups of scientists prepared a series of scientific 

roadmaps—covering lunar and planetary exploration, astrophysics, space weather, and Earth 

science—that were intended to communicate to 

national space agencies about important scientific 

opportunities and priorities from an international 

perspective. The roadmap authors also hoped that 

they might help inform the deliberations of future 

decadal survey committees in the United States.34

It is not yet clear whether this COSPAR initiative 

will have an impact.

In August 2015 the International Astronomical 

Union held a two-day session during its triennial 

General Assembly to promote discussion of issues 

regarding increased international coordination and 

cooperation in astrophysics and heliophysics programs. The participants at that meeting agreed 

that COSPAR’s scientific roadmapping approach 

was appropriate and that international discussions 

should take into account the priorities identified in 

various national decadal surveys.35

While scientists do often value international 

collaboration and do collaborate, there are also 

rather deeply ingrained competitive motivations 

that can be obstacles to fully open cooperation, 

even in the advisory process. Marcia Smith saw this 

in her experience with NRC advisory studies: 

From my perspective as someone who is not 

an astronomer, for example, I think it makes 

a lot of sense to get the world’s astronomy 

community together just the way you get the 

U.S. astronomy committee together and figure 

out what’s best to do and who’s going to do 

what. But I do know that astronomers feel personal pride and national pride in being the first 

to discover something.36

Consequently, she found on at least one occasion that the organizers of a long-range planning 

study committee did not want international people 

because they viewed them as competitive. 

31. Grunsfeld interview.

32. Rieke interview, p. 6.

33. Ibid.

34. Fisk interview, pp. 22–23.

35. For background on the meeting, see http://astronomy2015.org/focus_meeting_11

36. Smith interview, p. 25.
250 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

It is one thing to work together to identify 

important scientific priorities and opportunities 

for international cooperation, but the actual planning of missions is best left to the space agencies. In 

Grunsfeld’s opinion, international collaboration “is 

very tough for advisory councils or decadal surveys 

to coordinate, but they can certainly encourage.”37

Former NASA science chief Al Diaz had a similar 

view, saying that there might “be an international 

science body that would advise agencies on how to 

conduct and how to select missions”38 but that the 

agencies would not ask such a scientific group to 

help design the programs. From a U.S. perspective, 

Claude Canizares also saw the task of promoting 

an international discussion as being NASA’s job: 

There ought to be a regular convening of 

something like a “space summit.” I know that 

there are international organizations that try to 

bring some of the right parties together, but 

I think they are not the best ones to do this. 

I think NASA should take the lead on that.39

In summary, the international picture seems 

clear on a few points and murky on others. There is 

general agreement that scientist-to-scientist discussions about scientific goals and priorities that percolate up from the community are the best way to 

build a scientific consensus about future opportunities for international cooperation. However, the 

job of designing missions and forging specific partnerships is better left to government space agencies. 

One can envision a role for advisory bodies, especially at the National Academies, for the former but 

not the latter. Even when the players make their 

best efforts, the task will be difficult as long as 

planning and project commitment cycles of various nations remain misaligned. That includes the 

phasing of the decadal surveys in the United States. 

Given the fact that any ambitious space endeavor 

is, by definition, a long-term effort, it would make 

sense for U.S. decadal surveys, and the international scientific community in general, to work to 

communicate extensively, early, and often to ensure 

that informed perspectives about international 

opportunities are delivered to all space agencies. 

BASIC RECURRING THEMES OF ADVICE. Certain 

themes or principles have been woven into nearly 

every element of outside advice throughout NASA’s 

history. Those themes have become the very foundation for what advisors have urged NASA to do. 

1. Priority for scientific quality and merit. Advisors 

have argued without exception that the first criterion for making decisions and choices about 

NASA’s science program should be driven by scientific merit. This principle was the basis for advice to 

NASA in the SSB’s 1961 letter report40 (see chapter 

2); it has been the starting point for every decadal 

survey report; and it was the principal theme of 

the SSB’s 2005 report, “Science in NASA’s Vision 

for Space Exploration.”41 As chapter 16 notes, the 

latter report was a bit of a dud, because it lacked 

actionable recommendations, but it did repeat and 

reinforce the principle of making scientific merit 

a fundamental decision-making criterion. NASA’s 

internal committees also have consistently espoused 

the same view. For example, the Space and Earth 

Science Advisory Committee’s 1986 Crisis report 

(see chapter 5) discussed criteria for selecting future 

37. Grunsfeld interview.

38. Diaz interview, p. 8.

39. Canizares interview, p. 14.

40. National Research Council, “Policy Positions on (1) Man’s Role in the National Space Program and (2) Support of Basic Research for 

Space Science” (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 31 March 1961).

41. Space Studies Board, “Science in NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration” (National Research Council, The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2005).
Chapter 20 • The Big Picture—Future Challeng

research missions and placed scientific merit at the 

top of its list, saying 

The fundamental purpose of the Space and 

Earth Science Program is to obtain scientific 

understanding of the world around us; hence 

scientific merit and potential scientific contributions must be the dominant values to be 

assessed.42

The Crisis report did go on to add other criteria—specifically, programmatic considerations 

and societal benefits—but science remained 

number one. 

NASA has been largely responsive to this 

view and has reflected the advice in practice. For 

example, the first Office of Space Science and 

Applications strategic plan in 1988 (see chapter 7) 

was based on the principle of scientific excellence, 

and all subsequent science strategic plans either 

explicitly or implicitly reaffirmed that commitment to scientific merit as a priority.

2. Importance of peer review. The concept of 

peer review is a fundamental element of scientific research in the United States. By subjecting 

research proposals and results to critical examination by an independent cadre of scientific experts, 

the scientific community applies its own, usually 

rigorous and demanding, version of quality control 

to the scientific enterprise. Consequently, outside 

advisors have consistently emphasized that open 

competition and peer review should be the principal means by which NASA selects scientists to participate in space research missions, and NASA has 

largely embraced that approach. 

The process got off to a shaky start in the 

years immediately before and after NASA’s formation. When the Working Group on Internal 

Instrumentation of the NAS Technical Panel on the 

Earth Satellite Program (see chapter 1) recommended 

experiments to fly on the first Vanguard satellites, 

the top four priorities included experiments from 

two of the working group’s own members—Herbert 

Friedman of NRL and James Van Allen—as well as 

an another experiment by NRL scientist Herman 

LaGow. Panel member and Vanguard Program science coordinator Homer Newell was Friedman’s and 

LaGow’s supervisor. In his book, Naugle describes 

how extraordinary time pressures subsequently led 

to a rather chaotic selection process for experiments 

to fly on Explorer 1 and on the first Pioneer lunar 

missions, all due to a rush to respond to the successful Soviet Sputnik launches. Almost immediately 

after its formation in June 1958, the Space Science 

Board sought to take over future experiment proposal evaluations and selections, and they kicked off 

the process by issuing a widely circulated invitation 

to U.S. scientists to propose spaceflight experiments. 

However, NASA officials were convinced that proposal review and selection were properly NASA 

responsibilities, and by 1960 NASA put a system in 

place by which the Agency invited scientific proposals for spaceflight experiments and then organized 

scientific peer review panels comprised of both outside- and inside-NASA scientists to review the proposals and recommend ones for selection. Naugle 

describes how that process eventually dealt with 

the problems of conflicts of interest that colored the 

early selections for Vanguard, Explorer 1, and the 

first Pioneers.43

After getting an orderly peer review process 

in place for flight experiments, NASA eventually 

42. Space and Earth Science Advisory Committee, “The Crisis in Space and Earth Science: A Time for a New Commitment” (NASA 

Advisory Council, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, November 1986), p. 52.

43. See the discussion “Stress in the Selection Process” in chapter 1 of John Naugle’s book First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA 

Space Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, NASA History Division, Washington, DC, 1991).
252 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

moved to apply peer review more broadly to evaluation of all research grant proposals (e.g., for data 

analysis, ground-based investigations, theoretical 

studies, and sounding rocket and balloon flight 

experiments) across the space sciences. The last 

exception to a totally peer-review-based program 

was erased in the 1970s, when NASA in-house 

scientists were required to compete against their 

non-NASA colleagues in the same process in space 

science, and in the 1980s, when that approach was 

applied also to NASA’s Earth scientists. The Fisk 

strategic plan of 1988 and essentially every NASA 

science strategic plan thereafter have cited peer 

review as a basic operating principle.

The concept of peer review is integrated even 

more broadly into the culture of space and Earth 

sciences, because the advisory process is itself a kind 

of peer review process. As advisory bodies comprised of science, technology, and policy experts 

convene to debate potential advice, they challenge 

one another to ensure that their arguments towards 

an eventual consensus will stand up under scrutiny 

from other scientists, government officials, and an 

interested public. Both NASA’s internal advisory 

committees and committees operating under the 

aegis of the NRC have explicit policies for dealing with real or apparent conflicts of interest. The 

process is not perfect, especially because there may 

always be contrary views when the topic itself is 

complex or controversial. Nevertheless, the process 

of information gathering, debate, and convergence 

towards consensus by a broadly based group of 

independent experts can provide the government 

with as good an advisory product as is possible.

3. Balanced portfolio. Advisory body appeals for a 

“balanced” research program have probably been 

the most often cited, most open to interpretation, 

and sometimes most difficult to implement recommendations over NASA’s history. The issue of 

balance goes back to debates over NACA’s balance 

of emphasis on basic aeronautical sciences versus 

research in support of practical problems in aeronautical engineering. The infant Space Science 

Board staked out its position in the context of 

space research in its 1961 letter to NASA (see chapter 2) when it emphasized that a basic research 

program was essential “quite aside” from NASA’s 

flight projects.44

The balance issue in the space sciences, however, has many more facets than just fundamental 

science versus applications, and it really involves 

a consideration of several kinds of portfolio mix. 

First, there is NASA’s portfolio of space mission 

sizes, which range from small individual-scientistled projects that may cost a few $100 million or 

less up to major, flagship-class missions that cost 

billions of dollars. Then there is the question of the 

proportions of resources going to different classes of 

research activity, which range from small research 

project grants in data analysis or theoretical studies, 

on the one hand, to substantial spaceflight project 

investments. A more subtle and nuanced aspect of 

balance involves the relative levels of support and 

participation by researchers at universities versus 

researchers at national laboratories and industry. 

And finally, but in no way least significant, there 

is the question of balance in terms of relative 

emphasis and support for different scientific disciplines—e.g., astrophysics versus planetary science 

versus solar and space plasma physics versus Earth 

science. All of these dimensions enter into the discussion of balance.

In all of these discussions, balance has never 

been intended to mean equity. No advisory committee has suggested that NASA take its total 

budget and divide it equally amongst different 

components. Rather, advisors have urged NASA 

to not only avoid putting all its eggs in one basket 

but to ensure that each element of the program 

44. National Research Council, “Policy Positions on (1) Man’s Role in the National Space Program and (2) Support of Basic Research for 

Space Science” (The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 31 March 1961).
Chapter 20 • The Big Picture—Future Challeng

can remain viable even when some require more 

resources than others. 

