flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn) (03/05/84)
Those who complain about the ineptitude of bureaucrats at NASA Headquarters in getting approval for new missions, getting adequate money for mission data analysis, and the like, should remember that the basic reason (and probably the only reason) NASA exists is to pump several billion dollars a year into the aerospace industry. It is virtually impossible to sell a mission for which the spacecraft and instruments are to be built in-house at a NASA Center rather than by industry, since the pressure of the aerospace lobby is needed against agency management, OMB, and the Congress. The program directors at NASA Headquarters are for the most part knowledgable scientists with good relations with the academic community. They know what missions should be done, and in what order - their problem is how to sell the missions (rather like Zha Zha Gabor's sixth husband, who said after the wedding that he knew what was expected of him, but was not sure he knew how to make it interesting). The difficulty usually lies with agency management and financial people, who make decisions based on grounds other than scientific considerations. Often it appears that rationality plays no part in these decisions. For example, an outer planets mission failed a few years ago primarily because the Administrator said that the returns would be in long after he had departed. The infrared telescope at the University of Hawaii was approved to study Jupiter's satellites for better targeting of Voyager. In my own program, the financial people decided that $3.5M wasn't enough for the first year of a new start, so they took $1.5M of our R&D money (which goes to research grants) to make $5M for the new start. When the new start was unsuccessful, do you think we got the $1.5M back? In fact, to restore any cut whatsoever requires a new line item, which is as difficult to get approval for as a new mission. There is at NASA a paraphrase of something Fred Allen once said: You can take all the impact that scientific rationale has on major funding decisions, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart (Tony Calio was the Associate Administrator for Applications a few years ago - able and fair, but very, very tough). Mission data analysis money is the only part of a mission than can be (and very often is) cut when the mission starts overrunning costs. As to funds for instrument development and for basic research, the approach of management and OMB now is to cut every science program 30% or 50% every year and then see who squawks the loudest -- those people get perhaps half the cut restored, and the rest die. Disciplines which are outside whatever the mainstream of management interest is at any given time have to exert monumental efforts just to hang on until upper level people are replaced by those whose views might be different. For example, in the early 1970's, lunar and planetary science were the thing. Then in the Fletcher-Hinners era the astronomers broke through and dominated space science. Under Bob Frosch, large programs were begun in the earth sciences. Individual scientists in universities and research laboratories are almost comletely unaware of what the science program management people at NASA Headquarters do. You can make an analogy between the latter (as well as their counterparts at NSF, USGS, etc.) and the Rangers in the Lord of the Rings, who protected the little world of the hobbits in their shire from the demons and goblins outside, without the hobbits ever being aware of the effort.