NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration - (NASA), civilian agency of the U.S. federal government with the mission of conducting research and developing operational programs in the areas of space exploration, artificial satellites (see satellite, artificial), and rocketry. NASA came into existence on Oct. 1, 1958, superseding the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), an agency Read More...

National Aeronautics and Space Administration - (NASA), civilian agency of the U.S. federal government with the mission of conducting research and developing operational programs in the areas of space exploration, artificial satellites (see satellite, artificial), and rocketry. NASA came into existence on Oct. 1, 1958, superseding the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), an agency that had been oriented primarily toward laboratory research. The emphasis at NASA was to be on the implementation of operational programs. While the NACA budget never exceeded $5 million and its staff never exceeded 500, the NASA annual budget reached $14.2 billion in 1995, and its staff reached a maximum size of 34,000 in 1966 (21,000 in 1995), with 400,000 contract employees working directly on agency programs.

The creation of NASA was spurred by American unpreparedness at the time the Soviet Union launched (Oct. 4, 1957) the first artificial satellite (Sputnik). NASA took over the Langley, Ames, and Lewis research centers from NACA. Soon after its creation, NASA acquired from the U.S. army the Jet Propulsion Laboratory operated by the California Institute of Technology. Later, the Army Ballistic Missile Arsenal (now the Marshall Space Flight Center) at Huntsville, Ala., was placed under NASA control.

The best-known NASA facilities are the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center near Houston, Tex., where flights are coordinated, and the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where all space shuttle launches take place. Other facilities include the Dryden, Goddard, and Stennis centers and NASA headquarters, in Washington, D.C. Despite some highly publicized failures, NASA has in many cases successfully completed its missions within their projected budgets; the total cost of the Apollo project, for example, wound up very close to the original $20-billion estimate. Currently, NASA oversees all space science projects, operates the space shuttle, and launches approximately half of all military space missions.

See T. Crouch, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1989).

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved.

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NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

1.

Reinventing NASA: Human Spaceflight, Bureaucracy, and Politics
by Roger Handberg. 278 pgs.

Book

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From its beginnings, NASA was convinced that its real mission was to create the opportunity for a much different and better society on Earth, namely through human space flight. Pursuit of such a goal has led the agency to persist in certain activities even when they conflict with the wishes of Congress and the President. Recent changes in the international environment, changes that began well before September 11, 2001, have brought the military back into the field of human space flight, a situation that holds certain hazards for NASA since the military is more powerful politically. Dramatic changes could be in store, changes that could severely damage NASA's capacity for continuing what it sees as its primary objective.

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1: NASA and Defining the Dream

2: In the Beginning

3: An Imploding Agency: Post-Challenger Blues

Notes

4: Inadvertent Political Catalyst: the Space Station Freedom

5: Fixing Space Launch

Notes

6: Faster, Better, Cheaper?

7: Reinventing Government: Efficiency Comes to NASA

8: Organizational Change as Goal-Directed Behavior

9: The Future of NASA

Selected References

Index

About the Author
2.

Politics and Space: Image Making by NASA
by Mark E. Byrnes. 212 pgs.

Book

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Government agencies have tended to attempt to project favorable public images of themselves as a method of building the public support they need to survive, all the more so in times of increasingly sophisticated communications and decreasingly available financial resources. This study analyzes NASA's efforts to build political support through its public image. Throughout its tumultuous history, the space agency has carefully tailored its use of basic images: nationalism (during the Mercury era), romanticism (during the Apollo era), and pragmatism (during the Shuttle era)--to fit its prevailing political circumstances. This in-depth study will be of keen interest to scholars in political science and political communication.

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Title Page

Contents

Tables and Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Notes

1: Nationalism

Notes

2: The Mercury Era

Notes

3: Romanticism

Notes

4: The Apollo Era

Notes

5: Pragmatism

Notes

6: The Shuttle Era

Notes

7: Transmitting the Images

Notes

8: Conclusion

Notes

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

About the Author
3.

Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA
by David P. Gump. 221 pgs.

