Jon Goff has some thoughts about outsourcing NASA employees to private industry.
It’s an interesting concept, and not to discourage him from out-of-the-box thinking, but it has several flaws, more than one of which is almost certainly fatal.
Where would they work? Senator Shelby is not going to countenance a program that ships a Huntsville employee off to Mojave (and there are a lot of NASA employees who don’t want to move to Mojave). It’s not just the jobs that are important, but where they are. So it may necessitate moving the company to places like Huntsville to take advantage of it, even though it may be a terrible location from most other standpoints (e.g., flight test). In addition, a lot of the jobs that Congress wants to save aren’t just NASA civil servants–more, probably many more of them are contractors. How does that work? Does Boeing send you an extern and get reimbursed by NASA? How do you work out proprietary issues (among others)? How do you ensure that they send you the best employees, and not the ones they were going to lay off?
Also, there will be a huge discontinuity with skill matches. The current Shuttle work force, for the most part, knows very little about vehicle development, and what they know about vehicle operations, from the standpoint of a low-cost launch provider, is mostly wrong. Also, while a lot of people work for NASA because they’re excited about space, many there do so because they like the civil service protections and pensions. They don’t necessarily want to work the long hours often demanded of a startup, and they come from an employment culture that may be quite incompatible with the fixed-price private sector. I won’t say any more than that, but this is one of the reasons that the Aldridge Commission’s recommendation to convert the NASA centers to FFRDCs went over like a lead blimp.
And how would one qualify to get these “government resources” and how many would you get? As many as you ask for? After all, if the product is free (and contra the paragraph above, desirable) surely demand will exceed supply. How will you allocate the supply. It won’t happen on price, obviously, so some other solution will have to be developed. Would a company “bid” for an extern (and would they be able to bid on a specific person, or would they have to take pot luck?) by putting some kind of proposal to demonstrate how worthy their cause and their use of her will be? Who will be the equivalent of a source selection board for such a process? Can the current acquisition regulations even accommodate something like this? I know that this currently occurs for a few individuals, where it is mutually agreed, but I’m not sure that it would work for an entire work force.
Just a few thoughts, off the top of my head.
Hi Rand…
The current Shuttle work force, for the most part, knows very little about vehicle development, and what they know about vehicle operations, from the standpoint of a low-cost launch provider, is mostly wrong.
Well, there is definitely something to that. I used to work for General Dynamics in Fort Worth, and later, Pratt&Whitney in West Palm. I am constantly amazed at the, umm… peculiar… mindset of NASA when it comes to development. I have briefed a lot of folks at MSFC about the need for propellant slosh testing, and while everyone is interested, no one seems to know how to get it done. Last I heard, someone needs to step into the process and take “ownership of the risk” — which, as a contractor, I can’t do.
Also, while a lot of people work for NASA because they’re excited about space, many there do so because they like the civil service protections and pensions. They don’t necessarily want to work the long hours often demanded of a startup, and they come from an employment culture that may be quite incompatible with the fixed-price private sector.
Now, here I have to wonder about your stereotypes. Most of the folks I work with put in extra hours, uncompensated. I haven’t met very many who bug out at 4:30. The more typical problem is shutting them up by 6 pm so the children can get dinner. I can’t count the number of times I have had email exchanges with folks who are only just getting to their daily email at 8 pm. NASA ain’t the Post Office.
However, NASA would definitely benefit from an exchange program in which civil servants would be put on assignment with contractors to see how things get done “quickly”. (I say this with some humor, as someone who worked the much of the first half of the ATF/F-22 program from Plain Jane in 1983 to the F119 award in 1991 ~ a period of time comparable to, say, the invasion of Poland to Nagasaki).
Regards
BBB
I would think about it in a slightly different manner. Rand you are not casting the net wide enough here. Here are a few examples that would work.
Catapillar
Cat had a H&RT effort with NASA a few years ago for autonomous lunar surface equipment based upon their own work in that area. Cat and Deere and other companies are doing some very good work in this field and a NASA person who is interested in the lunar part could gain some really good insights into the application of terrestrial technology to the Moon and or Mars.
General Motors
GM has a very good fuel cell program and NASA engineers could learn a lot about fuel cell systems that would be applicable to the lunar/mars effort by working there.
