NASA Reform White Paper, Part 1 of 2 (long)
Jim Bowery
of our civilian space program. It is submitted to the network minus
an appendix which discusses a fall-back policy position which must be
adopted if this reform cannot be implemented. I will circulate the
appendix depending on the reaction to this paper.
About the coauthor:
Andrew Cutler is a well known researcher in the economics of space
resource utilization and edits an international scientific and technical
journal, "Space Power" devoted to that topic. He was a primary force
behind the introduction and imminent passage of HR2674, the Space
Transportation Services Act.
This paper is currently in revision and is being circulated for comment.
*****************************************************************************
A Space Program Derived from American Values
Part 1 of 2
Andrew Hall Cutler James Alan Bowery
(602) 327-9205 (619) 295-8868
Abstract
This paper describes how our national space policy should derive from
traditional American values so that Americans can create a spacefaring
civilization with settlements beyond the earth through private endeavor.
Our policy must involve a paradigm shift in our view of space
activities. Many space enthusiasts currently believe space is an appropriate
arena for a large monolithic bureaucracy to pursue 50 year plans under
centralized management while holding scientific data and results close to
its chest. This is similar to the Soviet economy, a notably flawed and
unproductive system - but it is NOT similar to the way the Soviets
themselves pursue their space activities. We must come to understand that
space is an appropriate arena for a typically American approach - many
small scale activities using varied approaches which have the freedom to
change their plans from year to year in an evolutionary process of learning
how to live and work in space.
We must shift our basic philosophy in space activities from public to
private endeavor; from planned to evolutionary expansion; and from
centralized management to vigorous and varied competition.
We must understand the distinction between research, development
and operations so we can pursue the appropriate one in each instance. It is
this lack of distinction which is primarily responsible for America not
currently having a productive space program since we have pursued far too
much development and operations at the expense of the research necessary
to give us needed options for the future.
We must understand the existing problems - such as the shuttle and
space station programs - and how to fix them - for example by privatization
and democratization.
Introduction
It is widely recognized that America has lost its leadership in space
due to organizational problems in our civilian space program. The extent to
which increased funding can realistically be proposed as a means to help us
recapture leadership is limited by increasing budgetary pressures.
Fortunately, we can recapture our world leadership without increasing the
civilian space program's budget through appropriate reform. The strategy
followed in this reform is to ensure variety and competition by creating
many small and diverse space programs. This will redirect inappropriately
allocated funds, ultimately creating a private space services industry
which will grow out of serving the government funded space science
community. For a variety of historic reasons, NASA wastes so much money
that the gains possible through a more sensible allocation of funds are truly
astounding. These gains are more than sufficient to support a renewed
American leadership in space activities within our current budgetary
constraints.
To realize the space rennaisance we must build our space policy on a
foundation of proven American values. By giving freedom and independence
to government funded space researchers we can create an immediate
multibillion dollar market for private space facilities and launch services.
The businesses springing up to serve this market can the use the research
results to expand into many diverse markets serving our economy. These
new, totally private enterprises serving a private market would be the
beginning of a spacefaring civilization.
The distinctions we must learn to draw are not between manned
versus unmanned, Mars versus the moon, expendable versus reuseable,
American versus Soviet; but between Publically supported research and
privately financed development and operations.
The Need for Values
There is real world, practical wisdom in having values and abiding by
them at all times. The real world is so complex that we need help from the
wisdom of the ages to cope with it successfully. This wisdom has evolved
ofer eons in our genes and over millenia in our cultures. Our culture hands
us wisdom in the form of principles which we are advised to follow even
though they may be quite inconvenient and may not appear to make much
sense in any particular instance. Some principles are idiosyncratic
artifacts of a bygone era - irrelevant in today's rapidly changing world (for
example: a woman's place is in the home). This has led many of us to the
false conclusion that ALL principles are irrelevant, and that pragmatism
must be used not only to elaborate our conduct but to form its foundation.
This anti-philosoply quickly becomes a rationalization for discarding our
principles when it becomes inconvenient to follow them, which is exactly
when they MUST be followed. If we cannot follow our principles when it is
difficult, why pretend to have principles at all?
