We NASA’ed the Hell Out of That

[The following is the text of a speech given by Phil McAlister during the November 2023 Washington Space Business Roundtable Luncheon, edited for content (this means I changed some stuff). ?The views reflected here are those of Phil McAlister and do not necessarily reflect the views of NASA.]

Several years ago, the conference rooms on the 7th floor of the NASA Headquarters building (where the human spaceflight people work) were undergoing renovations.? Bigger video monitors, better teleconference equipment, better chairs, etc.? This attracted a small crowd of NASA employees who watched the action. ?As one of the workers was removing what looked like a perfectly good, fairly large video monitor, a colleague of mine asked, “What are you going to do with that monitor?”? Turns out, it was going to be excessed.

My colleague worked on the International Space Station Program, and he got a great idea.? He knew NASA Headquarters receives a continuous video feed, 24x7, from the space station.? Sometimes the feed just shows Earth rotating below, or a view of the star field, but it was always something.? His idea was to salvage this excess monitor, put it in the window of the ground floor of the NASA Headquarters building, hook up the space station feed, and, VOILA!?

The NASA Headquarters building is in downtown Washington, DC, and lots of tourists walk by on any given day.? So, basically for free, we could show live video from actual freakin’ space for the people walking by.

To implement this great idea, we had to ask permission from a bunch of people (big mistake…huge).? Word got around, and people starting coming up with ideas to make the original idea EVEN BETTER.? By the time it was done, it had morphed into a multi-screen video wall, and each Mission Directorate was tasked with developing unique video content for the wall (see picture).?

What began as a simple idea suddenly became more complicated, requiring more resources.? The video wall was unquestionably “better”, but it also wasn’t free.? Subsequently, I saw my colleague, and as we were talking about the video wall he said, “We NASA’ed the hell out of that idea.”?

This is an amusing story (well, I hope it is amusing), but it is also emblematic of the culture at NASA.? We have a deep-seated, strong belief in continual improvement.? Never accept “good enough”.? Always make things better.? And on the face of it, continual improvement sounds great.? Why wouldn’t you want to make something better than it is??

I have to admit I have always been always somewhat uncomfortable with this aspect of NASA’s culture.? As I have mentioned in previous posts, I spent 20 years in the private sector before joining NASA, and in the private sector “good enough” often is the ideal.? Why spend more time and more money on something that is good enough?? I think the “always make things better” mantra at NASA has led to some of the cost overruns and schedule slips we have seen on some programs.?

This is why I think the public-private partnerships of the Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew Programs were so successful.? They leveraged the best of both worlds – the “always make things better” culture at NASA with the “good enough is good enough” culture of the private sector.? Without Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, NASA might have added a bunch of nice-to-have features to the cargo transportation systems that would have increased costs and delayed the schedule.? And without NASA, Orbital Sciences and SpaceX might have produced systems that are less capable than they are today. This healthy tension produced results superior to what either one could have produced alone. I believe this balance was absolutely critical to the success of the commercial cargo and crew efforts.

However, public-private partnerships are not appropriate for every spaceflight development effort.? Something like the James Webb Space Telescope, where you are pushing the state-of-the-art technologically and you are only going to build one unit, is much more appropriate for a traditional development program.? Also, partnerships are not immune from cost and schedule issues.? But, under the right circumstances, public-private partnerships can be very beneficial because they leverage the best features of the public institution and the private companies.

I want to be very clear:? one method is not better than the other.? We need both because we have so many different kinds of missions these days.? We at NASA just need to make sure we are using the most appropriate strategy given the mission we are trying to accomplish.

So, where are we today on these different development methods and where are we going?? The pendulum has definitely swung towards more fixed-price development.? You can see that trend clearly in the recent procurements that have come out of NASA.?

If you are in a company that focuses mostly on fixed-price development programs, you may be thinking everything is great, and in some respects it is.? But, you still have to be very selective about what jobs you go after.? You must really understand the program requirements, and you must be technically and financially capable of taking on the job, or else you could end up losing your shirt.?

On the other hand, if you are in a company that focuses mostly on traditional development programs, you may be tempted to just wait things out and hope the pendulum swings back.? This is a perfectly reasonable strategy. ?The problem with the “wait and see” strategy is that you will be foregoing some large revenue opportunities, and it could be a while before things change.? And they may not change.? As long as there is an appetite in the private sector for taking on fixed-price development efforts, it is difficult to see the pendulum swinging back towards a lot of traditional development approaches in the near-term.?

Another strategy would be to acquire or grow the skills necessary to successfully execute fixed-price development projects.? I understand that this is very difficult because it requires changing the way you do business for certain projects.? But, we accomplished this change at NASA.? It’s still somewhat of a work in progress in my opinion.? But, today, if you are the manager of a program using a fixed-price development approach at NASA, you don’t have to start from scratch – there are lots of people and resources and lessons learned from other programs to help guide you through the lifecycle.

All paths entail some degree of risk, and different companies can make different decisions for their specific companies.? I think that will make the future very interesting for our industry, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out.? Thank you.