A new course for NASA

ean O’Keefe is the type of individual that I would have recommended for NASA administrator [see “New NASA Administrator is Bush Insider,” p. 24]. The agency needs someone like him, familiar with the Washington scene, with a feel for the capital’s political structure and what it takes to manage money, and who, I hope, can help reorganize NASA for today’s needs. However, judging from his recent testimony before the House Science Committee as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, O’Keefe lacks knowledge of what NASA is. Criticizing NASA, as he did, by saying it ignored costs and worried only about technical and safety matters is unfair. NASA today is asked for 100 percent reliability. If we had the same oversight in the 1960s that the agency has today, we wouldn’t have left the ground. If NASA engineers are asked to make things cheaper and less prone to costly delays, they can do that. The space shuttle has quadruple redundancy. Allowing a flight to proceed with some redundant systems out would improve tremendously the reliability of launching on time and decrease costs dramatically. Similarly, the proposed Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) for the International Space Station (ISS) could be eliminated, even with a full ISS crew of six or seven. The risk is probably very small of an emergency developing that would give a crew time enough to evacuate in the CRV but not enough for a shuttle to pick them up. But these suggestions do increase risk. When O’Keefe finds himself with the final responsibility for sending men and women into space, will he be willing to sign off on such changes? O’Keefe should use his first six months to learn about NASA from the inside. He should take charge of its political interface and financial matters and appoint a strong technical staff from within. This is how James Webb managed the agency during the 1960s, and Webb was the best NASA administrator we ever had. Specifically, the first thing O’Keefe should do is create a board of directors for the agency—not an advisory panel, but a board like General Motors’ board of directors. It should include people like the presidents of the U.S. National Academies of Engineering, Science, and Medicine; astronauts like Bill Anders, Frank Borman, or Neil Armstrong; and former NASA and industry aerospace engineers like George Jeffs, George Mueller, or Bob Seamans. They would approve what NASA actually does under the direction of the White House and Congress. Then NASA’s future should be concentrated on: • Airplane R&D. NASA should ask the aerospace industry and the Department of Defense how it can help with aircraft design and development. NASA’s engineers and its unique facilities should be in the thick of aviation—its expertise could benefit the whole spectrum of national defense. • R&D for future manned exploration of the moon and Mars. A lot of money is not needed here now, but planning for the future is what NASA ought to be doing. • R&D for new rockets, new shuttles, and so on. Programs should develop components for these vehicles. NASA ought to answer questions like, What kinds of thrusters are needed for stability and control? Can we build new kinds of power systems? NASA could be of great help to commercial developers in space, be it of spacecraft or launch vehicles. Rather than spending US $4 billion on the current Space Launch Initiative to build totally new vehicles, that money would be better spent upgrading the space shuttle, just as Boeing upgraded the 747 or the Air Force upgraded the B-52. In fact, the money spent for the X-33 and X-34 programs would have gone a long way toward the shuttle’s modernization. This makes more sense than replacing the shuttle, which will cost at least $20 billion for development alone. Last, NASA should review the need for all its current centers. Unquestionably, NASA is too big. Eliminating some centers will be painful and politically difficult, but better than weakening the whole organization across the board. Adopting these proposals would result in a NASA much closer in spirit to its forerunner, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). NACA was a facilitator for the aeronautical industry. It didn’t try to run the industry; it was a place to go for technical expertise. For the sake of the effectiveness of the rest of NASA’s programs, O’Keefe also needs to review the science, engineering, and, in particular, the operating requirements of the ISS— because that’s what drives costs. For instance, the ISS was launched into a compromise orbit to allow Russian participaN A S A A New Course for NASA