Americans are a principled people, and this has brought us to
greatness. Today, when our principles are under attack as never before, we
also find ourselves, as a nation, slipping into the backwaters of history as
we immitate the slow decline into continuing mediocrity and failure of so
many other once great cultures. It is popular to point out that this is 'all
someone else's fault' - perhaps drug users, or AIDS demented gays, or
liberals, or the current president, or the religious right. But it is really
something we must all take responsibility for - it is through our inaction
that the basic principles that made America great are violated daily in
every area of life. We must all stand up and insist they be followed.
American Values
A selection of American values is: competence, knowledge,
scholarship, acceptance of criticism, openness, honesty, acceptance of
risk, vision, resourcefulness, freedom, independence, choice,
responsibility, truth, justice, individuality, and the worth of the
individual. Many Americans hold these values and typify them in their
approach to a challenge. We need these values applied to the challenge of
creating a spacefaring civilization so it is apporpriate to build a space
program on a foundation of these values and encourage the American people
to participate in it.
Good is also an American value. We are supposed to be good by acting
to bring progress, accomplishment and happiness to all in the most
beneficial and appropriate manner.
The power of American values is that they allow an evolutionary
approach to culture and socially important activities, like developing
technology and opening frontiers. The independent creativity of many free
minds provides the mutations necessary to an evolutionary approach, and
the marketplace provides the selective pressure needed to eliminate all but
the best of these mutations. The presence of both of these factors was
necessary for American culture and society to progress as rapidly as it has.
Both are necessary for the rapid evolution we need in order to create a
spacefaring civilization through private endeavor.
Our national vitality comes from our best and brightest making
independent attempts to solve outstanding problems and letting the
marketplace decide who has come up with the best solution. While many of
these people suffer the temporary inconvenience of an unsuccessful
business, we are all better off in the long run due to those who succeed.
America's best and brightest should make their own independent attempts to
solve our problems not only because they can offer the most creative and
useful solutions but because they are the best equipped to survive the trials
of occaisional failure - and indeed to learn to profit from them. Intelligent
and knowledgeable people have a duty to us all to shun the mundane world of
secure jobs and large organizations for the risk and excitement of
entrepreneurship and private endeavor so that they can contribute to the
evolution of American society and American technology. We should all
encourage them to do so and support their efforts when they do. This is how
we can all foster the creation of a spacefaring civilization.
We must focus on what we want our space policy to be rather than on
how we are to implement it. We must then insist that our elected officials
find a way to give it to us. If they offer explanations of why they can't give
us what we want, we must elect new officials. Our government is by of and
for the people and we must insist that it truly represent our noblest
yearnings instead of some base inability to acheive a satisfactory vision
due to a lack of commitment to finding ways to make things work.
Unamerican Values
There are a variety of Unamerican values. Some of these are:
centralization, bureaucratic authority, plagiarism, corruption and buying
votes. We are not supposed to be evil and are not supposed to act to ensure
that things are under our control through whatever means are accessible,
subject to our arbitrary whim, to be used for the benefit and pleasure of us
and our associates without regard for the dignity or desires of anyone else
involved.
Our space program is in trouble because projects are chosen on the basis
of political acceptability rather than technical feasibility and vision. We
must not concern ourselves with the political feasibility of acheiving our
vision since this is the very pitfall that has destroyed our space program.
NASA is a bureaucracy and the people within it are rewarded on the
basis of bureaucratic values, not American ones. Bureaucracies value the
concentration of power, money and authority in a small number of
individuals. Those NASA employees who do not strive to hold authority,
spend large quantities of money and grab for power are serving our best
interests, but they do not advance in the bureaucracy, so they do not get the
chance to serve our interests very well. Those who DO strive to exercise
the maximum amount of power and authority and spend the maximum amount
of money rise rapidly, and it is these people who are NASA. In order to get
what we want out of NASA we have to deny it power, authority, and the
ability to centralize control of significant sums of money so that
bureaucratic values become meaningless and NASA employees may be
rewarded on the basis of how well they contribute to creating a spacefaring
civilization.