Book

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"This veteran analyst offers an appraisal of investment opportunities in a wide array of space-related activities. NASA will no longer be a major factor in the commercialization of space. . . . There are a few futuristic projections, such as mining asteroids by robots and collecting antimatter, but the author is more concerned with the application of current or near-future high technology, i.e., products like ELVs (inexpensive expendable launch vehicles), and services with demonstrably large market potential, such as a remote sensing satellite network that could be subsribed to by every personal computer owner on earth." Choice

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Title Page

Contents

Introduction: The Overdue Frontier

1: The Shuttle: Pushed Beyond Its Limits

2: The Birth of a New Industry

3: Rockets and Spaceplanes of the 1990s

4: The $5,000 Ticket to Space

5: Space Communications: Ready for New Growth

6: Wonder Drugs and Electronics from Orbital Factories

7: 3m: Looking for Profits in Zero-Gravity

8: Orbital R&d for Earth-Side Problems

9: Spotting Earthly Treasures with Orbital Cameras

10: Prime Real Estate: The New Space Stations

11: The New Trade Route: The Moon, Mars, and Low Earth Orbit

Contacts For Further Information

Index

About the Author
4.

Can Democracies Fly in Space? The Challenge of Revitalizing the U.S. Space Program (Chap. 2 "In Search of the Magic Bullet: Critiques of U.S. Space Policy" and Chap. 3 "NASA: The Eye of the Storm")
by W. D. Kay. 248 pgs.

Book

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Over the last two decades, the image of the U.S. space program has become seriously tarnished. Its problems have ranged from massive cost overruns to serious program delays to catastrophic mission failures. The space program, once the most prominent symbol of American scientific and technological preeminence, now seems but one more example of government bumbling, extravagance, and waste. In this study, Kay examines the recent problems of the space program and finds that NASA's failures, like its earlier successes, are ultimately traceable to the way the American political system operates. Asking "can democracies fly in space?," the author suggests that the traditional workings of democratic politics actually exacerbates those very features of space projects--size, expense, and complexity--that make their development so difficult in the first place.

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

Part I: Introduction: WHERE DID WE GO WRONG?

1: A Program Adrift

2: In Search of the Magic Bullet: Critiques of U.S. Space Policy

NOTES

Part II: THE SPACE PROGRAM FROM THE GROUND UP

3: Nasa: The Eye of the Storm

NOTES

4: And a Cast of Thousands

NOTES

CONCLUSION: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THE DEMOCRATIC DILEMMA

NOTES

Part III: PROSPECTS FOR REFORM

6: A World Without Borders

NOTES

7: From Henry Ford to Captain Kirk

Bibliography

Index

About the Author
5.

Autonomy, Interdependence, and Social Control: NASA and the Space Shuttle Challenger, in Administrative Science Quarterly
by Diane Vaughan. 33 pgs.

Journal Article
6.

Mission Control: Politics, Not Size, Is the Real Threat to Megaprojects at NASA, in Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy
by W. D. Kay. 5 pgs.

Journal Article
7.

Space Policy Alternatives (Chap. 4 "The NASA Budget: For Whom, for What, and How Big?" and Chap. 5 "NASA and the Budget Process")
by Radford Byerly Jr. 296 pgs.

Book

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

Contributors

Chapter 1: Introduction

Notes

Part One: Overview

Chapter 2: The Future of the Unmanned Space Program

Conclusions

Chapter 3: The Lonely Race to Mars: the Future of Manned Spaceflight

Notes

Part Two: Context

Chapter 4: The Nasa Budget: for Whom, for What, and How Big?

Notes

Chapter 5: Nasa and the Budget Process

Notes

Chapter 6: Decision Making and Accountability in the U.S. Space Program: a Perspective

Chapter 7: The Role of Incentives and Accountability in Industry and Government

Notes

Chapter 8: Policy Issues Pertaining to the Space Exploration Initiative

Notes

Chapter 9: Low Cost Access to Space for Small Science and Technology

Part Three: Programs

Chapter 10 ***: Nasa's Space Science Program: the Vision and the Reality

Conclusions

Chapter 11: And Then There Was One: the Changing Character of Nasa's Space Science Flight Program

Notes

Chapter 12: Eos, the Earth Observing System: Nasa's Global Change Research Mission

The Outlook

Chapter 13: The Future of the Space Station Program

Notes

Chapter 14: The Space Shuttle Program: Performance Versus Promise

Notes

Part Four: Conclusions

Chapter 15: Imagined Frontiers: Westward Expansion and the Future of the Space Program

Notes

Chapter 16: Can the United States Conduct a Vigorous Civilian Space Program?

Notes

Index
8.

Organizational Crime in NASA and among Its Contractors: Using a Newspaper as a Data Source, in Social Justice
by Jurg Gerber, Eric Fritch. 14 pgs.