Practically every decadal survey report and 

every SSB review of NASA science strategies have 

emphasized the principle of balance and have noted 

its various dimensions. For example, the 2010 

astronomy and astrophysics decadal said,

“Maintaining a balanced program is an overriding priority for attaining the overall science 

objectives that are at the core of the program 

recommended by the survey committee.”45

The 2007 decadal for Earth science and applications from space took a similar view: 

The Earth observation and information system 

program should seek to achieve and maintain 

balance in a number of thematic areas in order 

to support the broad array of demands for 

Earth information. Balance is required in the 

types of measurements (research, sustained, 

and operational), in the sizes and complexity 

of missions, across science disciplines, and 

across technology maturity levels.46

The 2011 planetary science decadal echoed the 

same message:

“[The] prioritized list of flight investigations 

[has] been judged and ordered with respect 

to a set of appropriate criteria.... The first 

and most important was science return per 

dollar.... The second criterion was programmatic balance—striving to achieve an appropriate balance among mission targets across 

the solar system and an appropriate mix of 

small, medium, and large missions.”47

There have been occasions when the balance 

principle has appeared threatened and advisors have 

raised alarms. For example, in 1969 the Lunar and 

Planetary Missions Board (see chapter 3) threatened mutiny after the members felt that NASA 

had abandoned support for small and modest-sized 

planetary missions in favor of the Administration’s 

interest in big Mars missions. In the early 1970s, 

astronomers worried about whether the Large 

Space Telescope would hurt support for smaller, or 

at least less expensive, ground-based telescopes (see 

chapter 11). In 2005, scientists feared that President 

Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration would sacrifice 

astrophysics, space plasma physics, and even Earth 

science (see chapter 16) in the pursuit of areas that 

were focused on exploration of the solar system.

Arguments for balance have for the most part 

been based on long-range strategic considerations. 

That is, to remain robust and resilient in the face 

of budgetary or programmatic threats, the program 

needs a mix of sizes of investments, provisions for 

ensuring healthy flight rates and new opportunities, resources to enable each scientific discipline to 

make progress, and means to lay groundwork for 

both the technologies and the workforce that will 

be needed in the future. An emphasis on any subset 

of these at the detriment of others risks compromising program health either in the near term or the 

long term. 

Astronomer Steven Strom noted a societal or 

cultural argument for balance that goes beyond the 

cold, pragmatic considerations of investment strategy. When all members of the scientific community 

45. National Research Council, “New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics” (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2010), p. 4.

46. National Research Council, “Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond” (The 

National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2007), p. 40.

47. National Research Council, Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013–2022 (The National Academies Press, 

Washington, DC, 2011), p. 12.
254 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

sense that their particular areas of interest are being 

considered and not being ignored, then NASA can 

draw on a broader base of support.48 More people 

are likely to back the program as a whole, and factional infighting will be less likely to become an 

impediment. Advisory panels are not oblivious to 

this perspective, and so consensus recommendations for NASA to attend to the multiple dimensions of balance have been a constant for scientific, 

strategic, and societal reasons.

LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES. Finally, our glimpse 

into the future of outside scientific advice to NASA 

comes to rest on considerations of leadership. 

All participants in space research—from policy 

makers to government managers and administrators to scientists and engineers from academia, 

government and non-government laboratories, and 

industry—have leadership roles to play to ensure 

the success of NASA’s use of outside scientific 

advice. This success, in turn, depends on four key 

leadership principles.

First, all players need to appreciate that the U.S. 

space and Earth science program is not NASA’s 

program, and it is not the scientific community’s 

program; it is the nation’s program. Homer Newell 

and John Naugle understood this as they considered the basis for NASA’s relationships with advisory committees in the late 1960s and early 1970s 

(see chapter 3). Ed Weiler’s perspective was typical 

of most science leaders who followed Newell and 

Naugle: “I always felt that my job as Associate 

Administrator was to run a national science program.... I never said NASA space science program, 

I said the nation’s space science program.”49 At the 

2012 SSB workshop on decadal surveys (see chapter 

11), NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati noted 

that while scientists may believe that the space science program belongs to the scientific community 

because the scientific community uses the advisory 

process to decide what science is to be done, the scientific community really conducts space research 

on behalf of the nation.50 Dan Baker applied this 

principle to the decadals: “[T]his is advice that is 

being given to the whole nation. It really is advice 

that applies as appropriate to all the spacefaring 

agencies.”51

Second, by virtue of their different operating 

approaches and relationships to NASA, external 

NRC committees and internal NASA committees have distinct and distinctly important roles. 

Both systems are needed, and their practitioners 

need to understand and work to meet their different responsibilities. The general division of labor 

between strategic advice from the NRC and tactical advice from NASA’s committees is widely 

accepted. NRC committees require what John 

Grunsfeld described as “longer-term deliberation...

much broader engagement of the community, and 

some time for fermentation.”52 They are more likely 

to be viewed as speaking on behalf of the broader 

scientific community and to be addressing advice 

not just to NASA but to all relevant elements of 

the government. NASA’s committees, on the other 

hand, can respond more quickly to time-critical 

issues and work more intimately with NASA as 

their only client. 

Each of these two different advisory avenues 

has its own weaknesses, as well as strengths. The 

NRC bodies’ approaches to preserving independence and imposing strict standards of peer review 

make it practically impossible for them to deal with 

48. Strom interview.

49. Weiler interview, p. 5.

50. National Research Council,“Lessons Learned in Decadal Planning in Space Science: Summary of a Workshop” (The National 

Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2013), p. 72.

51. Baker interview, p 8.

52. Grunsfeld interview.
Chapter 20 • The Big Picture—Future Challeng

urgent tactical problems, and that has sometimes 

frustrated both the advisors and the Agency. For 

the NASA committees, the tension between providing independent advice versus serving on behalf 

of NASA has sometimes caused trouble. A notable 

example was when NAC chair Harrison Schmitt 

urged Administrator Griffin to dismiss the scientist members of the NAC (see chapter 12), because 

he felt they were advocating changes to the administration’s policy rather than helping implement it.

To be sure, there have been cases where the two 

kinds of advisory bodies reached well beyond the 

traditional limits cited above to provide critically 

important advice. Both the SESAC Crisis report 

and the Bretherton Earth system science report 

(see chapter 5) were prepared by NASA committees 

based on extensive analyses and deliberations. The 

NRC report on extending the life of the Hubble 

Space Telescope (see chapter 16) addressed an 

urgent near-term problem and did so in a remarkably short time. However, it appears that such 

exceptions are likely to be rare.

Third, the effectiveness of the advisory process 

needs to be continuously assessed. As the science 

makes progress, as the political and programmatic 

environment evolves, and as roles and relationships between elements of the advisory ecosystem 

change, all the players need to examine the efficacy 

of the process and ask whether the process itself 

needs to be modified or sharpened. The series of 

reorganizations of NASA internal committees 

from the 1960s through the 1980s reflected NASA 

officials’ views that the committee structure and 

roles needed to change as NASA’s programs progressed. The SSB’s continuing evaluations of the 

decadal survey process have had important impacts 

on the utility of the surveys, and one can expect 

further improvements in future rounds. NRC policies and procedures certainly changed in response 

to the amendments to FACA legislation, and both 

the National Academies and NASA are still coping 

with those changes. Earlier, this chapter argued for 

a new business model for the NRC, and the organization seems to be making modest progress in that 

direction. However, whether an institution steeped 

in history and tradition can keep up with the pace 

of evolving national needs remains to be seen.

The fourth leadership principle is possibly the 

most important. Providing and utilizing scientific 

advice requires partnership. NASA cannot deliver a 

world-class space research program without sound 

advice about scientific opportunities and priorities 

from the research community, participation of U.S. 

scientists in the enterprise, and supportive budgets 

and policies from the Congress and the White 

House. The scientific community cannot make the 

progress it wants without NASA’s direct support 

in planning and executing a space science research 

and development program. In addition, Congress 

cannot ensure that the American people will have 

a research program that serves the national interest unless it hears and understands the best scientific advice that the nation can obtain. All the 

players need to understand and embrace a process 

that is open to ideas, scientifically sound, tested by 

constructive tensions, and ultimately focused on 

achievement via partnership.

Earlier chapters have described an advisory ecosystem that has experienced a variety of stresses. 

Ecosystems often manage to recover from stresses 

and to emerge as robust as they were before. 

NASA’s advisory ecosystem has demonstrated that 

capacity in the past, and it should be able to do so 

in the future. Past conflicts—whether over priorities or resources or authority—have been resolved 

by players that have been willing to seek consensus, 

open to embrace partnership, and above all, prepared to exercise leadership.

257

Bibliographic Essay

To the author’s knowledge, this book is the first comprehensive treatment of the history and 

implications of outside scientific advice to NASA. 

However, Bruce L. R. Smith’s The Advisors: Scientists 

in the Policy Process (The Brookings Institution, 

Washington, DC, 1992) provides a nice highlevel overview of the history of science advice to 

the government, and it includes case studies from 

the Department of Defense, the Environmental 

Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the 

Department of State, NASA, and the White House. 

Smith’s emphasis is on the interfaces between science and politics, but he does not dig into the 

details of the wide array of advisory fora. Also, Peter 

Blair provides a nice concise summary of the history of the advisory roles of the National Academy 

of Sciences and recent trends in its roles (Peter 

D. Blair, “The evolving role of the US National 

Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 

in providing science and technology policy advice to 

the US government,” Palgrave Communications 2, 

Article number 16030, 7 June 2016).

There are several useful historical treatments of 

the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 

(NACA). In particular, chapter 1 of Model Research

by Alex Roland (NASA SP-4130, NASA History 

Division, 1985) provides an excellent summary 

of the NACA’s origins, and Orders of Magnitude: 

A History of the NACA and NASA, 1915–1990

by Roger E. Bilstein (NASA SP-4406, NASA 

History Division, 1989) covers the NACA’s early 

years and its transition into NASA. A NASA 

History Division publication, The National 

Advisory Committee for Aeronautics: An Annotated 

Bibliography, (Monographs in Aerospace History, 

No. 55, 2014, NASA SP-2014-4555) provides 

many other useful sources. For coverage of the early 

evolution of NASA’s science programs, Homer E. 

Newell’s Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space 

Science (NASA SP-4211, NASA History Division, 

1980) and John E. Naugle’s First Among Equals: 

The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments

(NASA SP-4215, NASA History Division, 1991) 

are superb. Both Newell and Naugle discuss relationships between NASA and its internal and external advisory bodies during the Agency’s formative 

years. For a detailed picture of the evolution of the 

NASA headquarters organization and how NASA’s 

science offices related to the rest of the Agency at 

different times, one can consult The Evolution of 

the NASA Organization, which was prepared by the 

NASA Office of Management in 1985; it is available on the NASA History Division Web site at 

http://history.nasa.gov/orgcharts/evol_org.pdf.

An August 1976 paper in the NASA 

Archives—“The Lunar and Planetary Missions 

Board”—by University of Virginia professor Barry 

Rutizer (HHN-138) provides a particularly informative history of the activities of the Lunar and 

Planetary Missions Board. The NASA Archives also 

have useful collections of correspondence and documents about NASA’s various advisory bodies.

The seven-volume Exploring the Unknown documentary history series, which has been prepared 

for the NASA History Division by John Logsdon 

and collaborators, has many useful documents that 

are complemented by incisive introductory essays. 

The following volumes were particularly helpful for 

this book:

• Logsdon, John M., ed., with Linda J. Lear, 

Jannelle Warren Findley, Ray A. Williamson, 

and Dwayne A. Day. Exploring the Unknown: 

Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. 

Civil Space Program, Volume I, Organizing 

for Exploration. NASA SP-4407, 1995. 
258 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

• Logsdon, John M., ed., with Amy Paige 

Snyder, Roger D. Launius, Stephen J. Garber, 

and Regan Anne Newport. Exploring the 

Unknown: Selected Documents in the History 

of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume V, 

Exploring the Cosmos. NASA SP-4407, 2001. 

• Logsdon, John M., ed., with Stephen J. 

Garber, Roger D. Launius, and Ray A. 

Williamson. Exploring the Unknown: Selected 

Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil 

Space Program, Volume VI: Space and Earth 

Science. NASA SP-2004-4407, 2004. 