When you build one or a few of anything it is a monument. While
Americans like monuments, they do tend to be very careful to protect them
from hard use that might damage them. When Americans find some
monument to be of value, they replicate it countless times so that the
copies can all see hard use without 'using up' the item in question.
Bureaucrats prefer monuments (preferably to themselves) while private
citizens prefer to have a copy for their very own. We do not need the Taj
Majal in space. We need houses, factories and means of transportation in
space. We need many of each. Creating these is not something
bureaucracies are well suited to and it is foolish of us to expect them to do
OUR job for us. The American people, as embodied in businesses, can
create enough places to live in space that anyone who wants one can have it.
The NASA bureaucracy cannot. It is our duty to arrainge public policy so
that WE can create the material basis for a spacefaring civilization rather
than lamenting NASA's continuing failure to do so.
Space Policy from American Values
We should adopt the following long term goals: To foster the creation
of a spacefaring civilization with self sufficient settlements beyond the
earth; to become the seashore of the universe; to understand the origin,
evolution and present state of the universe and our place in it; to make the
material wealth in space available to mankind; to allow the American people
to participate directly in our space program and to personally explore and
exploit space through private endeavor; and to make space a place where
private citizens can afford to live, work and play.
In the immediate future, we should revitalize our planetary
exploration program, revitalize our research enterprise by restoring vigor
and diversity to it so we have technology options 20 years from now, create
a commercial launch services industry and fly spacelab and materials
processing experiments frequently.
We need to have an open space program to involve the American people
in the creative process. We need to have an honest space program so that
the American people will know enough about it to truly contribute. While
we need to evaluate ideas like manned spaceflight on the basis of their
potential, we should evaluate the managers of things like the manned
spaceflight program on the basis of their past performance. In the case of
manned spaceflight this would lead to a vigorous program under entirely
new management.
There are eight NASA centers we propose turning into independent
agencies in order to add diversity and independence to our space program:
Kennedy Space Center; Marshall Spaceflight Center (with the associated
National Space Technology Laboratory); Goddard Spaceflight Center (with
the associated Goddard Institute for Space Science in NYC); NASA
Headquarters; Johnson Space Center; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; AMES
research center (with the Dryden center associated); and the Lewis
Research Center. In addition an independent shuttle flight agency should be
formed which would be statutorily barred from increasing its budget or
pursuing launch vehicle development.
This reform gives us many independent space agencies each of which can
take its own unique approach to space. Under this reform the NASA centers cum
space agencies would become similar in size and independence to the existing
national laboratories, which are currently under DoE (but which might be
turned loose in a related reform). The independent NASA centers would also
be similar in size to NSF and the various parts of NIH - stable programs
which have proven to provide a much better return of results produced per
dollar invested than NASA has.
An important part of the 'many space programs' idea is to allow
agencies like NOAA, NSF and DoE to perform their own space science and fly
their own spacecraft if they wish. Diversifying our space activities across
traditional agency boundaries will lead to greater creativity and more rapid
progress as well as enhanced stability.
There are significant overlaps between many federal research
agencies where the benefits clearly outweigh the costs of redudancy. These
benefits include independent verification of scientific results, having a
backup team in case of failure, and the added incentive of having others in
the same field who might do a better job using less money. In the long run
the duplication of effort we must support if we have many space programs
is the cheapest and most efficient way to go - it just may be hard to believe
this at any given time.
Leadership consists of having worthy goals and progressing towards
them, even when it is hard, regardless of current temptations and the
actions of competitors. Crash programs do not demonstrate leadership -
they illustrate a lack of it. Commitment to the above goals through many
diverse space programs will give America leadership in space. Continuing
on our present course or committing ourselves to some monolithic crash
program because it is a great adventure will ensure that we abdicate our
leadership in space activities for the next 30 years.
The specific steps we need to take to regain leadership are to foster a
commercial launch industry, to provide long term support for companies who
wish to learn about materials processing in space, to fly automated
planetary exploration and scientific spacecraft frequently, to ensure that
we have a useful and robust space facilities instead of the current NASA
amazing shrinking space station that does all things too poorly to be of use,
to clean up the NASA bureaucracy which stifles productivity and innovation
in favor of paperwork and politics, to revitalize our aerospace research
enterprise, and to involve other federal agencies in space activities.
