Political Science

Instructor Name Inside NASA high technology and organizational change in the U.S. space program By Howard E. McCurdy  A Review

In Inside NASA the renowned space historian and sociologist Dr. Howard E. McCurdy, studies NASAs organizational culture and the agencys collective attitude towards the work of space exploration in the organization in the early days of NASA as compared to the state of NASA in in the 1970s and beyond.
The book is a mainly a study of organizational culture with the use of NASA as a case study, rather than a work on the history of NASA. The author uses sociological concepts to explain the decline of NASA as a space-faring organization, its transformation into a bureaucracy and why NASA in the decades after the great success of the lunar landings was unable to replicate the successes of the past.

Dr. McCurdys book throws an interesting light on the ways of bureaucratic organizations however, I think Inside NASA could have been enhanced by adding an analysis of the organization in light of Cybernetic theories. The transformation of NASA from an objective based organization to one geared towards self-preservation and status quo recalls the difference between the Analytic Paradigm and Cybernetic and Cognitive Paradigm as theorized by Steinbruner in his Cybernetic Theory of Decision. Steinbruner says that the Analytic Paradigm is geared towards seeking solutions and achieving objectives while the Cybernetic and Cognitive Paradigm is geared towards self-perpetuation.

Organizations with an Analytic paradigm are sensitive to unexpected outcomes while those with the Cybernetic and Cognitive paradigm focus on eliminating variable and ensuring stability, assuming that conditions will always remain the same (Steinbruner, 1974). Rather than a paradigm change McCurdy views the changes in the agency more in terms of an inevitable organizational life-cycle where an early culture of risk taking is replaced by one that is occupied with maintenance of the status quo.

McCurdy describes the early days of NASA as a period of great enthusiasm, creativity and innovation. The employees of NASA were imbued with a sense that they were making history. Technical and scientific achievement was the foremost objective in everyones minds. The role of engineering project management in the organization was far greater than it is today. The organization worked with a clear vision of their goals, the time available to them for the fulfillment of their objectives and the various constraints placed upon them such as budgetary and cost constraints.

An organization such as NASA depends upon government to give them leadership and direction. On May 25, 1961, in a message to Congress, President John F. Kennedy gave a rousing speech calling for a mission to land humans on the Moon. Charged with President Kennedys vision, the agency made great strides in technological progress.

This era of progress started to end around the start of the Nixon administration. NASA officials found that government was so longer interested in space explorations or scientific endeavors in general, for their own sake. Several reports by NASAs Space Task Group for the expansion of extension of space exploration missions were reject one after another by the government.

Without the governments support, NASA was left without any long-term vision or objective. In response to the lack of support for science-for-the-sake-of-science, NASA official developed a strategy to try to bundle up their scientific missions with the goals of the military or the private industries. They found that usually only projects that had underlying benefits for the military or industry were approved by the government.

The focus of NASA administration was shifted from technological achievement to the creation of political coalitions for their various programs. Campaigns in support of various NASA programs involved the support of such disparate entities as the military, private contractors hoping to get some business from the programs, space exploration enthusiasts from the public, astronomers and politicians looking for NASA related jobs in their districts.

One of the results of these dirty politics in support of space programs was the Shuttle. The shuttle was supposed to be able to do multiple jobs, it was designed to transport people to and from a orbiting space station, deliver military spy satellites, deliver components of the space station into orbit, deliver space telescopes into orbit and so on and so forth.

McCurdy says that the presence of these multiple objectives seriously strained the technological ability of the agency. McCurdy cites this as one of the causes of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster (McCurdy, 1993).

McCurdy theorizes that three decades of visionless existence had caused serious decay in the organizational capabilities of NASA. NASA administration had become bureaucratized and interested only in maintaining status quo. Thus, when the administration of Bush the senior came up with a proposal for renewed exploration of the moon and Mars, instead of grasping this opportunity to revitalize the agency, NASA response to the proposal was to try to bundle up the proposal into continued support for existing programs and into support for flailing sectors of the organization.
McCurdy has not presented a great case of why we should have space exploration for the sake of itself. The United States is a democratic country, if the citizens of the country do not believe that space exploration should be a priority, the politicians will not give it importance either. In the early days of NASA the public as well as the politicians were greatly motivated by the Cold war rivalry with the USSR to win the space race, today, when the United States is clearly ahead in the space race, it is doubtful that public enthusiasm for space exploration can be revived. Even the current Mars exploration program of European Space Agency which recently revealed images of the Mars moon Phobos, failed to generate much enthusiasm for Mars exploration in the United States. A renewal of NASA would perhaps require the Chinese or the Russian space programs to achieve a level of technical achievement that could be seen as rivaling that of the United States.