Several episodes in the history of space science 

are nicely captured in detail in various pieces. For 

example, John Logsdon’s account of the near death 

of NASA’s planetary program (“The Survival Crisis 

of the U.S. Solar System Exploration Program”) is 

in Roger Launius’ book, Exploring the Solar System: 

The History and Science of Planetary Probes (Palgrave 

Macmillan, 2012). Robert W. Smith describes the 

advisory history of the Hubble Space Telescope in 

The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA, Science, and 

Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1989). Martin 

Harwit’s book, In Search of the True Universe: The 

Tools, Shaping, and Cost of Cosmological Thought

(Cambridge University Press, 2013), complements 

Smith’s account and expands on it to cover other 

space astronomy missions.

The archives of the National Academy of 

Sciences have relatively complete records of the 

activities of various National Academies boards 

and committees. The Web site of the Space Studies 

Board (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/index.

htm) provides a complete list of all SSB study 

reports going back to 1958 (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/SSB_051650#1950s), and the 

site includes links to the reports themselves. The 

SSB also tracks the history of its advisory activities 

in its annual reports, which are posted at http://sites.

nationalacademies.org/SSB/SSB_051650. One particularly useful feature of the annual reports is a set 

of diagrams that display timelines and relationships 

for SSB reports in each scientific discipline area. 

The National Academies Press Web site permits 

one to search for other National Research Council 

reports.

“Federal Advisory Committees: An Overview” 

by Wendy R. Ginsberg (Congressional Research 

Service, 7-5700, R40520, 16 April 2009) provides 

a good overview of the Federal Advisory Committee 

Act history and content.

For advisory committee activities and NASA 

reactions over the period 1980 through late 1994, 

the author has also relied on his personal notes. 

Those notes then cover NRC Space Studies Board 

activities from early 1998 through about 2012.

Two oral history collections have been helpful 

to gain insights about some of the key players in 

NASA science. One is the NASA Oral History 

Program, for which many interview transcripts are 

available at http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/participants.htm. Another is maintained by the 

Niels Bohr Library and Archives of the American 

Institute of Physics, which has interview transcripts 

online at https://www.aip.org/history-programs/

niels-bohr-library/oral-histories.

Finally, the author conducted interviews with 

many current and former government officials 

and with scientists who have been substantively 

involved in developing scientific advice for NASA. 

A list of those interviews follows [an asterisk denotes 

interviews for which a transcript is available in the 

NASA Oral History program collection.]:

*Mark R. Abbott; Dean and Professor, College 

of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, 

Oregon State University; interview via telephone; 26 March 2014

*Marc S. Allen; Deputy Associate Administrator 

for Research, NASA Science Mission 

Directorate; Washington, DC; 9 September 

2013 and 7 May 2014 
Bibliographic Essay 259

*Daniel N. Baker; Director, Laboratory for 

Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of 

Colorado; Boulder, CO; 2 November 2014

Radford Byerly, Jr.; former Chief of Staff, 

Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 

U.S. House of Representatives; Boulder, CO; 3 

November 2014

*Claude R. Canizares; Bruno Rossi Professor of 

Physics and Vice President, MIT; and former 

SSB chair; Cambridge, MA; 5 December 2013

Arthur Charo; Senior Program Officer, National 

Research Council; Washington, DC; 8 May 

2014

Mary L. Cleave; former Associate Administrator, 

NASA Science Mission Directorate; Annapolis, 

MD; 16 July 2014

Bruce B. Darling; Executive Officer, National 

Research Council; Washington, DC; 16 March 

2015

Dwayne A. Day; Senior Program Officer, National 

Research Council; Washington, DC; 8 May 

2014

*Alphonso V. Diaz; Vice President for Financial 

Affairs and Treasurer, Marymount University, 

and former NASA Associate Administrator for 

Science; Washington, DC; 1 August 2014

*Lennard A. Fisk; Thomas M. Donahue 

Distinguished University Professor of Space 

Science, University of Michigan, former NASA 

Associate Administrator for Space Science and 

Applications and former SSB Chair; Portland, 

OR; 10 October 2013

*Robert A. Frosch; Senior Associate in Science, 

Technology, and Public Policy Program, 

Harvard University, and former NASA 

Administrator; Woods Hole, MA; 6 December 

2013

Neil Gehrels; Chief of Astroparticle Physics 

Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight 

Center; telephone interview; 7 July 2014

David Goldston; Director of Government Affairs, 

Natural Resources Defense Council, and 

former Chief of Staff of the House Committee 

on Science; Washington, DC; 21 November 

2014

*Richard M. Goody; Mallinckrodt Professor 

of Planetary Physics (Emeritus), Harvard 

University, and former SSB Chair; Woods 

Hole, MA; 5 December 2014

James L. Green; Director of Planetary Science, 

NASA Science Mission Directorate; 

Washington, DC; 8 May 2014 and 7 

December 2015

Michael D. Griffin; Chairman and CEO, Schafer 

Corporation, and former NASA Administrator; 

Arlington, VA; 20 November 2014

John M. Grunsfeld; Associate Administrator, 

NASA Science Mission Directorate; 

Washington, DC; 31 July 2014

*Paul Hertz; Director of Astrophysics, NASA 

Science Mission Directorate; Washington, DC; 

25 November 2013

James F. Hinchman; Deputy Executive Officer, 

National Research Council; Washington, DC; 

9 October 2014

Noel W. Hinners; former NASA Associate 

Administrator and Chief Scientist; telephone 

interview; 11 and 17 December 2013
260 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

*Wesley T. Huntress; Director Emeritus, 

Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution 

of Washington, and former NASA Associate 

Administrator for Science; Washington, DC; 4 

November 2013

Amy P. Kaminski; Senior Policy Advisor, Office of 

the NASA Chief Scientist; Washington, DC; 

17 March 2015

*Charles F. Kennel; Distinguished Professor of 

Atmospheric Science, Scripps Institution 

of Oceanography, former NASA Associate 

Administrator for Earth Science, former NASA 

Advisory Council Chair, and former SSB 

Chair; telephone interview; 20 January 2014

Mary E. Kicza; former NOAA Assistant 

Administrator for Satellite and Information 

Services; Washington, DC; 7 August 2014

*Louis J. Lanzerotti; Distinguished Research 

Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 

and former SSB Chair; telephone interview; 25 

February 2014

Grace Leung; Director of Finance, City of 

Sunnyvale, CA; telephone interview; 14 August 

2014

Janet G. Luhmann; Senior Fellow, Space Sciences 

Laboratory, University of California at 

Berkeley; Tucson, AZ; 11 November 2014

*Kevin B. Marvel; Executive Officer, American 

Astronomical Society; Tucson, AZ, and 

Washington, DC; 15 October 2013 and 14 

July 2014

Ralph L. McNutt; Chief Scientist, Johns Hopkins 

University Applied Physics Laboratory; Tucson, 

AZ; 11 November 2014

Michael H. Moloney; Director for Space and 

Aeronautics, National Research Council; 

Washington, DC; 15 July 2014 and 18 March 

2015

Richard M. Obermann; Democratic Chief of 

Staff, House Committee on Science, Space, 

and Technology; Washington, DC; 22 October 

2014

Kathie L. Olsen; Founder and Managing Director, 

ScienceWorks International LLC, former 

NASA Chief Scientist, and former NSF 

Deputy Director; telephone interview; 25 

August 2014

Joel R. Parriot; Deputy Executive Officer 

and Director of Public Policy, American 

Astronomical Society; Washington, DC; 14 

July 2014 

*Charles J. Pellerin; President, 4-D Systems, 

former NASA Director of Astrophysics; telephone interview; 23 October 2013

Jeffrey D. Rosendhal; former NASA Assistant 

Associate Administrator for Space Science and 

Applications; Washington, DC; 15 November 

2013

*Marcia J. Rieke; Regents’ Professor of Astronomy, 

University of Arizona; Tucson, AZ; 11 

November 2014

Harrison H. Schmitt; Honorary Associate and 

Fellow of the College of Engineering at 

University of Wisconsin-Madison and former 

NAC Chair; telephone interview; 17 February 

2015

*Kathryn S. Schmoll; former Vice President 

for Finance and Administration, University 
Bibliographic Essay 261

Corporation for Atmospheric Research; 

Boulder, CO; 3 November 2014 

Donald C. Shapero; Senior Program Officer, 

National Research Council; Washington, DC; 

17 December 2013

Paul Shawcross; Science and Space Branch Chief, 

Office of Management and Budget; with Grace 

Hu and J. D. Kundu, OMB budget examiners; 

telephone interview; 30 December 2014

David S. Smith; Senior Program Officer, National 

Research Council; Washington, DC; 15 July 

2013

*Marcia S. Smith; Founder and Editor, 

SpacePolicyOnline.com, and former SSB 

Director; Washington, DC; 3 September 2013

Steven W. Squyres; James A. Weeks Professor of 

Physical Sciences, Cornell University, and 

Chair, NASA Advisory Council; telephone 

interview; 28 January 2015

*S. Alan Stern; CEO and President, The Golden 

Spike Company, and former NASA Associate 

Administrator for Science; telephone interview; 

6 August 2014

Ellen Stofan; NASA Chief Scientist; telephone 

interview; 12 January 2015

Stephen E. Strom; former Chair of the Five 

College Observatory Astronomy Department, 

MA, and former member of the scientific staff, 

National Optical Astronomy Observatory; 

Tucson, AZ; 6 November 2014

Michael S. Turner; Bruce and Diana Rauner 

Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy 

and Astrophysics, Enrico Fermi Institute, 

Director, Kavli Institute for Cosmological 

Physics, University of Chicago, and former 

NSF Assistant Director for Mathematics and 

Physical Sciences; Chicago, IL; 11 November 

2013

*Edward J. Weiler; former NASA Associate 

Administrator for Science; Washington, DC; 

14 August 2013

Pamela L. Whitney; Professional Staff Member, 

House Committee on Science, Space, and 

Technology; Washington, DC; 8 August 2014

Gregory J. Williams; Deputy Associate 

Administrator for Policy and Plans, Human 

Exploration and Operations Mission 

Directorate; telephone interview; 21 February 

2014

George L. Withbroe; former Director of the 

NASA Sun-Earth Connection Division; telephone interview; 25 July 2014

Dan Woods; Director for Strategic Integration 

and Management, NASA Science Mission 

Directorate; Washington, DC; 23 March 2015

*A. Thomas Young; former Executive Vice 

President, Lockheed Martin Corporation, and 

former SSB Vice Chair; telephone interview; 

20 February 2014

263

Acronyms

AAAC Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory 

Committee

AEC Atomic Energy Commission

AFTA Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets

AIM Astrometric Interferometry Mission

APL Applied Physics Laboratory

AMB Astronomy Missions Board

AMS Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

ASEB Aeronautics and Space Engineering 

Board

Athena Advanced Telescope for High Energy 

Astrophysics

AURA Association of Universities for 

Research in Astronomy

AXAF Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility

BPA Board on Physics and Astronomy

CATE cost and technical evaluation

COBE Cosmic Background Explorer

CODMAC Committee on Data Management 

and Computation

COMPLEX Committee on Planetary and Lunar 

Exploration

Con-X Constellation-X x-ray observatory

COSEPUP Committee on Science, Engineering, 

and Public Policy

COSPAR Committee on Space Research

COSPUP Committee on Science and Public 

Policy

CRAF Comet Rendezvous and Asteroid 

Flyby

CRS Congressional Research Service

CSSP Committee on Solar and Space 

Physics

CSTR Committee on Solar Terrestrial 

Research

DOC Department of Commerce

DOD Department of Defense

DOE Department of Energy

ELV expendable launch vehicle

EOS Earth Observing System

ESA European Space Agency

ESAC Earth Sciences Advisory Committee

ESSC European Space Science Committee

ESSC Earth System Sciences Committee

EUVE Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer

FACA Federal Advisory Committee Act

FESAC Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory 

Committee

FUSE Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer

GLAST Gamma-ray Large Area Space 

Telescope

GP-B Gravity Probe B

GPRA Government Performance and Results 

Act

GPRAMA GPRA Modernization Act

HEAO High-Energy Astrophysics 

Observatory

HEPAP High Energy Physics Advisory Panel

HRC Historical Reference Collection

HST Hubble Space Telescope

IGY International Geophysical Year

IMCE International Space Station 

Management and Cost Evaluation

IRT Independent Review Team

ISPM International Solar Polar Mission

ISS International Space Station

IXO International X-ray Observatory

JAXA Japanese Space Agency

JDEM Joint Dark Energy Mission

JWST James Webb Space Telescope

LGO Lunar Geoscience Observer

LISA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

LPMB Lunar and Planetary Missions Board

LST Large Space Telescope
264 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