Anglo American
This is one of the largest mining companies in the world and a NASA person could learn a lot there about moving material around as well as learning about the chemical processing of dilute ores to obtain metals. This would disabuse them of this notion that you can’t get metals out of rocks.
There are others but this gets the point across. To me it would not be appropriate for NASA people to work with the existing contractor base but it would be very good in the farther off world of industry.
If NASA were a contractor, instead of a government department, it would have been disbarred from any further government man in space contracts based on it’s track record with the Shuttle and the Space Station. The CES just confirms that statement.
The military has a far better track record at procurement and one reason is that it doesn’t have an indigenous army of engineers and technicians whose reason for working is to play space cadet and meddle in the weapons design process. They leave that to non profits like Aerospace corp whose charter is to look over the contractor’s shoulder and grade and not to design the system for them.
Exchanging NASA employees with contractor employees is not going to do squat, except make slightly more confident design meddlers. Oh the other hand, it’s just the kind of PR you see from NASA.
= R101 Airship
As I’ve said before, Governments are terrible at exploring a design space – that’s what free markets are for. The absolute worst thing a government agency can do is design. Government agencies should set the direction, (and if the need is dire, provide funding) and then get out of the way.
Ask a few simple questions – who has the last word one architecture and design at NASA? Is it a political appointee or the engineer that rose to the top for technical prowess? Is the decision based on office politics or technical strengths? When a better technical solution is found, what is the process by which it can be adopted – and are the gatekeepers politicians or technicians?
I don’t actually care, mind you – I believe the solution to CRATS or whatever will come from the market, probably an existing company. I just wish that if they were going to do it, that they would at least not embarrass everyone.
The military has a far better track record at procurement and one reason is that it doesn’t have an indigenous army of engineers and technicians whose reason for working is to play space cadet and meddle in the weapons design process.
Are you sure about this? Last time I looked (which was friday) the military had some vastly over-budget and ridiculously behind schedule satellite programs (SBIRS?). Mil-space acquisition would of course be the closest comparison to NASA acquisition. Perhaps you were speaking to aeronautics programs? Even with the extra motivation provided by military necessity, we not exactly churning out excellent products on-cost at high speed (JSF?).
They leave that to non profits like Aerospace corp whose charter is to look over the contractor’s shoulder and grade and not to design the system for them.
Heh, quasi-outsourcing your “meddlers” to an FFRDC non-profit that sits in the same building you do doesn’t make them non-indigenous. On the contrary, Aerospace has become the primary and most relied upon body of knowledge precisely because they are indigenous, far more so than the military personnel that PCS every 3-4 years. They aren’t sitting over the contractors shoulder, they are sitting over SMCs’ shoulder (AF Space and Missile Systems Center, responsible for operational space acquisition in the AF). They may not provide designs, but they certainly do have a large influence on performance, design, and test requirements. Which drive cost and schedule.
Aerospace also happens to be something like the 4th largest contractor (budget wise) to SMC (can you guess the first 3?). In this case, non-profit only means they can co-locate with the military, are largely unaccountable for delays or overruns on programs they influence, and aren’t forced to provide any value to shareholders. Bear in mind I’m not trying to say that Aerospace employees can’t be incredible assets to military programs, just the structure of the military-Aerospace relationship can create a lot of problems.
For the real question at hand, I think sending government employees to work part-time in contractor facilities is fantastic, when it is done right. The trick is to *not* meddle, which really isn’t that difficult.
I think one of the best things the Government can do is send its young engineers and scientists to participate, watch, and learn from the contractors tasked to provide systems to the government. The government wins because it develops the technical acumen of its future program managers and directors, has much greater insight into contractor performance and technical hurdles, creates better communication between Govt and contractor, and really helps to bind them together as one team.
The contractor wins for a lot of the same reasons. They also get some free labor, someone on the government team that can better see issues from their point of view, someone who the ear of and more insight to govt program management that they can bounce ideas off of, and someone on the inside to show just how dreadful it can be to work with the government sometimes (which is healthy knowledge all govt employees should have).
Concerns like security of proprietary and source selection information really aren’t difficult to address.
Acronyms impede understanding.
What is an FFRDC?
FFRDC = “Federally Funded Research and Development Center”
Examples, JPL and the Aerospace Corporation. Non-profit corporations that exist primarily on government contracts (with an actual line item in the federal budget), but whose employees are not in the civil service, so they can be dealt with much more flexibly in terms of both pay and retention.