Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

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SPACE AS AN INVESTMENT IN ECONOMIC GROWTH
A word of elaboration on point (3) is in order. It is not surprising to find that NASA’s
socio-economic activities are at this stage separate, uncoordinated, and almost incidental
activities. Until now the highest national priority on NASA has been that of creating a
large technical organization and getting on with the task of moving the nation toward the
position of pre-eminence in space. Most of NASA’s socio-economic studies are now carried
out on an ad hoc basis by technical offices under the Associate Administrator. In each of
these specialized staffs, the perspective and outlook are constrained by mission statement,
and the analyses are almost never carried out by trained economists, statisticians, and
other social scientists skilled in perceiving social implications. Moreover, the various
reporting systems and data elements are not adequately integrated and coordinated from
the point of view of economic analysis; they were developed almost without exception for
other specialized management purposes and only fortuitously serve socio-economic analysis
needs. To continue this approach would deny your office the strong central staff and
perspective needed to analyze critical agency positions with respect to overall NASA programs
and policies. A new professionalism is needed if NASA is to maintain leadership in
the new national environment for goal selection and public policy formulation.
Our key recommendation is that your Chief Economist’s responsibility of serving as a
focal point for agencywide socio-economic analyses under the Associate Deputy
Administrator be clarified, and his authority be spelled out in management instructions
and other suitable media. Our detailed recommendations for achieving this are set forth
in Chapter IV, especially section A, and the remainder of that chapter deals with other
improvements. The NASA Economist should become involved in major NASA decision
processes and selected interagency committees, and he should develop an information
base to serve top agency needs just as the activities of the Management Information
Systems Division now serve middle management and project management needs.
I do not want to close without noting that in our judgment successful implementation
of our recommendations will require a number of additional positions with high enough
grades to attract outstanding personnel, and also a period of about six months to assimilate
the data collections and cited reports, and to study and begin to carry out the recommended
improvements.
We wish to express our appreciation for the cooperation we received from NASA personnel
and our gratitude for the opportunity to review for you the central socio-economic
staff role in NASA.
I, of course, will be happy to discuss any points in this report at your convenience.
Document III-2
Yours sincerely,
[hand-signed: “Jack G. Faucett”]
President
Document title: Roger W. Hough, “Some Major Impacts of the National Space Program,”
Stanford Research Institute, Contract NASW-1722, June, 1968, pp. 1–2, 19–22, 36.
Source: NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
During the 1960s, as economists began to develop methodologies designed to evaluate the impact of
research and development (R&D) on the economy, NASA contracted for studies to document the space
agency’s specific impacts. These excerpts are from one of the early studies that focused on the impact
of NASA field centers on their localities. The report did not address national economic impacts.