MAO Mars Aeronomy Observer

MEPAG Mars Exploration Program Analysis 

Group

MOWG Management Operations Working 

Group

MPIAT Mars Program Independent 

Assessment Team

MPSAC Mathematical and Physical Sciences 

Advisory Committee

NACA National Advisory Committee for 

Aeronautics

NAC NASA Advisory Council

NAE National Academy of Engineering

NAPA National Academy of Public 

Administration

NAS National Academy of Sciences

NASA National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration

NBS National Bureau of Standards

NEAR Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous

NEO near-Earth asteroid

NESDIS National Environmental Satellite, 

Data, and Information Service

NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration

NRC National Research Council

NRL Naval Research Laboratory

NSAC Nuclear Science Advisory Committee

NSB National Science Board

NSF National Science Foundation

OAO Orbiting Astronomical Observatory

OMB Office of Management and Budget

OSSA Office of Space Science and 

Applications

OTA Office of Technology Assessment

P5 Particle Physics Project Prioritization 

Panel

PAC Physics Advisory Committee

PSC Physical Sciences Committee

RTAC Research and Technology Advisory 

Council

RRC Report Review Committee

SAB Space Applications Board

SAC Science Advisory Committee

SAFIR Single Aperture Far Infra-Red 

observatory

SDO Solar Dynamics Observatory

SDT Science Definition Team

SESAC Space and Earth Science Advisory 

Committee

SIM Space Interferometry Mission

SIRTF Space Infra-Red Telescope Facility

SMD Science Mission Directorate

SNAP Super Nova Acceleration Probe

SOFIA Stratospheric Observatory for 

Infrared Astronomy

SPAC Space Program Advisory Council

SSB Space Science Board or Space Studies 

Board (after 1989)

SSAC Space Science Advisory Committee

SSEC Solar System Exploration Committee

SSAAC Space Science and Applications 

Advisory Committee

STScI Space Telescope Science Institute

TPF Terrestrial Planet Finder

UARRP Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research 

Panel

UNH University of New Hampshire

WFIRST Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope
265

About the Author

J

oseph K. Alexander is a space scientist who pursued his research career at the NASA Goddard 

Space Flight Center. He subsequently served in 

senior science management and policy development roles at the National Research Council, 

the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of 

Research and Development, NASA Headquarters, 

and the White House Office of Science and 

Technology Policy. He and his wife, Diana, reside 

outside Tucson, Arizona.

267

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Matranga, Gene J., C. Wayne Ottinger, 

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Renee M. Rottner. Making the Invisible Visible: A 

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Olympus: An EVA Chronology, 1997–2011, Vol. 

2. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 50, 

2016. NASA SP-2016-4550.

Gelzer, Christian. The Spoken Word III: 

Recollections of Dryden History; The Shuttle 

Years. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 

52, 2013. NASA SP-2013-4552.

Ross, James C. NASA Photo One. Monographs 

in Aerospace History, No. 53, 2013. NASA 

SP-2013-4553.
The NASA History Series 277

Launius, Roger D. Historical Analogs for the 

Stimulation of Space Commerce. Monographs 

in Aerospace History, No 54, 2014. NASA 

SP-2014-4554.

Buchalter, Alice R., and Patrick M. Miller, 

comps. The National Advisory Committee 

for Aeronautics: An Annotated Bibliography. 

Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 55, 

2014. NASA SP-2014-4555.

Chambers, Joseph R., and Mark A. Chambers. 

Emblems of Exploration: Logos of the NACA and 

NASA. Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 

56, 2015. NASA SP-2015-4556.

ELECTRONIC MEDIA, NASA SP-4600

Remembering Apollo 11: The 30th Anniversary Data 

Archive CD-ROM. NASA SP-4601, 1999.

Remembering Apollo 11: The 35th Anniversary 

Data Archive CD-ROM. NASA SP-2004-4601, 

2004. This is an update of the 1999 edition.

The Mission Transcript Collection: U.S. Human 

Spaceflight Missions from Mercury Redstone 3 to 

Apollo 17. NASA SP-2000-4602, 2001.

Shuttle-Mir: The United States and Russia Share 

History’s Highest Stage. NASA SP-2001-4603, 

2002.

U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission Presents 

Born of Dreams—Inspired by Freedom. NASA 

SP-2004-4604, 2004.

Of Ashes and Atoms: A Documentary on the NASA 

Plum Brook Reactor Facility. NASA SP-2005-

4605, 2005.

Taming Liquid Hydrogen: The Centaur Upper Stage 

Rocket Interactive CD-ROM. NASA SP-2004-

4606, 2004.

Fueling Space Exploration: The History of NASA’s 

Rocket Engine Test Facility DVD. NASA 

SP-2005-4607, 2005.

Altitude Wind Tunnel at NASA Glenn Research 

Center: An Interactive History CD-ROM. NASA 

SP-2008-4608, 2008.

A Tunnel Through Time: The History of NASA’s 

Altitude Wind Tunnel. NASA SP-2010-4609, 

2010.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, 

NASA SP-4700

Dick, Steven J., and Keith Cowing, eds. Risk and 

Exploration: Earth, Sea and the Stars. NASA 

SP-2005-4701, 2005.

Dick, Steven J., and Roger D. Launius. Critical 

Issues in the History of Spaceflight. NASA 

SP-2006-4702, 2006.

Dick, Steven J., ed. Remembering the Space Age: 

Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Conference. 

NASA SP-2008-4703, 2008.

Dick, Steven J., ed. NASA’s First 50 Years: 

Historical Perspectives. NASA SP-2010-4704, 

2010.

SOCIETAL IMPACT, NASA SP-4800

Dick, Steven J., and Roger D. Launius. Societal 

Impact of Spaceflight. NASA SP-2007-4801, 

2007.

Dick, Steven J., and Mark L. Lupisella. Cosmos 

and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic 

Context. NASA SP-2009-4802, 2009.

Dick, Steven J. Historical Studies in the Societal 

Impact of Spaceflight. NASA SP-2015-4803, 

2015.

279

Index

A

Abbott, Mark, 147

Abdalati, Waleed, 254

Academy-Research Council, 2–3, 10, 26

Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (Athena), 

113, 183

Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), 76–77, 79, 

170–171, 219, 233. See also Chandra X-ray Observatory

Advisors: Scientists in the Policy Process, The, 47n1, 209

advisory committees. See also individual.

ad hoc committees, 3, 11, 17–18, 21, 98

ad hoc NOAA, 154

FACA list of, 146n4

independence of, 12, 97–98

NACA technical, 10

origin of, 1

precedent for, 8, 11–12

redundancy of, 47–48

structure, 54

timeline, 55, 114

advisory reports, 15, 18–19, 64, 162–163. See also types of 

reports; individual reports

versus advocacy, 212–214

clout, 202

Cold War effect on, 29

conflicts of interest, 223–225

demand for, 244

effectiveness of, 200

eminence-based, 24

failures of, 202, 204, 210–214

and implementation, 23

international perspectives, 247–250

number of, 145n2

recruitment for, 243

scope, 20–21, 216n5

and self-interest, 244–245

successes of, 199–210, 250–255

workshop reports, 13, 118n32, 244–245

Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB), 28, 31, 45, 

98, 154, 187

Agnew, Spiro, 39

Aldridge, Edward, 122

Alexander, Joseph K., 116

Allen, Marc, 86–87, 89, 157, 194–195

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), 37, 228–229

American Aeronautical Society. See National Advisory 

Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)

American Astronomical Society, 18, 112, 186, 222

analysis groups, 141–143, 224

animal rights groups, 93, 99

Apollo program, 24, 33, 36–39, 61, 136

Arecibo Observatory, 148

Armstrong, John, 196

Asrar, Ghassem, 116

“Assessment of Balance in NASA’s Science Programs, an” 

(report), 191–193, 201–202, 209–211, 214, 219, 233

“Assessment of NASA’s Draft 2003 Earth Science Enterprise 

Strategy” (report), 85

“Assessment of Options for Extending the Life of the Hubble 

Space Telescope” (report), 209. See also Hubble Space 

Telescope (HST) life extension study; Lanzerotti report

“Assessment of Planned Scientific Content of the CRAF 

Mission” (report), 19, 22

“Assessment of Programs in Solar and Space Physics” (report), 

23

“Assessment of the Planned Scientific Content of the LGO, 

MAO, and NEAR Missions” (report), 19, 23

astrobiology, 101, 180–181

cuts to, 137, 140, 191–192

defined, 14, 140

exobiology, 14n45, 17

reports, 19

Astrometric Interferometry Mission (AIM), 113

astronomy, 2, 14, 28, 77, 79

Astronomy Missions Board (AMB), 42–43, 65, 67, 216, 233, 

238. See also Missions Boards

charge, 35, 38

folded into SPAC committee, 43

Goldberg at, 40, 111

Long-Range Program in Space Astronomy report, 38–39, 

216, 233

scope, 38–39, 65

timeline, 34

Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets (AFTA), 183

Atkins, William, 109n2

Atomic Energy Commission, 11, 25, 111

Augustine, Norman, 151

B

Bahcall, John, 79, 112, 120–121, 209

Baker, D. James, 79

Baker, Daniel, 155, 161–162, 237, 241–243, 254

Balance report, 122, 189–193, 201–202, 209–211, 214, 219, 

233

Barron, Eric, 172–173

Beggs, James M., 24–25, 58, 75, 226

Belton, Michael, 114

Berkner, Lloyd V.

ad hoc committees, 21

background, 10
280 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

International Geophysical Year (IGY), 7, 12, 34

ionospheric research, 37

letter reports, 24

personality of, 10

service of, 12

SSB chair, 9–12, 14, 17–18

summer studies, 25

Bernstein, Ralph, 30

Blumenthal, Marjory, 212

Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate, 23, 154, 173, 196

Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA), 28, 112n14, 118, 

120, 149–150, 181

“Connecting Quarks” report, 121, 181–184, 202, 210

Bodde, David L., 31–32

Boehlert, Sherwood, 182n36, 192

Bolden, Charles, 140–142, 159, 205, 224

Bretherton, Francis P., 60, 79, 172, 206, 209

Bretherton report, 60, 116, 172–173, 206, 242, 255

Bronk, Detlev W., 9–11, 15

Brown, George, 79

Burbidge, Geoffrey, 36

Burbidge, Margaret, 11n39, 36

Bush, George H. W., 61, 93

Bush, George W., 116, 140, 151–152

administration priorities, 139, 143, 228

Vision for Space Exploration, 121–122, 136–139, 

189–191, 210–211, 253

Bush, Vannevar, 2

Byerly, Radford, 56

C

Cameron, A.G.W., 20, 54

Canizares, Claude R.

advisory structure, 156, 232

FACA section 15 compliance, 98–99

international collaboration, 250

quoted, 57–58, 68, 98–99, 147, 180

SESAC chair, 57

SSAAC chair, 79

SSB chair, 58n15, 179–180, 196

Cannon, Robert, 226

Carlucci, Frank, 48

Carper, Tom, 84

Carter, James Earl (“Jimmy”), 53–54, 56, 58, 69, 74

Cassini program, 56, 59, 76–77, 101, 219, 233

“Categorization of the Mars Orbiter Mission, the” (report), 19, 

22

Challenger (Space Shuttle). See also Space Shuttle

accident, 20–21, 56, 60, 75–76

accident impacts, 57, 64, 69, 73, 226

Chambers, W. Irving, 3

Chandra X-ray Observatory, 112, 170–171, 183, 233. See 

also Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF)

Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan, 36

Cleave, Mary, 140, 193

Clinton, William Jefferson (“Bill”), 83, 94, 146, 179–180

Cluster program, 104

Columbia (Space Shuttle), 121, 186, 189, 201, 228

Columbia Accident Investigations Board, 121

Comet Rendezvous and Asteroid Flyby (CRAF), 21–22, 59, 

76–77, 234

Comité Special de l’Année Geophysique Internationale 

(CSAGI), 7. See also International Geophysical Year (IGY)

Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration 

Policy, 122

Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics (CAA), 122–123, 

138–139, 225

Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration 

(COMPLEX), 22–23, 59, 66, 97, 208

Committee on Science and Public Policy (COSPUP), 28

Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy 

(COSEPUP), 87–88

Committee on Solar and Space Physics (CSSP), 18, 23, 32, 

196, 211

Committee on Solar Terrestrial Research (CSTR), 196, 198

Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Relations, 23

Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), 26, 66, 248–249

Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, 171, 183

conflicts of interest, 4–5, 12, 34, 95, 223, 252

DOE and, 151

FACA impacts, 127, 162, 213, 223n26

NAS and, 17

NASA advisory structure, 42, 224–225, 240–241

Newell on, 17

NRC and, 127, 151, 191n29

Smith on, 241

SSB and, 191n29

Stern on, 225

Congress (U.S.)

advisory legislation, 242

advisory structure, 64

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), 228

Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), 

151–152

attitudes toward NASA, 222

decadal surveys, 114, 229

DOE oversight, 150

FACA amendments, 94

FACA legislation, 47–52, 204

Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), 83–91

House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 143

Hubble Space Telescope (HST), 112, 185–189, 206, 209, 

233

interim NASA decadal survey (2005), 116

knowledge of advisory processes, 242–243

mandated studies, 23, 163–164, 185–193, 233

Mars missions, 201

Mission to Planet Earth program reviews, 61

NAC independence, 141

NACA appropriations, 3

NASA appropriations, 109, 115, 128–129, 170, 189–193, 

195–196

NASA Authorization Acts, 104n14, 117, 123–125, 

143–144, 164–165, 189
Index 281

NASA communication with, 89, 202, 208

NASA oversight, 76, 79, 109, 123–129, 181–182, 222, 

231, 255

NASA senior reviews, 104–105

NASA strategic plan, 74

NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017, 144

National Academy of Science, 1

National Aeronautics and Space Act, 9

National Plan for Civil Earth Observations, 128

National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations, 128

NRC decadal strategy surveys, 109–112

NSF Authorization Acts, 152

OSSA reorganization, 195–196

proposed elimination of SAB, 32

quoted (staff), 129

relationship with OSSA, 76

“Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century” (report), 121, 181–184, 202, 

210. See also Quarks-to-the-Cosmos report; Turner report

Constellation program, 136–137, 182–183

Con-X Observatory, 113, 182–183

Cordova, France, 97

Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission, 73

Cosmic Frontier program, 184

“Crisis in Space and Earth Science: A Time for a New 

Commitment, the” (SESAC Crisis Report), 55–58, 210, 

255

advisory timeline, 55

Challenger accident, 64, 69

circumstances leading to, 56–57, 69, 73–74, 101

recommendations, 57–58, 194, 250–251

Cuellar, Henry, 84

Culberson, John, 109n1, 115, 130

Curiosity rover/science laboratory, 115–116, 139n20, 176

Cuzzi, Jeffrey, 77

D

Darling, Bruce, 245–246

“Data Management and Computation—Volume I: Issues and 

Recommendations” (report), 19–20

decadal surveys, 77, 126, 148, 211, 226

advisory timeline, 34

and advocacy, 212

after NAC restructuring, 138

Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), 

152

astronomy and astrophysics decadal surveys, 120–121, 124, 

147, 170, 219, 253

attitudes toward, 159–160, 162

audience for, 205

Bahcall report, 79, 112, 120, 209

clout, 157, 182

cost and technical evaluation (CATE), 247

decision rules, 75n7

defined, 28

described (John Grunsfeld), 119

future of, 246–247

Greenstein report, 109–113, 117

interim NASA decadal survey (2005), 116–117

international perspectives, 248–250

lessons learned, 118–120, 204

life-cycle cost estimates, 117

list of, 124

midterm reviews, 120–129, 124, 207

mission cost estimates, 120, 240, 248–249

mission priorities, 119–120, 122, 183, 207

mission technical readiness, 117

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and 

Medicine, 164–165

NOAA role in, 155

NRC decadal strategy surveys, 109–133

NRC reports, 89, 150

NSF role in, 148–149

origin of, 109–113, 216

phasing problems, 118, 248–249

planetary science survey (2003), 114–115

process chart, 131

process review (2005), 122–123

science strategies, 20

scope, 110, 114, 116, 121, 205–206, 228, 242

SSB chair, 117–118

SSB reports, 86, 149–150, 155, 190, 246–247

SSB role in, 164, 254, 255

status of, 112, 120–121

successes of, 130–133, 200, 202, 213–214, 232–233, 243

timeline, 114

various, 112, 117, 120–121, 124, 206

Whitford report, 110

deGrasse Tyson, Neil, 122

DeLauer, Richard D., 31

Department of Defense (DOD), 31, 111, 122, 135

Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 9–11

advisory funding, 245

Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC), 

150–151

GPRA implementation, 88

Hubble Space Telescope (HST), 187

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 79

summer studies, 25

Department of Energy (DOE), 11, 111, 121

advisory structure, 149–152, 228, 231

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), 37, 228

“Connecting Quarks” report, 181–183, 210

GPRA implementation, 88

partnership with NASA, 183

role, 146, 228

Super Nova Acceleration Probe (SNAP), 182–183

Department of Health and Human Services, 93–94, 195

Diaz, Al, 171, 188, 219, 238, 250

Discovery program, 126, 202–204, 233–234, 242

Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, 173–174

program definition group, 169

Donahue, Thomas M.

background, 25
282 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

budgetary concerns, 21

interpersonal relations, 225–226

letter reports, 24–25, 96

NASA R&D budget, 75

SSB chair, 18, 24–25, 32, 64, 80, 96

summer studies, 25–26

Dressler, Alan, 118

Dryden, Hugh L., 4–5, 12, 15, 63

DuBridge, Lee A., 39

Dutton, John, 194–196

E

Earth Observing System (EOS) program, 61, 74, 76–78, 

171–173

Earth system science, 14, 60, 172, 202–203, 206, 212, 

246–248

Earth Systems Science Committee (ESSC), 54–55, 59–61, 

169, 172, 206

Edelson, Burton I., 56–57, 60, 73, 172, 200, 242

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 8–9, 27, 93

“eminence-based” reports. See letter reports

engineering-science tension, 4, 24, 252

Europa program, 115, 213

European Space Agency (ESA)

budgets, 118

ISPM program, 58

IXO program, 183

joint planning with NASA, 26, 37, 73, 223, 248–249

Mars Sample Return, 115–116

Everitt, Francis, 226–228

Explorer program, 19, 57, 77, 112–113, 115

experiments on, 251

Explorer 1, 6, 9, 34, 251

launch rate, 139

as Planetary Observer model, 59

reports, 19

successes of, 9, 173

Extreme Ultraviolent Explorer (EUVE), 21

F

Fairbank, William, 226

Fairchild Space Company, 41, 58

Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE), 112–113

Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer (FAST), 104

“faster-better-cheaper,” 79–80, 174, 176n21

Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), 83, 90, 91, 255

Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), 

152

Department of Energy (DOE), 149–150

FACA section 15, 94

impacts of, 160–163, 162, 217, 223–225, 229, 239, 240–242

introduced, 49

list of committees, 146n4

NASA Advisory Council (NAC) role, 53, 141, 220

National Science Foundation (NSF), 145–146

NOAA, 153–155

origin of, 47–48

passage, 45

provisions, 49–50, 67, 93, 217

timeline, 55

Fellows, Jack, 61, 76

Field, George B., 54, 170–171, 218

Findlay, John W., 37, 39

Fink, Daniel J., 30

Firor, John W., 54

Fisk, Lennard A.

background, 73–74

FACA section 15 compliance, 98, 224

Gravity Probe B mission, 227

management style, 74–75

NAC independence, 135–136

NAC structure reform, 138

NASA advisory structure, 156, 221, 228

NASA budget growth, 101

NASA chief scientist, 80, 163

NASA strategic plan, 74–81, 238, 252

O’Keefe’s administration, 135–136, 159, 217–218

OSSA Associate Administrator, 58, 65, 73, 172

quoted, 65–66, 76, 98, 118, 135–136, 138, 156

SAB elimination, 31

SSB chair, 116, 208, 217

SSB decadal survey workshop (2012), 118

Fletcher, James C.

NASA Administrator, 16–17, 43–44, 67, 163, 238

opposition to Richard Goody’s SSB appointment, 16–17, 

217, 219

proposed elimination of SAB, 31–32

Sally Ride report, 60

support for Space Shuttle priority, 20–21

focused topical reports, 18–19, 23–24

Ford, Kenneth, 140

Fowler, William A., 36–37

Freedom of Information Act, 50–51

Friedman, Herbert A., 60–61, 66, 251

Frosch, Robert A., 34, 53–54, 96

G

Galileo program, 21, 55–56, 58, 73

Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), 112–113

Gemini program, 33

Geotail program, 21, 104

global climate change, 59–61, 173

go aheads, 25n38, 101, 170, 183, 220

Goddard, Robert H., 5, 12

Goddard Space Flight Center, 16, 33, 38, 170

Diaz at, 188

Fisk at, 73

Great Observatories brainstorming group, 170

Hubble Space Telescope (HST), 186–189

NASA organization chart, 16

Riegler at, 101

scientific operations preference, 176–178

senior reviews, 101

Young at, 175
Index 283

Goldberg, Leo, 38–40, 42, 111

Goldin, Daniel, 201

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), 228

“Connecting Quarks” report, 181–184

faster-better-cheaper, 79–80, 174, 176n21

International Space Station Management and Cost 

Evaluation (IMCE), 135

Mars missions, 200

NASA Administrator, 61, 79, 135, 175, 179

NASA budget growth, 101

NASA staff reductions, 138, 160–161

OSSA reorganization, 79–81, 96, 195–196

personality of, 80, 175–176

Total Quality Management, 79

Goldston, David, 212

Goody, Richard, 16–18, 27, 60, 217, 219

Gore, Albert Arnold Jr. (“Al”), 179–181

Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), 83–91, 

114, 156, 160

Government Performance and Results Modernization Act 

(GPRAMA), 84, 114, 164

Gravity Probe A mission, 226n35

Gravity Probe B mission, 19, 37, 226–228

Great Observatories program, 56, 101, 233

Beyond Einstein program, 183, 210

brainstorming group, 169–171, 182, 200–204

Greenstein, Jesse, 110–112, 117

Greenstein report, 109–113, 117

Gregory, Fred, 136

Griffin, Michael, 231

Congressional mandated studies, 190

Hubble Space Telescope (HST), 188–189

NAC restructuring, 136–141, 146, 156, 159–160, 218–220, 

239, 255

NASA Administrator, 126, 136, 163, 190

NASA budgets, 139–140, 191–193, 218, 238

Grunsfeld, John

ESA-NASA joint planning, 248–249

NAC Science Committee, 223

NASA Associate Administrator, 141, 161, 215

NASA internal relationships, 218–220

NRC reports, 254

quoted, 119, 215–216, 248–249

“Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals” document, 93

H

Handler, Philip, 17, 217

Harwit, Martin, 170

Hertz, Paul, 97–98, 103, 128, 192–193

Heynes, Roger, 40

High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), 149–150

High-Energy Astrophysics Observatory (HEAO), 40

Hinners, Noel, 201

management style, 177–178, 223, 242

NASA Associate Administrator, 68, 79

NASM Director, 58

SSA Associate Administrator, 57, 65, 177–178

Hornig, Donald F., 177

Hornig report, 176–178, 202, 205, 214. See also

“Institutional Arrangements for the Space Telescope” 

(report)

Hoyle, Fred, 36

Hubbard, Scott, 176

Hubble Space Telescope (HST), 16, 55, 121, 170–171, 219. 

