Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

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SPACE AS AN INVESTMENT IN ECONOMIC GROWTH
A 1977 study by the Hudson Institute that did not receive a lot of publicity, but was
extremely interesting and well balanced, made 100-year projections of space activities.
The analysis provided a number of different scenarios ranging from space being dominated
by military activities to space being an instrument of a “green” society. In each of
the scenarios, the economic activities, costs, and benefits of space were major factors. The
projections were based on a combination of economic growth and technology forecasting,
superimposed on different assumptions concerning overall future societal and political
perspectives. This is one of the first studies sponsored by NASA that gave equal weight to
economic as well as technological trends and changes. The authors recognized that the
purpose of the study was to provide NASA with both qualitative projections of the future
for planning and public relations purposes and very broad guidelines to answering critics’
questions about the value and long-term use of space. [III-16]
In the early 1980s, NASA embarked on a number of efforts to find new and better
ways to commercialize space. NASA officials commissioned a task to review the agency’s
options. The Office of General Counsel prepared an in-depth legal and policy paper
detailing the options available to NASA for stimulating commercial investments and
opportunities. [III-17] The final series of reports of the task force was instrumental in
establishing a headquarters office responsible for all commercial activities, ranging from
technology transfer functions to direct support of R&D and joint projects with industry
that had prospects of developing commercial space manufacturing activities. This office,
as with most prior efforts to stimulate commercial uses of space, had some near-term success,
but it failed to generate long-term changes in the operations or goals of the agency.
The office (but not the commercialization functions) met with the fate of all prior NASA
economics-oriented program offices; it was slowly dismantled in the early 1990s.
There were many reasons various internal NASA attempts at establishing and making
economic analysis and economic stimulation programs were unsuccessful. Primarily,
NASA is an agency managed and staffed by engineers and scientists. Historically, NASA
officials and program managers have been recognized and rewarded by developing successful
scientific or engineering programs. Cost management and economic stimulation
were seen as important, but were not the yardsticks for promotion. Even though NASA’s
top management recognized the need and the potential for NASA to be an important element
in economic policy for the United States, the message was not adequately transmitted
to the program offices. The transition to a more business-like approach to space has
been slow, but the trend, as evidenced in both legislative and presidential directives as well
as NASA’s own planning documents, is unmistakably toward emphasizing economic objectives
as well as technological advances. 20
In addition, during the 1983–1984 time period, the Reagan administration took a
proactive stand on encouraging private-sector involvement in space. There had been a
number of successful Space Shuttle flights, and experiments in materials processing in
microgravity were beginning to show the promise of future business opportunities. In
August 1983, business leaders and top-level executive branch officials attended a meeting
on space commercialization and had lunch with President Reagan. [III-18] By April 1984,
a memorandum from Craig Fuller on commercial space initiatives had been prepared by
industry representatives that began a dialogue on the various incentives and changes in government
activities and regulations that might be necessary to encourage more industrial
participation in space. [III-19] An interagency working group was established under the
Cabinet Council on Commerce and Trade to begin work on these commercialization issues.
20. The motto, “faster, cheaper, better,” which is the byline of Daniel S. Goldin’s term as NASA
Administrator, is indicative of this new culture being instilled within NASA.