A Case Study in NASA-DoD - The Black Vault

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VI. APPLYING THE NASA-DOD COOPERATION EXPERIENCE TO OTHER SITUATIONS:
PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS
Section II traced the evolution of NASA and DoD cooperation in
space activities from the development of President Eisenhower's space
policies during the pre- and post-Sputnik era through the mid-1960s.
The cost and organizational implications of DoD utilization of NASA
standard spacecraft designs for the Space Test Program missions were
investigated using a case study approach in Secs. III and IV. The
case study examined the process of NASA-DoD cooperation in one area.
This cooperation benefited from experiences gained during nearly 20
years of NASA-DoD interaction.
In a variety of situations, it is often hypothesized that improved
cooperation between agencies having overlapping areas of responsibility
or between nations having similar interests will lead to increased
economic efficiency.
Such cooperation is considered especially important
during periods of tight financial (budgetary) constraints, where it
is often seen as a means of sharing the costs and risks associated with
a speeific project. Over the years, numerous attempts have been made
to establish cooperative relationships among agencies or nations, with
varying degrees of success.
In general, the more successful cooperative
arrangements involved a specific project and were for a few participants
(agencies or countries) or for a short time. Examples include
the Concorde aircraft co-development and co-production by France and
England, the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous project between the USSR and the
United States, and the European cooperation on the space shuttle program
(which has finally centered on the Space Lab Module after many aborted
attempts at much more extensive participation).
In contrast, the
NASA-DoD cooperation cited in this study is unusual because it has
dealt with a broad spectrum of projects and problems and has been in
effect for over 15 years.
In this section, NASA-DoD cooperation is reexamined for lessons
that might facilitate future Interagency cooperation in other situations.
This is done first by reviewing the NASA-DoD cooperation