Space.com by Leonard David 10/22/2024
"This is not a time for business as usual."The next few years are likely to be pivotal ones for NASA, according to a hard-hitting report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
The report, which was released last month, is called "NASA at a Crossroads: Maintaining Workforce, Infrastructure and Technology Preeminence in the Coming Decades." And that title was chosen advisedly.
"The bottom line of all this, I think, would be to say that, for NASA, this is not a time for business as usual," said Norm Augustine, committee chair and former Lockheed Martin CEO, during a Sept. 10 webinar that detailed the report's findings.
"The concerns that it faces are ones that have built up over decades," Augustine said. "NASA truly is, in our view, at a crossroads, and that's why we put that word in the title."
Rebalance its priorities The report identifies out-of-date infrastructure, pressures to prioritize short-term objectives, budget mismatches, inefficient management practices and nonstrategic reliance on commercial partners as the core issues.
The report also argues that NASA should rebalance its priorities and increase investments in its facilities, expert workforce and the development of cutting-edge technology, "even if it means forestalling initiation of new missions."
Indeed, the environment in which NASA functions today is complicated by several factors, including:
• Rapid advancements in technology
• The need to compete for talent with the commercial space sector, other space agencies and other high-tech sectors
• A declining federal discretionary budget and a flat agency budget (in terms of purchasing power)
• Lack of timely congressional authorization acts
• Shortfalls in the nation's education system, from pre-K through high school
• Increasing competition in space from China
More:
https://www.space.com/nasa-crossroads-budget-issues-national-academies-report