One way to do this is to view NASA as an NSF like funding agency.
Ensure EXTERNAL and UNBIASED peer review. This means that reviewers
should not be civil servants or contract engineers, they should be scientists
who want to do things in space. NASA's job would be to send money out to
scientists with meritorious ideas and let them decide how best to spend
that money. NASA should not be a middleman, controlling the money spent
to (theoretically) serve the science objectives by doing engineering - it
should allow the scientists themselves to do this. NASA civil servants
should not manage programs, they should perform research and do the
engineering that is needed to pursue science objectives but which no private
entity can be found to do. NASA should serve as a source of money and
knowledge, not as a middleman, manager or operator.
Research proposals must be unsolicited in order to protect the
integrity and independence of the proposal generation process.
Development programs and operations should obtain all of funds through
funded scientists in order to ensure these activities are serving legitimate
needs. Scientists must be free to purchase services, including launch and
the use of on orbit facilities, from any source they choose so that these
choices are based solely on technical and economic merit.
There are many ways to reform NASA - and many effective ways to
deal with NASA intransigence. Some of these mirror ways private industry
uses when it has a recalcitrant workforce and needs to change direction.
Announce your changes well in advance, make it clear that there will be a
lot of hard work to do pretty soon, that there might be layoffs, and that
everyone can expect to be transferred to another center, and then offer an
attractive early retirement package. Those who don't want a change from
business as usual will retire. Some of them will decide they liked working
after all, and go back to work in the private sector benefiting us all. Those
who look forward to the new way you want to do business will stay and will
have lots of time to get ready to do a good job of it. Institute merit review
on the basis of whether individual small projects meet their deadlines and
performance requirements. Tell the people what the deadlines and
requirements are up front and allow them to decline working on the
projects. Transfer those who establish a pattern of poor performance on the
projects and hope a change of scenery does them some good. Offer
promotions and incentives for people who distinguish themselves in
nonmanagement activities. Assign onerous tasks to people who are not
productive. These general principles have proven themselves in the
marketplace and should be applied to NASA.
Goals of our Space Activities
The efforts of our many space pograms must be primarily directed
towards acquiring knowledge and new understanding which can be used by
the American people to open up the new frontier of space to private
endeavor. The basic goals of NASA or its successor agencies should be as
stated here:
* To determine the origin, evolution and present state of the
solar system and the universe
* to understand the earth through comparative planetary studies
* to understand the present and future dynamic state of the earth
through detailed measurement and analysis
* to understand the relationship between the physical and chemical
evolution of the solar system and the appearance of life
* to survey the natural resources available in near earth space
* to understand basic physical processes in the space environment
* to understand the effects of the space environment on terrestrial life
* to understand and learn to control the behavior of technologically
important processes in the space environment
We must not forget that NASA currently has goals not directly related to
space exploration (e. g. aeronautics). These are:
* to explore the basic materials science applicable to advanced
technology
* to understand and learn to control the basic phenomena underlying
airbreathing and space propulsion
* to understand and learn to control the aerodynamics of flight over
a wide range of conditions
With many space agencies these goals can be served more efficiently by
being pursued by institutions primarily devoted to them instead of by an
institution for which they are an afterthought.
The ultimate goal of our governmental space activities is to acquire
the knowledge necessary to allow the American people to create a
spacefaring civilization with settlements beyond the earth through private
endeavor.
Research - the generation of new knowledge and basic understanding -
should be the TOP policy priority, as it is of intrinsic value in and of itself
and has the broadest political appeal. Development should only be pursued in
service of research. We must make the distinction between development
and research very clear and because of historic abuses of the term "R&D"
enforce a separation. This is most easily done by only providing direct
funding to research through a merit review process and letting the people
who are trying to DO the research contract independently of NASA or the
government with whomever they wish for the engineering and services
required to get their research done.