See also “Assessment of Options for Extending the Life of 

the Hubble Space Telescope” report; Lanzerotti report

budget for, 56, 111–112, 253

cancellation proposal, 58

Congressional mandated studies, 201–203, 208–209, 

213–214, 217–219

decadal survey of 1972 (Greenstein), 111–112, 117

International Solar-Terrestrial Physics program, 26

launch delayed, 73

life extension study, 185–189, 206, 213, 243–244, 255

mission control of, 176–178

scientific use report, 19

servicing missions, 121, 201–202, 206

Hunten, Donald M., 54

Huntress, Wesley, 200

Discovery program, 203, 234, 242

management style, 174, 179

NAC scientist, 137

NASA Associate Administrator, 84–85, 179–180

NASA budgets, 223

NASA Director of Solar System Exploration, 173–174

quoted, 88–89, 137–138, 180, 203

SSB reports, 242

Huygens probe, 59

I

“Implementation Plan for Priorities in Solar-System Space 

Physics, an” (report), 23

Ink, Dwight, 48

Institute of Medicine (IOM), 93–94

“Institutional Arrangements for the Space Telescope” (report), 

19, 177–178. See also Hornig report

International Astronomical Union, 2, 38, 249

International Council of Scientific Unions, 7, 9

Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), 26, 66

International Geophysical Year (IGY), 7–9, 12, 34, 63, 

247–248

International Solar Polar Mission (ISPM), 58, 74, 233

International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) program, 21, 26

International Space Station (ISS), 37, 122, 128, 133

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), 228

budget shortfalls, 139–140

costs, 190–191

experiments on, 190

Management and Cost Evaluation (IMCE), 135, 175

servicing missions, 188

International X-ray Observatory (IXO), 183

Isakowitz, Steve, 180
284 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

J

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), 112–113, 118, 

139n20, 183, 233

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 9, 173, 175–176, 203

NASA organization chart, 16

Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), 183

Juno program, 115

Jupiter missions, 55–56, 73

Cassini program, 56, 59, 76–77, 101, 219, 233

Europa program, 115, 213

Juno program, 115

Jupiter-C rocket, 9

LPMB recommendations, 19, 37

Pioneer program, 58

K

Kaplan, Joseph, 9

Kennel, Charles F., 99, 118–119, 135–137

Kicza, Mary, 155

Kistiakowsky, George, 27

Krause, Ernst H., 6

L

LaGow, Herman, 251

Lanzerotti, Louis J.

background, 57, 187

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) report, 187–189, 206, 213

letter reports, preference for, 96

NOAA ad hoc committee, 154

personality of, 187

proposed elimination of SAB, 32

quoted, 146, 154

SESAC chair, 55, 57–58, 64

SESAC Crisis Report, 194

Solar and Space Physics Committee, 114

SSB chair, 58, 79, 194

Lanzerotti report, 187–189, 201, 217–218, 244–245. See 

also “Assessment of Options for Extending the Life of 

the Hubble Space Telescope” report; Hubble Space 

Telescope (HST) life extension study

Large Space Telescope (LST). See Hubble Space Telescope 

(HST)

Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), 37, 113, 182

Lawler, Andrew, 211

Leshin, Laurie, 122

letter reports, 23–25, 64–65, 65, 95–97, 97, 163

“Assessment of Planned Scientific Content of the CRAF 

Mission” (report), 19, 22

“Assessment of the Planned Scientific Content of the LGO, 

MAO, and NEAR Missions” (report), 19, 23

“Categorization of the Mars Orbiter Mission, the” (report), 

19, 22

COMPLEX, 23, 97

defined, 13, 15, 97

eminence-based, 24

FACA section 15 compliance, 95–99, 163

list of, 19

“Man’s Role in the National Space Program” (report), 19, 24

NOAA, 153

process, 23–24, 64

Shuttle versus backup modes of launch, 20–21

SSB chair, 35

SSB prepared, 18–21, 153, 193, 205, 241, 250

Levy, Eugene, 137

Lewis, Deming, 29

Lincoln, Abraham, 1

Logsdon, John M., 79

Lunar and Planetary Missions Board (LPMB), 37, 67, 238, 

253. See also Missions Boards

charge, 35

creation of, 34–35

folded into SPAC committee, 43

scope, 65

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, 105

M

Magellan program, 21, 59

Management Operations Working Groups (MOWG), 76, 

171, 219

advisory structure, 138, 141, 218, 221

defined, 51–52

dissolution of, 156–157, 160

FACA exemption, 65–67, 218, 224

“Managing the Space Sciences” (report), 196, 201–202, 

209–210

Manhattan Project, 34, 177

“Man’s Role in the National Space Program” (report), 19, 24

Mark, Hans, 172, 200

Mars missions, 23, 37, 39, 58–59, 105, 173–176, 202

analysis groups, 142n28

budget cuts, 126

Curiosity rover/science laboratory, 115–116, 139n20, 176

decadal surveys, 115–116

Discovery program, 174

failures of, 176n21

human travel to, 60, 121

independent assessment, 175–176, 201–202

Mariner Mark II, 59, 173, 204, 223, 234

Mars Observer, 21, 59

Mars Sample Return, 115, 116, 248

meteorites, 179–181

NRC report (2006), 125–126

Mars Rock symposium, 179–181, 191, 202, 205

Marvel, Kevin

advisory committees, 146–147, 149, 222, 239

“Connecting Quarks” report, 182

HST servicing missions, 186

quoted, 146–147, 149, 182

Turner (“Connecting Quarks”) report, 182

McDonald, Frank B., 25, 56, 225–226

McElroy, John, 79

McKay, David, 179–180

McLucas, John L., 31–32

Mercer, John, 83
Index 285

Mercury missions, 37

Metcalf, Lee W., 49

midterm reviews, 123–130, 157, 207, 233, 242

decadal, 124, 164, 240

decadal surveys, 130–133

Earth science, 127–128

list of, 124

NASA budgets, 126

National Academies prepared, 148

SSB prepared, 124, 128–129

Mikulski, Barbara, 96n10, 186–187, 189, 196, 201, 209

Mission to Planet Earth program, 59–61, 80, 136, 195, 233

Missions Boards, 34, 35–40. See also Astronomy Missions 

Board (AMB); Lunar and Planetary Missions Board 

(LPMB)

Moloney, Michael, 99

Monagan, John S., 47–48

Moon missions, 12, 23–25, 38, 121, 136, 191

Moore, Berrien, 78

Morrison, David, 58

N

NASA. See National Aeronautics and Space Administration 

(NASA)

NASA Advisory Council (NAC), 30–31, 53–61, 84, 125. See 

also Space Program Advisory Council (SPAC)

advisory timeline, 55

attitudes toward, 159–160

charge, 137, 144

committee structure, 54

independence of, 141–144, 161–162

International Space Station Management and Cost 

Evaluation (IMCE), 135

NASA organization chart, 16

relationship with NASA internal committees, 161–162, 220

relationship with SSB, 138, 220

role, 135–144, 176–184, 216

Science Committee analysis groups, 142

Science Mission Directorate (SMD), 146

SESAC Crisis Report, 55–58, 64, 69, 73–74, 101, 194, 

210, 250–251, 255

Space and Earth Sciences Advisory Committee (SESAC), 

55–57, 76

Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC), 54–55, 78–80

standing committees, 205

structure, 136–137

structure reform, 137–144, 225, 239

“NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space” (Ride 

report), 60–61

National Academies, 15–16, 67, 76, 160. See also individual 

academies

advisory funding, 245–246

advisory structure, 206–207, 241–242

annual reports, 2n7

attitudes toward, 159–160, 221

Committee on Science and Public Policy (COSPUP), 28, 

109

Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy 

(COSEPUP), 87–88

cross-discipline studies, 195–196

FACA section 15 compliance, 95, 98–99, 156, 162, 239

fast-track studies, 245–246

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) report, 187–189, 201

independence of, 94, 130, 246

NASA/NSF midterm review, 148

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and 

Medicine, 149–150

relationship with NASA, 156, 215

role, 161–162

Space Studies Board (SSB), 14

National Academy of Engineering (NAE), 2n5, 15–16, 30, 

93–95, 99. See also National Academies

National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), 15–16, 

94. See also National Academies

2014 NASA Authorization bill, 143–144

FACA section 15 compliance, 94

National Academy of Sciences (NAS), 123, 177. See also

National Academies

advisory structure, 144

Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate, 23

Committee on Science and Public Policy (COSPUP), 28, 

109–110

creation of, 1

criticisms of SSB, 27

FACA section 15 compliance, 94–97

independence of, 1, 16–17, 93–94

International Geophysical Year (IGY), 8

laboratory animals, 94

Lloyd Berkner at, 10

National Research Council (NRC) creation, 2

policy changes, 2–3

relationship with SSB, 9, 10–11, 15–16

role, 1

U.S. National Academy for the International Geophysical 

Year (USNC-IGY), 7

National Academy of Sciences’ Space Science Board. See

Space Science Board (SSB)

