Senate Subcommittee Examines NASA’s Identity Crisis

With the Cold War fading into history, economic competitiveness becoming the watchword of the decade, and the space race against the Russians turning into probable cooperation, NASA is struggling to redefine its role. On November 16, the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space invited NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, Martin Marietta CEO Norman Augustine, and Robert Frosch of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to offer their thoughts on NASA’s plans, priorities, and budgetary difficulties.

Augustine, who in 1990 chaired the Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program, posed two questions: What does American want its space program to be, and can the country afford to pay for the program it wants? He stated bluntly that if the answers were incompatible, “we are unlikely to have a satisfactory program.”

Frosch, the NASA administrator in the early 1970s and more recently Vice President of General Motors for Research, warned that restructuring the space agency will “not necessarily” improve its performance. He advocated open, collegial discussions with Congress and the White House on NASA’s role, and argued that overregulation of procurement, personnel, and auditing has led to a “system of bureaucratic trivia.”

Goldin vehemently blamed the lack of stable funding for many of NASA’s difficulties, including poor morale. Testifying that NASA’s budget was altered every few months, he called for multiyear funding and complained, “when we can’t plan, we can’t perform.” Augustine added that year-by-year budgeting allows lawmakers to avoid hard choices by stretching programs out, and he recommended budgeting by program rather than by year.

Subcommittee chair Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) asked how Congress’s recent emphasis on technology commercialization fit with NASA’s original missions. While Goldin agreed that technology transfer “should be treated as importantly as the mission,” he worried that too much emphasis on “things that’ll have an impact over the next few years” might deter investment in the future. He declared: “If NASA is going to be converted to justify itself just on tech transfer-- cancel the agency.”

Asked to name his priorities for the agency, Goldin responded with Mission to Planet Earth, followed by research on humans in space, aeronautics, and then space science, which he called “what NASA was born to do.” However, he warned that, while he favored a balanced program, further budget cuts might force cancellation of the planetary program and cut deeply into astrophysics.

Augustine, while admitting that his committee’s recommendations need to be revisited in light of current budget realities, said that committee members continue to believe that space science deserves the first priority. He placed Mission to Planet Earth second, and Mission from Planet Earth third, done on a “go-as-you-pay basis.” Fourth on his list of high priorities was NASA’s contribution to the technology base.