Research is not politically partisan - it is almost apolitical. It has
is widely recognized as being of intrinsic value and has bipartisan support.
In the space arena, every major presidential candidate supports the value of
generating basic knowledge about and new understanding of the space
frontier. The value of research is so widely recognized that even Jesse
Jackson fully supports continued RESEARCH on SDI related topics - even
though strongly opposed to development or deployment.
The federal government does contain models of ways to do things other
than federally funded, agency managed and selected, contractor produced
engineering. Federal funding need not carry the rest of this with it.
Research is the search for basic knowledge and understanding. The
creativity and special knowledge of individuals gained through long periods
of hard work and study are key to research. Development is an attempt to
create the technology to perform specified tasks. While development
typically requires far more people than research, the people are more easily
interchanged, 'bought' and 'sold' than in research. In development people
are interchangeable and not particularly valuable as individuals.
While development provides us with specific capabilities, without
research which has no immediate applications, we do not gather the
knowledge we must have to gain yet more advanced capabilities. Thus of the
two research always seems less valuable at first sight and is ultimately
the most. Without a vigorous research program, development consumes
money and leads nowhere. Without market disciplined development to
higlight the problems with the greatest impact on our technological
capabilities basic research becomes a blind man's walk and provides
knowledge with no practical applications. We must have an appropriate
balance between federally funded research and privately financed
development and maintain it over time in order to learn how to create a
spacefaring civilization.
Current policy has stressed development at the expense of research,
and we are thus out of new ideas for a while. The solution to this is to
support more research and be patient while it produces the basic ideas we
need, rather than spending a lot of money rehashing ideas we have been over
before in hopes they will look different this time around.
There are several areas where basic research is needed - some of
which are currently being ignored by NASA. These are hypersonic flight and
propulsion (NASP is a development project with minimal research involved);
microgravity materials processing; space resource utilization; life
processes in the space environment; life sciences under variable gravity;
and active and passive remote sensing techniques.
Private technology development would be economically very favorable
in the areas of: advanced space based communications; advanced
materials; nonchemical propulsion; advanced computational techniques;
technology support for space science; space power generation; long term
life support; and advanced instrumentation, since there are currently
significant technology needs that NASA is not able to fulfil in these areas.
One of the most destructive and innapropriate things the government
does is to hold patent rights. How can the government legitimately control
the American people's rights to practice an invention made at their own
expense? Add to this the fact that the government does not generate
significant revenue in licensing these patents out anyway and it is clear that
the government should immediately dispose of all patent rights by passing
on patents to licensees, or in the absence of licensees placing them in the
public domain.
It is clear that reducing a patentable innovation to practice is a
development activity. Since the government has no business funding
development, it should not allow the patenting of any innovation which was
reduced to practice using federal funds. Private entities can clearly
perform the research needed to think up innovations at federal expense and
retain the right to patent, but they should be asked to risk their own money
if they wish to bring the innovation to fruition both to keept he government
out of the development business and to ensure that they don't waste time
pursuing a worhtless idea just because there is federal money to be had for
exploring it.
Real Priorities
The priorities we give various activities should be proportional to
budget we allocate to them - and REAL priorities ARE proportional to budget.
Stated priorities are not always the real ones. For example, NASA claims
that fostering commercial launch services is one of its highest priorities.
Since it proposes to spend less than 1/2 of 1% of its budget on this, we
must conclude that it is a very low priority indeed. If we want commercial
launch services to be a high priority, we must take a substantial portion of
the budget and earmark it specifically for this purpose. We should rearrange
the NASA budget so the dollar amounts reflect the true priorities of the
American people.
The Reagan space policy offers several ways to back stated priorities
with dollar funding amounts. For example, it mentions providing launch
vouchers to scientists whose payloads are stuck on the ground now that the
shuttle flight rate is reduced. Perhaps some money should be earmarked to
back these vouchers so that they will mean something and can help foster a
commercial launch industry while allowing many frustrated space
scientists to finally get some results.
