NASA's Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus (2012) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 1-7
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leadership in space science is being threatened by insufficient budgets to carry out the missions identified in the strategic plans (decadal surveys) of the science communities, rising cost of missions, decreasing science budgets, and the collapse of partnerships with the European Space Agency (ESA)
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leadership in robotic space exploration today, but the sudden and dramatic proposed cut to the Mars exploration budget and withdrawal from the ExoMars program with Europe cast doubt on the future. Human spaceflight capabilities historically have served as a symbol of a country's leadership in space.
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Rising costs associated with increasingly complex missions, declining science budgets, international partnerships that fell apart, and mission cost overruns have strained science budgets to their breaking point. As a result, key decadal priorities in astrophysics, planetary science, and Earth science will not be pursued for many years, or not at all.
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are not currently in the budget; high-priority science missions (including robotic planetary exploration missions that are precursors to human exploration) identified in the most recent NRC decadal survey are unfunded; and aeronautics now accounts for only about 3 percent of the total NASA budget.
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Option 1 might also diminish NASA's workforce capabilities if changes in policies prompt large numbers of key personnel to retire or seek other employment. To be effective, Option 2 might require congressional authorization for NASA to make long-term financial commitments to a particular program to assure prospective partners that neither NASA nor Congress would unilaterally cancel a joint program.
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• NASA should transform its network of field centers into an integrated system that supports its strategic plan and communications strategy and advances its strategic goals and objectives. Today it is common to declare that all future human spaceflight or large-scale Earth and space science projects will be international.
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Only with a national consensus on the agency's future strategic direction, along the lines described in this report, can NASA continue to deliver the wonder, the knowledge, the national security and economic benefits, and the technology typified by its earlier history. REFERENCES NRC (National Research Council)
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