Journal Article
9.

Reaching for the High Frontier: The American Pro-space Movement, 1972-84
by Michael A. G. Michaud. 468 pgs.

Book

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Title Page

Contents

List of Tables

List of Figures

Foreword

Preface

List of Acronyms

Part I: Formation

1: The Space Dream: Realized, Threatened

2: Conventional Responses

3: The Beginnings of the New Space Movement

4: The Big Idea

5: O'Neill's Children

6: The New Demographics of Space

7: Science Fiction, Science Fact, and Space

8: The Space Group Boom

9: Organizing for Politics

Part II: Issues

10: Scientists, Citizens, and Space

11: Eagles and Doves

12: Space Commercialization and the New Entrepreneurs

13: The Space Station Decision

Part III: Summing Up

14: Conclusion

15: Epilogue and Future

Appendix a American Space Interest Groups

Appendix B the British Interplanetary Society

Notes

Appendix B

Bibliography

Index

About the Author
10.

Space, the Dormant Frontier: Changing the Paradigm for the 21st Century
by Joan Johnson-Freese, Roger Handberg. 280 pgs.

Book

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Rather than examining only the civil or military side of the US space program, as have many books in the past, Space, the Dormant Frontier takes a unique look at the space program as a whole. Part of the book's treatise is that the two communities must stop ignoring each other if the US space program is to move forward beyond being a science project, jobs program, or political football. How the program got into its current, semi-desperate state is also examined, as history has given space a legacy once glorious, now an albatross. The authors include information and analysis on the military and civil space programs, challenge the perspective of the Washington Beltway analyst with vested interests in the status quo, and make policy recommendations based on realism, rather than idealism.

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Title Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

Acronyms

I: THE BIG PICTURE

1: Repackaging the Dream

Notes

2: Policy Overview: If You Don't Care Where You'Re Going, Any Road Will Take You There

Notes

II: THE SITUATION

3: Space As a Government Domain

Notes

4: History As Inertia

Notes

5: The Economics of Space, Breaking the Dependency Cycle

Notes

III: THE OPPORTUNITY

6: Semidesperate Times

Notes

7: Seeking New Opportunities

Notes

IV: The Method

8: Convergence: Merging the Space Technology Bases

Notes

9: Change the Paradigm: Incorporate Politics and Emphasize Economics

Notes

10: A Parallel Development Plan

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Authors
11.

After Columbia: NASA Ought to Have Clear and Sensible Purposes, in National Review
by John Derbyshire. 2 pgs.

Magazine Article
12.

Columbia's Last Flight: The Inside Story of the Investigation-And the Catastrophe It Laid Bare, in The Atlantic Monthly
by William Langewiesche. 26 pgs.

Magazine Article
13.

It Is Now Emerging That the Columbia Space Shuttle Had Serious Problems on 20 of Its 28 Flights, and That a Near-Disaster in 1999 Was Hushed Up, in New Statesman
by Andrew Stephen. 1 pgs.

Magazine Article
14.

The End of the Space Age, in New Statesman
by Marina Benjamin. 2 pgs.

Magazine Article
15.

NASA and the Decision to Build the Space Shuttle, 1969-72, in The Historian
by Roger D. Launius. 18 pgs.

Journal Article
16.

A Historical Guide to the U.S. Government ("National Aeronautics and Space Administration" begins on p. 392)
by George Thomas Kurian. 768 pgs.

Book

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Beginning with George Washington's presidential staff of three, the executive branch of the U.S. federal government has undergone a tremendous transformation. Today it is the largest institution of its kind in the world, employing over 3.1 million people, with an annual budget of over $1.5 trillion. A Historical Guide to the U.S. Government chronicles its growth from its modest beginnings to its present state. Focusing on the federal executive branch and its constituent departments, agencies, commissions, and committees, the guide offers 180 historical accounts for each of these organizational entities. It addresses Congress and the Judiciary where they interact with the executive branch--for example, reviewing congressional oversight functions, examining the control wielded by the Supreme Court on government structure, and profiling the agencies under the administrative control of Congress. It examines the social, cultural, and intellectual movements that have influenced the way America is governed, and looks closely at American bureaucracy--what it is, how it is controlled, and how new technologies have influenced it.

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Directory of Contributors

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Appendix: Basic Documents of Public Administration

Index

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