Rewarding A Past Success
The program of automated planetary exploration has been one of the
major successes of the American space program. We must follow up on this
success by implementing the recommendations of the Solar System
Exploration Committee immediately, perhaps on an accelerated schedule,
and by taking steps to see that they are not again put on indefinite hold as
has happened in the recent past. In a very real sense the SSEC report is a
'peer reviewed' proposal in that it has passed muster with most of the space
science and space interest community in the United States. This is the kind
of activity that NASA should support by passing on funds to the proposers
and letting them arrainge to carry out the work as proposed. Automated
spacecraft provide us with invaluable knowledge about the universe around
us - knowledge which has intrinsic beauty, often practical applications, and
which will hasten our progress towards creating a spacefaring civilization.
We must support a vigorous and ongoing planetary exploration program
(and protect it from the budgetary pressures of other programs), which will
pursue the goals laid out by the Solar System Exploration Committee: to
determine the origin, evolution and present state of the solar system; to
understand the Earth through comparative planetary studies; to understand
the relationship between the chemical and physical evolution of the solar
system and the appearance of life; and to survey the natural resources
available in near Earth space.
Automated spacecraft are appropriate and economical for a variety of
simple or long term measurements, while human flexibility is required to
solve complicated problems, improvise repairs or new experiments and gain
a full and deep understanding of certain problems. Automated spacecraft
will lead the way in exploring the solar system and identifying fascinating
problems, while humans will always be needed to ultimately solve them.
Real Reasons to Support Space
The arguments that we should support THE SPACE PROGRAM because of
all the spinoffs, or because the money magically multiplies itself seven
times in stimulating economic activities are fallacious. There are a lot
fewer spinoffs than is popularly believed - and it is difficult to believe that
we could not do better if we spent the money trying to generate 'spin offs'
directly rather than hoping a few occur. The idea that every dollar NASA
spends is magically multiplied seven times and added to the economy is
basically flawed - after all, it is money paying for things which are used up,
not money spent to create wealth. If this argument were correct, we could
all get together and cause economic growth simply by writing each other
checks for a million dollars and passing them around in a circle. The
original macroeconomic theory of Keynes has been so abused by these
arguments that its true validity -- in the sense of creating PRODUCTIVE
ACTIVITY (which is different from simply creating "jobs") -- has been
almost totally obscured in policy debates ever since World War II.
Instead we should OPEN THE SPACE FRONTIER for the same reasons
that frontiers have always been opened - for what we learn, the wealth we
gain, the opportunity it creates and the cultural vigor and vision it
produces. No frontier is truly open until everyman can go there and pursue
his own pet project or idea if he tries hard enough.
Supporting an Appropriate Space Policy
Support for vigorous space activities is bipartisan - every significant
presidential candidate in 1988 has released or supported a detailed policy
position on space.
A 50 year plan is not appropriate. Even the Soviets don't have one.
But the United States does... the National Commission on Space report and
various NASA publications. At this point it is simply not possible to plan
more than 3 to 5 years down the road and we should stop doing so
immediately. An evolutionary program is a VIGOROUS program - one with
long term plans is stagnant. This mirrors the difference between a free and
a centrally planned (communist) economy. We need a vigorous, free,
evolutionary space program that can take advantage of its successes and
recover from its failures rapidly. What we have is a 'communistic' space
program that suffers from the classic faults of communist economies -
obsolescence, low productivity and a failure to serve real needs.
---
Typical RESEARCH grant:
$
Typical DEVELOPMENT contract:
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Nick Szabo
>The following is part 1 of a 2 part white paper proposing a reform
>of our civilian space program.
>About the coauthor:
>
>Andrew Cutler is a well known researcher in the economics of space
>resource utilization and edits an international scientific and technical
>journal, "Space Power" devoted to that topic. He was a primary force
>behind the introduction and imminent passage of HR2674, the Space
>Transportation Services Act.
>...........
For those of you who have been asking about what alternatives to
NASA planning we NASA-critics propose, this is the most definitive and
agreeable that I have seen. My differences with it are only on the
trivialities. Great work, guys!
********** These opionions are not related to Big Blue's **********
--
---------------------------
Nick Szabo
sza...@ibmpa.tcspa.ibm.com
uunet!ibmsupt!szabonj