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), 157, 

223

advisory precedence for NASA, 12, 42, 63, 123, 144, 

237–238

advisory structure, 3–5, 33

creation of, 3–4

independence of, 4

science advisory role, 3–4

science-engineering tension, 4, 24

Space Science Board (SSB) established, 9–11

Special Committee on Space Technology, 6

technical committees, 10

transformed into NASA, 9–10

National Aeronautics and Space Act, 9

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 121, 

234. See also NASA Advisory Council (NAC); Space 

Science Board (SSB)
286 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

absorption of NSF, 151–152

ad hoc committees, 21, 34–35, 141, 145, 183, 244

advisory committee costs, 221

advisory committees, external, 3, 12, 13, 63, 135, 140, 

176–184

advisory committees, external, impacts of, 185–193

advisory committees, external versus internal, 215, 229, 254

advisory committees, internal, 13, 33, 63–69, 125, 

160–161, 169–176, 240

advisory structure, 2, 33–45, 48, 50–52, 63–69, 123, 

145–157

advisory structure diagram, 64

advisory structure reform, 125, 129, 136–144, 160–162, 

255

advisory timeline, 34, 55, 114

Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), 

152–153

Astronomy Missions Board (AMB), 35, 38–40, 42–43, 65, 

67, 216, 233, 238

attitudes toward, 67, 140, 163, 176–178

Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA), 120

budget constraints, 26, 54, 61

budget cuts, 40, 58–59, 68–69, 74, 116, 239

budget cuts implemented, 139–140, 143

budget decisions, 89, 126–128

budget growth, 75, 119, 121–122, 189–190

budget projections, 40, 85–86, 120, 139

budget reviews, 76, 126

CODMAC recommendations, 20

conflicts of interest, 223–225

Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission, 73

creation of, 3–4, 9–10

criticisms of, 192

decadal surveys, 109–133

Earth Observing System (EOS) program, 61

Earth Science Enterprise (ESE), 85

Earth Systems Science Committee (ESSC), 59–61, 66, 203, 

206, 209

Earth-oriented satellite use studies, 29–30

ESSC recommendations, 60

FACA committees, 145–146, 204, 206–208, 217

FACA legislation, 48, 50–52, 67, 162

Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), 83–91, 

102, 120

Homer Newell at, 6

international collaboration, 113, 247–250

International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, 60

launch vehicle costs, 75n9

letter reports, 24, 97

Lunar and Planetary Missions Board (LPMB), 35–37, 

42–43, 65, 67, 238, 253

Management Operations Working Groups (MOWG), 

65–67, 76, 141, 156–157, 160, 171, 218–219, 224

Management Operations Working Groups (MOWG), 

defined, 51–52

Mars program independent assessment, 233

mission data analysis, 101, 252

mission longevity, 101

mission operations, 101n1

mission priorities, 57, 61, 63, 79–80, 85–86, 117, 207, 

238–239, 252

mission queue, 78–80, 210

mission resources, 125–128, 139, 189–196

Mission to Planet Earth program, 59–61, 73

Missions Boards, 34, 35–40

NAC structure reform, 137–144, 159–160

NACA advisory precedence, 12, 42, 63

National Space Policy Directive, 61

New Frontiers Program, 114–115

NRC committees, 145

Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA). See also

NASA strategic plan

Office of Space Science Plan, 85

Office of Space Sciences, 14

organization chart, 16

organizational culture, 159–160, 237–238

OSS R&A evaluation, 105–106

OSSA GPRA inquiry, 86

paper-free reports, 86n12

partnership with DOE, 183

peer review, 88, 251–252

perception of, 67

Physics Advisory Committee (PAC), 35–40, 65

Planetary Science and Astrophysics Division, 106

priorities set by SSB, 20, 119–120

Ramsey committee, 34–35, 53

relationship with AMB, 40

relationship with Congress, 242–243

relationship with NOAA, 31, 155

relationship with NRC, 216–220

relationship with scientific community, 231–232, 239–240, 

242–243

relationship with SSB, 11, 25, 127

relationships with external advisory groups, 231

research and analysis (R&A) programs, 105–106

Research and Technology Advisory Council (RTAC), 43

response to NRC’s advice, 23

Ride (Sally) report, 60–61

role, 146

Science Advisory Committee, 40

science discipline divisions, 87

science management and planning, 231–232

Science Mission Directorate (SMD), 86, 119, 139, 248

security clearance reviews, 29

senior reviews, 102–107, 147, 169, 200, 203–204, 208

Solar System Exploration Committee (SSEC), 23, 58, 66, 

69, 173–174, 204, 234

Space Applications Board (SAB), 30, 194

Space Physics Paradox Report, 197–198, 201

Space Program Advisory Council (SPAC), 42–45, 215. See 

also NASA Advisory Council

Space Science Steering Committee, 34, 65

Space Shuttle priority, 20–21

Space Task Group, 43
Index 287

Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI/STScI), 178, 186, 

202, 214, 242

Space-Based Global Change Observation System, 61

SSB recommendations, 22, 122

SSB response time, 96–97

SSB role, 11, 15–16, 44, 63–64, 66–67, 149

staff reductions, 138, 160–161

strategic plan, 32, 74–81, 84–87, 120, 252. See also Office 

of Space Science and Applications (OSSA)

summer studies, 25, 243

support for research, 24

Sustaining University Program, 21–22

National Bureau of Standards, 3, 5, 10, 25

National Institutes of Health (NIH), 88, 93–95, 195

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 

175

advisory structure, 153–155, 204, 231

decadal surveys, 116

ESSC recommendations, 60

NASA senior reviews, 104

relationship with NASA, 31, 155

relationship with NRC, 154

relationship with NSF, 155

relationship with SSB, 154–155

review team, 153–154, 175

National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 37–38, 110

National Reconnaissance Office, 183

National Research Council (NRC)

ad hoc committees, 183

advisory committees, 181, 187, 201, 206–208, 254

advisory funding, 245–246

advisory structure, 215–216, 215–220, 229

advisory timeline, 55, 114, 211n12

Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB), 28, 31, 

133

article in Science, 211

Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), 

151–152

Balance report, 202

Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA), 122–123, 128, 

181

business model, 244

Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems, 31

Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space, 

116

Congressional mandated studies, 191–192, 211–212

“Connecting Quarks” report, 202

creation of, 2

decadal surveys, 28, 89, 110–112, 115, 118, 244

FACA section 15 compliance, 94–99, 127, 129, 162–163, 

208, 220, 225, 241–242, 255

fast-track studies, 245–246

GPRA implementation study, 88–89

GPRAMA implementation, 90

Greenstein report, 110–112

Hubble Space Telescope (HST), 187–189

independence of, 93–94, 217–220

letter reports, 24, 95–99, 163

NASA advisory committees, 13

NASA-NSF merger, 151–152

Near Earth Object (NEO) hazard report, 148

neutrality of, 124–125

process chart, 131

program priorities, 197

project approval, 96

relationship with NASA, 216–220

relationship with National Academies, 221

relationship with NOAA, 154–155

relationship with the National Academies, 244

Report Review Committee (RRC), 27–28, 96, 220

role, 148–149, 161–162, 210

staff merger, 28n52

standing committees, 96–98

study costs, 220–221

summer studies, 29

Whitford report, 110

workshop reports, 239

National Science Board (NSB), 11, 36, 143, 145, 187

National Science Foundation (NSF), 110–111, 121, 177

advisory funding, 245

advisory structure, 145–149, 231

Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), 

152–153

budget constraints, 147–148

“Connecting Quarks” report, 181

ESSC recommendations, 60

FACA committees, 145–146, 204

GPRA implementation, 88

merger with NASA, 151–152

meteorite discoveries, 179–181

NRC decadal strategy surveys, 112

relationship to National Science Board (NSB), 11, 36, 143

relationship with NOAA, 155

role, 146

senior reviews, 148

Space Science Board (SSB) established, 9–11

standing committees, 196–198

summer studies, 25

Vanguard program, 9

National Space Policy Directive, 61

Naugle, John E.

background, 40–41

book, 251

FACA legislation, 51–52

OSSA Associate Administrator, 36, 39–40

peer review, 251

priorities of, 40–42, 41, 161, 254

SSEC chair, 58

Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), 5–8, 174, 203

advisory structure, 33

Homer Newell at, 63

rocket panel, 8, 34

Navy Department. See U.S. Navy

near Earth Asteroid (NEO), 148
288 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission (NEAR), 174

new starts, 22, 54–58, 68, 74–78, 101, 170, 183

Newell, Homer E., 40–41, 251

advisory committees, 33–34, 63, 119, 131, 161, 254

advisory timeline, 34

background, 6–7

book, 7n27, 17, 39

memorandum of record, 44–45

NASA Associate Administrator, 42–44

NASA science programs, 24, 39–40, 63

opposition to Richard Goody’s SSB appointment, 17

OSSA Director, 14, 40

priorities of, 36, 39–44, 242

quoted, 17

recommendations to James Fletcher, 43–44, 67, 238, 254

SCIGY chair, 8, 12, 63

SPAC creation, 34, 42–45, 215

SSA Associate Administrator, 36

SSB guidance, 44, 119, 131, 242

TPESP working group, 12, 251

newsletters, 142n29

Nierenberg, William A., 30, 34, 54

Nixon, Richard M., 39, 47, 49–50

NOAA. See National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC), 149–150

O

Obama, Barack Hussein, 128

Oberth, Hermann J., 5, 12

Office of Management and Budget (OMB), 40, 48–50, 54, 

202

advisory reports, 205

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), 228

Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), 

151–152

attitudes toward NASA, 159–160, 222, 239–240

GPRAMA implementation, 90

Mars Rock symposium, 180–181

Mission to Planet Earth program, 61

NASA appropriations, 128–129, 139, 193

NASA senior reviews, 105

NASA strategic plan, 76

presidential administrations, 84, 86

relationship to NOAA, 153

Sunnyvale management and planning system, 83

Office of Naval Research (ONR), 2, 11, 110

Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), 56, 112, 

127–128, 182, 210, 239–240

Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA), 40, 54–55, 

67, 84, 164

reorganized, 79–81, 96, 195–196

senior reviews, 102–107, 147, 164

strategic plan, 32, 73–81, 251

timeline, 114

O’Keefe, Sean

Congressional mandated studies, 190

HST servicing missions, 186–189

NASA Administrator, 121, 135–136, 159, 163, 190

personality of, 159, 190, 217–218

Opportunity rover, 105

Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO) program, 40

Orbiting Solar Observatory satellite series, 111

Origins Program, 142n28, 180

outer solar system missions, 19, 25, 36–38, 58, 142n28, 212

P

Paine, Thomas O., 38–39, 42, 61n26

Paradox report, 196–198, 201, 210, 214

peer review, 137, 220, 228, 243

Clinton’s request for, 179–180

decadal surveys, 232

of drafts, 93–94, 127

exemptions from, 48

FACA committees, 145, 208

importance of, 251–255

NAC and, 221, 244–245, 254

process, 131

of proposals, 26, 88, 145–146

Report Review Committee (RRC), 27, 220

senior reviews, 103

Pellerin, Charles

Great Observatories program, 170–171, 182, 200, 204, 

209, 242

interpersonal relations, 225, 232

Management Operations Working Groups (MOWG) role, 

218

NASA Director of Astrophysics, 66, 68, 170

quoted, 68, 170, 218–219

relationship with decadal survey committees, 218–219

Percy, Charles H., 49

“Performance Assessment of NASA’s Astrophysics Program, a” 

(NRC report), 124–125

Pilcher, Carl, 84–85, 97, 242

Pimentel, George, 42

Pioneer program, 58, 251

“Planetary Exploration 1968-1975” (report), 18–20

“Planetary Exploration Through the Year 2000: A Core 

Program” (report), 23, 59

Planetary Observer (spacecraft series), 59, 173, 204, 234

Pluto missions, 115

Polar program, 21, 104

Porter, Richard W., 9, 12

position papers. See white papers

“Practical Applications of Space Systems” (report), 30

President’s Scientific Advisory Council, 9–10

Press, Frank, 31–32, 64–65, 96

“Priorities for Space Research” report, 19, 23, 34, 202, 210, 214

Puckett, Allen E., 30

Pugh, George, 226
Index 289

Q

Quarks-to-the-Cosmos report, 121, 181–184, 182n36, 202, 

210. See also “Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: 

Eleven Science Questions for the New Century” 

(report); Turner report

R

Ramsey, Norman F., 34–35

Ramsey committee, 34–35, 40, 53, 177, 238

Raven, Peter, 96

Reagan, Ronald, 54, 56, 58, 69, 73–74, 234

“Remote Sensing of the Earth in Space: A Program in Crisis” 

(report), 30, 31n59, 116

“Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on NASA/University 

Relationships” (report), 19, 21

Report Review Committee (RRC), 27–28, 96, 220

research and analysis (R&A) programs, 138–139

defined, 105

Fisk and, 74

Huntress and, 180

Lanzerotti and, 55

NASA budgets, 57, 138, 180, 214, 224

“Review of Space Research, a” (report), 25

Ride, Sally K., 60–61

Riegler, Guenter, 101–103, 105, 242

Rieke, Marcia, 104, 129–130, 152–153, 248–249

Rocket and Satellite Research Panel, 6, 9

ROSAT (Röntgensatellit), 21

Rosendhal, Jeffrey D., 55, 57, 68

Roth, William V., 49, 83

round tables, 13

S

Sagan, Carl, 148

Sargent, Anneila, 179, 221

satellites

environmental, 116

Explorer 1, 9

first Soviet artificial (Sputnik I), 9

first U.S. artificial, 8

funding for, 116, 128

Gravity Probe B mission, 19, 37, 226–228

and military surveillance, 29

Orbiting Solar Observatory series, 111

Sputnik I and II, 9

spy, 183

TIROS-1, 29

satellites (natural)

