NASA needs more idealists

February 5, 2011 - Reading time: 7 minutes

It's fair to say that I'm full of ideas.  They aren't all good, and they aren't all original, but I like to think ahead and imagine possibilities.  It's why I enjoy science fiction, and it's why I wanted to work at NASA.  I always assumed that at NASA, I would be less likely to be told that my ideas were too "out there," since "out there" is NASA's business.

What I found when I got here is that "out there" is indeed a problem: NASA's business is in satisficing.  It's an underfunded federal jobs program meant to keep huge government contractors in business, not the bastion of high-risk, high-yield research and development that I had envisioned.

This comes up because of a conversation I had the other day with an "old timer" civil servant (he's not that old, but he has been at NASA for much longer than me).  I went to him seeking some advice on a politically expedient way of pitching a proposal that might be construed as stepping on someone's toes.  What I was proposing would replace a system that we're about to fly with something that's best described as TRL 4, 5 tops.  It's something that a few people were having great success with at Ames Research Center about a decade ago, until a budget cut killed the project; it has languished since then.  My idea involved taking the research from Ames and applying it to our project in a much more elegant and useful way than what we're flying.

The outcome of the conversation was twofold:

  1. "Working with Ames" is out of the question; they're already trying (with some success) to take control of this project from JSC; we recently got "screwed" by them and the project managers here would probably laugh at me if I proposed working with Ames.  It would be much more productive to just do the work on our own, reinventing the wheel as necessary, and leaving the outcome as a surprise lest Ames take more of our project (and budget).
  2. What we have is Good Enough.  "Better is often the enemy of good."  It's been said before, and in many cases I agree.  In this case I don't.  But he brought up a good point that's valid at NASA, even though it shouldn't be: if you want to replace something that works (to some degree), you've got to convince someone with resources why it's bad.  You have to have a Wrong that needs to be Righted, and management has to agree with your Wrongs.  If you can't convince the right people that it's Wrong, then either it isn't Wrong, or this isn't the time to change it (I would have to wait until different people, who can be convinced, are in charge).

On the surface, #1 is appalling and #2 is reasonable.  But if you think for a bit about where we are, #1 is even more appalling, and #2 becomes pathetic.  I won't address #1 because it speaks for itself.

#2 comes back to satisficing.  What I was told by my elder (whom I'm supposed to respect) is that it's proper to settle for "good enough."  His point was that good ideas abound, but personal interests and politics will always prevail so you have to work within the system, because radical change only has a chance in the face of abject failure.  As unpleasant as the thought may sound to a budding engineer, it is exactly how we work at NASA.  ISS crews are faced with a staggering array of workarounds, "known bugs," and poor designs that are flown to the station because they meet a schedule, not because they are good.  And once hardware has flown, it becomes even harder to make drastic changes, because so many resources were already expended to get the existing stuff up to the Station.  What I'm doing now is no different - I'm working to fly hardware and software, purchased or developed at taxpayer expense, that will probably never work well, but will probably be in use for a decade or more because it's "good enough."  The alternative - a year or two of R&D into a technology that has profound spinoff potential [1] - is a good idea, but there aren't enough Wrongs to justify pushing it now.

America chose to go to the moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard.  Today, we choose NOT to go to the moon, because it's too hard.  We choose to go to Mars, maybe, but using the architecture of the Apollo program because new ideas are too hard.  We choose workarounds over rework for the ISS program; not because rework is more expensive but because workarounds are easier politically (and - on a cost-plus contract - more profitable).

This is the attitude that must change for us to progress.  NASA is full of bright people who are in tune with the political realities of "how things work" at NASA.  It's easy to find someone who will explain that each center competes against all others, which is why we can't cooperate with them.  What we need instead is a NASA full of idealists, people who are impractical and who reject political expedience in favor of radical ideas and the high-risk, high-reward research that will lift humanity from this fragile oasis.  NASA is full of people who are more than happy to tell a young engineer why "you can't do that."  But humanity is most successful when it decides to challenge the odds and tackle the insurmountable - there should be no place for naysayers at NASA.

Progress has never been easy.  The preface to The Modern System of Naval Architecture, published in the late 1800s, reads:

We the passing generation have had to grope our way out of the dark slowly and painfully, with trial and error.  But what has to be pardoned to us can no longer be pardoned to our successors, to whom we bequeath the costly knowledge and painful experiences that have cost us so dear, but which we have gladly earned, and now painstakingly contribute for their instruction, and the advancement of their future.

These are profound words from an intense era of discovery and invention, and I think that the engineers who created the Apollo spacecraft would agree with the sentiment.  What we must do now is demonstrate that we carry their banner in good faith: we do not rest on our laurels and wallow in the ease of precedent; we build on their successes, learn from their failures and ours, and our achievements are beyond their wildest imaginations.  We must measure by reward, not just risk, and act accordingly.  To do less is to resign ourselves to mediocrity - and that is not acceptable.

[1] What are the spinoffs?  Prosthetic limbs that work like real ones.  More responsive controls for cars, control rooms, airplanes, and spacecraft.  Improved medical monitoring.  Probably more.