A Case Study in NASA-DoD - The Black Vault

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shared hardware and facilities, and common management and procurement
procedures.
However, even where the interests were common, it was not
easy to achieve a high degree of cooperation. The inclination to create
separate management procedures was as strong as the desire to build
separate facilities and support organizations.
Congress recognized the potential for NASA and DoD to create duplicate
capabilities, and thus specified in the Space Act of 1958 that...
in order to keep the costs of the U.S. Space program as low as possible,
unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment should be
avoided by close cooperation among Federal agencies.... This statement
* of Congressional intent, along with the provision for organizational
arrangements to oversee the NASA-DoD relationship, provided the legislative
basis for such cooperation.
Even with these factors, it took four to five years before the organizational
structure for cooperation was developed and institutionalized
as part of the NASA and D-.D standard operating procedure.
Situations
that do not include these two categories of factors could
expect to encounter possibly even more difficulty in establishing a
cooperative relationship.
THE DIFFICULTIES OF TRANSFERRING NACA EXPERIENCE TO NASA
The transferral of organizational experience from one situation
to another is generally much more difficult than anticipated. For
instance, during the debate between Congress and the Executive Branch
on the formulation of NASA, it was often suggested that the experience
of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was directly
applicable to the new space agency and should be used as an organizational
model for NASA. In 1959, NACA, employing 8000 scientists,
engineers, and other personnel and operating several major research
and testing facilities, had already demonstrated many years of service
to the aircraft industry and the military services. In 1952 it began
to study the mechanics and problems of space flight and was the agency
responsible for such technical contributions as the blunt nose design
The Civilian Military Liaison Committee (CMLC)
Aeronautics and Space Council.
and the National