Europa, 115, 213

Moon, 23–25, 38, 121

Titan, 59

Saturn missions, 56, 59, 77, 101

Schiff, Leonard, 226

Schmitt, Harrison, 136–138, 140, 255

Schmitt, Jack, 218

Schmitt, Roland, 196

Science Definition Teams (SDTs), 65n3

science

Cold War effect on, 29

collaboration in, 7n28, 37, 113, 183, 248–250

developments in, 121, 129–130

diversity in, 116–118

interdisciplinary, 18, 106–107

management and planning, 231

silos in, 18, 252–253

Science (journal), 11

“Science, the Endless Frontier” (report), 2

science strategies. See strategic reports

science-engineering tension, 4, 24, 252

scientists

as advisors, 35, 165, 195–196, 208–209, 238

as advisors (diagram), 64

attitudes toward NASA, 140, 163, 176–178, 218, 

231–232, 238

clout, 240

competitiveness of, 3–4, 68, 202–203, 212–214, 249

interpersonal relations, 225–226

resistance to change, 42, 61

support for NASA, 254

workload, 243

Scripps Institute of Oceanography, 30, 54, 61, 136

Seamans, Robert C., 39

Seitz, Frederick, 29

senior reviews, 101–107, 169, 200–208, 233

of 2005 (Arecibo), 147–148

advisory timeline, 114

versus peer review, 88

Riegler on, 102–105, 242

SESAC Crisis Report, 55–58, 210, 255

advisory timeline, 55

Challenger accident, 64, 69

circumstances leading to, 56–67, 69, 73–74, 101

recommendations, 57–58, 194, 250–251

Single Aperture Far Infra-Red observatory (SAFIR), 113

Skylab space station, 38

Smith, Bruce L.R., 47n1, 208, 241

Smith, Henry J., 36

Smith, Marcia

Congressional mandated studies, 163, 185

FACA section 15 compliance, 98, 217

GPRA/GPRAMA impacts, 90

on Louis Lanzerotti, 187

NAC structure reform, 138, 141–142, 217

NASA relationship with National Academies, 156

on NRC study chairs, 208

quoted, 89–90, 141–142, 163, 185

scientists’ competitiveness, 249

Soderblom, Lawrence A., 55, 57

Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), 112–113

Solar Orbital Telescope, 73

“Solar System Space Physics in the 1980s: A Research Strategy” 

(report), 19, 23

Space and Earth Sciences Advisory Committee (SESAC), 136. 

See also SESAC Crisis Report
290 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

Space Applications Board (SAB), 29–31, 194, 204

Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), 112–113, 120. See 

also Spitzer Space Telescope

Space Physics Paradox Report, 196–198, 201, 210–211, 214

“Space Plasma Physics—The Study of Solar System Plasmas” 

(report), 19, 20

Space Program Advisory Council (SPAC), 34, 42–45, 53, 

215. See also NASA Advisory Council (NAC)

“Space Research: Directions for the Future” (report), 18–19, 34

Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC), 54–55, 179–181

Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee 

(SSAAC), 61, 77–80, 101, 171–172

Space Science Board (SSB), 9, 193. See also National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Space 

Studies Board (SSB)

absorption of SAB, 32

achievements, 15

ad hoc committees, 11, 17–18, 119, 149

Advanced Research Projects Agency initial recommendations, 11

advisory report costs, 193

advisory reports, 15, 18, 162–163

advisory services, 107

advisory structure, 144

advisory timeline, 55, 114

assessment reports, 23, 84, 203

Balance report, 122, 189–193, 201–202, 209–211, 214, 

219, 233

chairs of, 12

charge, 10, 26, 129, 191

clout, 22, 24, 63–64, 129, 160–161

Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics (CAA), 

122–123, 138–139, 225

Committee on Data Management and Computation 

(CODMAC), 18, 20

Committee on Earth Sciences, 32

Committee on Microgravity Research, 32

Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration 

(COMPLEX), 22, 66

Committee on Planetary Biology and Chemical Evolution, 

22

Committee on Solar and Space Physics, 23, 211

Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Relations, 23

Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), 248

committee organizational structure, 18

Congressional mandated studies, 190, 210–211

“Connecting Quarks” report, 181, 210

COSPAR, 26

creation of, 8, 34

criticisms of, 27, 127

cross-discipline studies, 201, 210, 239

decadal survey workshops, 117–118, 254

decadal surveys, 28, 86, 112n14, 149, 164, 246–247, 255

decadal surveys, midterm, 124

discipline areas, 12, 14

ESSC partnership, 26

established, 9–10

extended mission assessment, 105

FACA section 15 compliance, 95–98, 127

focused topical reports, examples of, 19

formal reviews, 84–85

Gravity Probe B mission review, 227

Hornig report, 176–178

Hubble Space Telescope (HST), 112, 187, 209–210, 219

impact of, 26

independence of, 64–65, 76, 217–220, 240–242

“Institutional Arrangements for the Space Telescope” 

(report), 177–178

interdisciplinary science, 18

joint studies with ASEB, 28

letter reports, 24, 95–98, 205, 250, 252

letter reports, examples of, 19, 21, 24, 65, 97

“Managing the Space Sciences” report, 196, 201–202, 

209–210

Mars Rock symposium, 179–181

mission priorities, 58, 120, 207, 216

name change, 14, 32, 194

NAS members, 10–11

NASA budget decisions, 126

NASA initial recommendations, 11

NASA long term advisory capacity, 13

and NASA Missions Boards, 35

NASA organization chart, 16

NASA R&A budget, 140

NASA senior reviews, 105

NASA strategic plan, 32, 85–86, 97

NRC collaboration, 23

NRC decadal strategy surveys, 109–133

NSF initial recommendations, 11

Priorities report, 19, 23, 34, 202, 210, 214

process, 18

rapid response, 21–22, 24, 26

relationship with LPMB, 37–39

relationship with NAC, 138, 220

relationship with NASA, 25, 127

relationship with NOAA, 154–155

report availability, 19

Report Review Committee (RRC), 27–28

role, 11, 15–16, 44, 66–67, 238

scope, 15–16, 20–24, 35, 216, 229, 251

SESAC Crisis Report, 64

Space Physics Paradox Report, 196–198, 202, 210

specialized study committees, 18

standing committees, 18, 26, 95, 99

strategic reports, 216, 233

strategic reports, examples of, 19, 66

summer studies, 25

support for research, 24

Task Group on Space Astronomy and Astrophysics, 120

William A. Fowler at, 36

Woods Hole planning workshop, 78–80

“Space Science Decadal Surveys: Lessons Learned and Best 

Practices, The” (report), 119–120
Index 291

“Space Science in the Twenty-First Century: Imperatives for 

the Decades 1995 to 2015” (reports), 26

Space Science Working Group, 74

Space Shuttle, 20–21, 60, 121. See also Challenger; Columbia

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), 228

budget shortfalls, 139–140

costs, 75, 122, 190

development of, 25n38, 39

Galileo program, 21

Hubble Space Telescope (HST), 121, 185–189, 206, 216, 

233

launches deferred, 73

Magellan program, 21

replacement by Constellation, 136

retired, 139

role, 30, 56

Ulysses program, 21

Space Station program, 25n38, 30, 39, 75

Space Studies Board (SSB). See also Space Science Board (SSB)

advisory structure, 215–216

cross-discipline studies, 193–196

decadal surveys, 119

NASA’s 2016 Mission Directorate, 14

role, 161, 194

Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI/STScI), 68, 176–178, 

186, 202, 214, 242

Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year 

(SCIGY), 7–8

special pleading, 96, 212–214, 226

Spitzer, Lyman, 112

Spitzer Space Telescope, 112–113, 171, 233

Spudis, Paul, 122

Sputnik, 9, 34, 251

Squyres, Steve, 140–142, 216, 221, 224, 247

Stern, Alan, 140, 193, 216, 225

Stockman, David A., 58

Stofan, Andrew, 20

Stofan, Ellen, 222

strategic plans, 148, 150–151, 180

drafts, 153

Fisk and, 74, 229, 238, 242, 252

GPRA requirements, 83–90, 156, 160, 164

Lanzerotti and, 57–58

NASA timeline, 114

NASA’s, 73–81, 120, 219, 242

NSAC’s, 150

OSSA prepared, 32, 164, 195, 251

strategic reports, 18

Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration 

(COMPLEX), 22

list of, 19

process, 23–24

SSB prepared, 19–23, 233

suspension of, 32

“Strategy for the Exploration of Primitive Solar System 

Bodies—Asteroids, Comets, and Meteoroids: 1980–

1990” report, 22–23

“Strategy for the Exploration of the Inner Planets: 1977-1987” 

(report), 23

Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), 

112–113, 139n20

Strom, Steven, 253–254

study reports

defined, 13

focused, 15, 18, 20, 23–24

NRC prepared, 220

peer review, 93

SSB prepared, 193

Sullivan, Kathryn, 153–154

summer studies, 25–26, 29–30, 34, 243

T

Technical Panel on the Earth Satellite Program (TPESP), 9, 

34, 251

Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), 113

Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and 

Dynamics (TIMED), 104

Thompson, J.R., 78

Tilford, Shelby, 172, 200, 242

Ting, Samuel, 228

Titan missions, 19, 59

topical (focused) reports, 15, 18, 20, 23–24

Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE), 104

Truly, Richard, 79, 163, 187

Tsiolkovskiy, Konstantin E., 5, 12

Turner, Michael S., 117–118, 150, 181–184

Turner report, 182. See also “Connecting Quarks with the 

Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century” 

(report); Quarks-to-the-Cosmos report

U

Ulysses program, 21, 73, 104

Urry, C. Megan, 122–123

U.S. Air Force, 9, 11, 39

U.S. Army, 3–9, 11

U.S. Global Change Research Program, 59–61, 173

U.S. National Academy for the International Geophysical 

Year (USNC-IGY), 7–8, 12

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), 5–8, 33, 63, 174, 

203

U.S. Navy, 2–10

V

Van Allen, James, 6–9, 12, 25, 251

Van Allen radiation belts, 6, 9

Vanguard program, 6, 8–10, 12, 33–34, 251

Venus missions, 19, 25, 37, 58–59, 115, 142n28

Viking program, 58, 173, 175

Vision for Space Exploration, 121–122, 136–139, 189–191, 

210–211, 253

von Braun, Wernher, 5–6

Voyager program, 58, 104
292 Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership

W

Walcott, Charles D., 3

Warner, Mark, 84

Washington, George, 1

Wasserburg, Jerry, 208

Webb, James E., 15, 21, 24, 29

advisory timeline, 34

Ramsey committee, 34–35

Webb Space Telescope (JWST), 112–113, 118, 139n20, 183, 

233, 253

Weber, Arnold, 48

Weiler, Edward, 193, 203, 254

advisory committees, 221–222, 234, 244

advisory structure, 213

Congressional mandated studies, 185

decadal surveys, 242

Hubble program scientist, 178, 186

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) report, 188

Management Operations Working Groups (MOWG), 218

Mars program independent assessment, 175–176, 200

NAC structure reform, 138–139

NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science, 114, 175, 

212–213, 232

NASA budgets, 140, 240

OMB responsiveness, 239

quoted, 89, 138–139, 159–160, 178, 186, 188

relationship with SSB, 225

Whipple, Fred L., 12

white papers, 13, 131, 141

Whitford, Albert E., 110

Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), 183

Wilson, Woodrow, 93

Wind program, 21, 104

Withbroe, George, 197–198

Withee, Greg, 116

workshop reports, 13, 118n32, 244–245

Y

Young, Thomas, 135, 153–155

background, 175

on Jerry Wasserburg, 208

Mars program independent assessment, 175–176, 201, 

205, 209, 244

NOAA review team, 153–154

on Noel Hinners, 223

quoted, 201, 239–240

Young report, 175n19, 176

Z

Zuber, Maria, 122
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