Augustine: NASA Needs to Focus on the Basics–Infrastructure, Workforce, Technology

A new report from the National Academies warns NASA that it needs to focus on the basics even if it means forgoing new missions. Chaired by Norm Augustine, the report “NASA At a Crossroads” tells a familiar tale of an agency in need of more money to accomplish all it is asked to do. The bottom line this time, however, is that fixing long-standing infrastructure decay, investing in new technology, and maintaining a skilled workforce is more important than new missions if additional money does not materialize.

Augustine has chaired many study committees for the Academies and NASA over the years that usually point to inadequate funding as NASA’s greatest challenge. In writing this report, requested by Congress in the CHIPS and Science Act, the long-retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin was joined by 12 other prominent members of the space community with extensive experience in government, industry, and academia. They summarized their findings and recommendations during a webinar on September 10.

Over the course of about a year, they visited all nine NASA field centers across the United States and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) operated for NASA by the California Institute of Technology.

What they found was that 83 percent of NASA’s infrastructure is beyond its design life, with many facilities dating back to the 1960s. “This aging infrastructure is expensive to maintain, wastes valuable personnel time, and makes it more difficult to attract and retain world-class talent,” the committee said in a press release.

They want NASA to work with Congress to establish a Working Capital Fund financed by the government and users of NASA facilities similar to those at other government agencies. The committee estimates the revolving fund would need $600 million annually to meet their goal of eliminating NASA’s maintenance backlog over the next decade.

A repeated theme in the report is that NASA lacks long-term planning, which particularly affects technology investments. During its visits to NASA centers the committee was told there’s little point in making long term technology investment plans when congressional appropriations are only for one year and it takes half of that year to get final approval to do anything.

Augustine’s committee disagrees.

“Our committee takes exception to that and we believe what’s needed is what we’ve chosen to call long range milestone-based plans where, for example, if at time T-0, whatever year that is, if you were going to go to Mars maybe it’s 2033, T-0. At that time you’re going to plan people on Mars then at T-x years you’d better be prepared to fly a full scale, say, a nuclear thermal propulsion system.  And if you’re going to do that, then at T-y you’d better do a prototype operation on the ground. At T-z you have to have a complete design and the components available to exercise those later milestones.

And if you have those and each milestone you can sort of specify the number of people that are going to be needed, what types of skills, what technologies have got to be available at that point in time, how much money it’s going to take. And you can back up and begin to take stock of whether you’re behind or ahead, or where you stand and what are the priorities to catch up if you’re behind. And we would encourage NASA to do more milestone-based planning because we do think it is useful and possible.” — Norm Augustine

The committee also is concerned that NASA’s Independent Research and Development (IR&D) program has shrunk compared with the overall size of NASA even though it’s the groundwork for the future. It wants IR&D funded “even at the expense of some near-term missions if necessary.”

The agency needs help from Congress to ensure a robust workforce. The NASA Flexibility Act of 2004 allows NASA to expedite hiring scientists and engineers with special skills, but it applies to only “a few hundred cases,” Augustine said.  It needs to be broadened so NASA can compete with the private sector because those fields are “in great demand throughout the economy.”

NASA also needs to ensure that the workforce maintains critical skills. The agency’s move towards Public-Private Partnerships and service contracts instead of developing technology on its own is a concern. Engineers need to “get their hands dirty” to hone their skills, Augustine argued. NASA needs to maintain a critical mass of skills for early technology work and not overly rely on industry.

Several other committee members weighed in on this, too. Hans Koenigsmann, retired from SpaceX, stressed that NASA has made “amazing progress” with the new contract models, but it leaves NASA’s workforce concerned about their future “and how much hands-on work” will be done at NASA.

Gen. Lester Lyles (Ret.), who also chairs the NASA Advisory Council and the National Space Council’s Users’ Advisory Group, added that “the nation cannot afford to have NASA just become a funding agency for industry. … Industry actually values having an agency like NASA that understands the technology and is not just going to sit back and dole out dollars.” It’s a balance that has to be struck “between the two parties.”

Former astronaut and NOAA Administrator Kathy Sullivan agreed. Asked if NASA is shifting from an engineering powerhouse to a funding agency, she replied that’s exactly the committee’s concern.

“I think it’s the committee’s consensus view that the United States will be best served for its future by continuing to have engineering prowess in NASA and not have the agency just become a funding pass-through or a contract monitor.” — Kathy Sullivan

But adequate funding remains a top challenge. Augustine pointed out that he’s chaired two previous Academy studies and NASA always needs $3 billion more and reacts by under-investing in infrastructure. That has to stop.

The two previous [Academy] studies that I was involved in … said that NASA’s problem is it always seems to have $3 billion more in programs than it has in funds and that’s prevailed ever since. NASA’s solution to the problem has been to under-invest in infrastructure and so on for the future and that tactic has frankly run out of gas. We can’t continue to do that. … This is not a time for business as usual. — Norm Augustine

Asked how to get increased funding, Lyles replied that better communication with Congress is needed to “make them understand the benefits of all the things that NASA does … and what’s in jeopardy” not just for NASA, but for the economy and national security. Sullivan added that a long-range plan would help.

The committee made seven core findings and eight core recommendations, but in wrapping up the webinar, Augustine summarized it all by saying that NASA is a strong organization today, but absent more money it must change its strategy and invest in fundamentals even at the expense of new missions.

NASA is a strong organization today, but it is underfunded [for] the future NASA.  It’s been doing this for many years and it’s reached a crossroads today where it’s no longer business as usual. Either NASA is going to have to have a larger budget or NASA is going to have to spend a larger portion of that budget on foundational items as opposed to doing new missions and that’s going to be a very tough set of choices.” — Norm Augustine

Today, the two top Democrats on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee who oversee NASA praised the report. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Ranking Member of the full committee, and Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-IL), Ranking Member of the space subcommittee, thanked the Academies for identifying “critical gaps” that NASA and Congress must address “for the Agency to remain the preeminent federal organization for cutting-edge technology and exploration.”  The report “will help ensure NASA is set up for success in the future and provides important insight to inform the Committee’s work.”