Does NASA need to wake up? Or is the agency already awake?
A Daily Press editorial maintains that bad things have happened since NASA “turned itself inside out” in response to the President’s space exploration vision. Conditions need to change to allow Langley “to better tap into the opportunities offered by the space program,” the editorial asserts, and to “reinstate aeronautics and science as national priorities, with funding to match.”
What do you think? Read the editorial here.
“Two different, but not mutually exclusive, strategies could help NASA Langley. One, position it to better tap into the opportunities offered by the space program. Success here will depend largely on capacity at Langley, on the center’s efforts and on NASA’s willingness to send work its way.
Two, reinstate aeronautics and science as national priorities, with funding to match. This is a job for Congress, and the area’s delegation must lead. With a new administration and his party in charge, Rep. Bobby Scott is well positioned to make a difference.”
- Daily Press
As I have stated before (not in this blog). NASA, as a whole does not distinguish its centers from “research centers” and “flight centers”. Currently, our business practices are those which “appear” to work well for flight centers and programs, but not research centers and projects i.e. short term jumps and fixes, versus longer term research studies. The current space program is driven by COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) Technology, not by research. Why you ask, because there isn’t enough time to do a research style program to replace the Shuttle. The closest activity we have that resembles basic and applied research is in the Fundamental Aeronautics program, which we at Langley participate in, but have little say in how the program is operated. The operational model was developed at the NASA HQ level, and setup as “grass roots” style implementation. However, the program was inadequately funded from the start and so it has the standard NASA programmatic structure, heavy on FTE, light on procurement dollars and no set aside for infrastructure maintenance of core capabilities. So, we are slowly collapsing under the weight of our aging facilities. The research dollars keep decreasing because “aeronautics is a mature discipline that is run by corporations”, not my quote. In this, Langley might have a marketing problem. It sells itself as an “aeronautics” center and not as a “research” center. I’m not sure how much or if this perception hurts us or not, but I’m told perception is reality, This perception coupled with the current operational business model could be limiting us to doing or overseeing more longer term space related research, since that’s “space” and your “aeronautics”. My $0.02.
See here also: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/r2-d2-and-other-lessons-from-bell-labs/