Science & Mathematics - 8 September 2006

should we shut the organization down or hold our leaders and those at the head of N.A.S.A. responsible

WASHINGTON - A former NASA manager issued a critical report Monday of the agency's "faster, better, cheaper" approach that has pushed the agency's engineers and scientists to crank out more frequent, low-cost and stripped-down missions since the early 1990s.

The report was written by Tony Spear, who worked on several missions and headed up much of the Pathfinder mission that successfully air-bagged its way onto the Red Planet in July 1997 on a relatively modest budget.

In his 18-page report, Spear wrote that NASA's "current mission failure rate is too high and must be reduced."

While there can be "honorable" failures, he said, most NASA duds in the past 10 years "can be attributed to poor communications and mistakes in engineering and management."

Spear, a veteran Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer, was the top project engineer for Mars Pathfinder -- a mission that epitomized an econo-class space mission that worked. That project cost $270 million, a fraction of the budgets for NASA's more typical missions in years past, such as the Galileo spacecraft at Jupiter and the Cassini spacecraft now en route to Saturn, which frequently climbed higher than $1 billion per mission.

The now-retired Spear was asked last July by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin to help the space agency gauge and chart its "faster, better, cheaper" approaches to its missions; an edict that Goldin himself spearheaded when he first came on board to head up the ailing space agency in the early 1990s. To fulfill the task, he conducted a series of interviews and workshops at various NASA centers.

"As with any major human endeavor, there have been successes and failures in the stress and strain of venturing onto new ground, trying new things, taking risk to gain significant return," the report said.

However, "failing due to mistakes is not tolerable," it concluded, particularly when contrasted to failures occurring due to use of exotic technology or a spacecraft that encounters a strange, unknown environment.

Spear even tackled NASA timidity. The report, which lapsed into a folksy tone at times, advocates a reward system whereby faster-better-cheaper projects -- and those working on them -- would receive a "Badge of Courage."

The report also said:

Achieving the goal of faster-better-cheaper missions can invoke an infectious "team spirit "at NASA. However, some mission teams report that the fun had gone away after their funding resources were cut too deeply.
No magic is required to achieve all three elements of faster-better-cheaper missions. It's back to basics: lots of hard work and dedication, follow through on details.
There is a need to prod the NASA centers to better coordinate space projects.
NASA must watch for potentially high-payoff technology breakthroughs that can be a plus for space missions, as well as give the nation a competitive advantage.
In an interview with SPACE.com following the report, Liam Sarsfield, a senior policy analyst at RAND's Science and Technology Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-think tank, said that what NASA has experienced in the way of failures cannot be necessarily tied to the faster-better-cheaper way of doing business.

"NASA is facing problems that are endemic to the aerospace industry at large," he said.

"It's clear that teams in NASA, industry and the military are all experiencing burnout because they are moving too fast, trying to accomplish too much with too little," Sarsfield said. "The Spear report is an excellent road map. Now NASA has to design the right on and off ramps and they've got a lot of work to do."

NASA has long been chasing a faster-better-cheaper approach in its space projects, said Frank Hoban of the Institute for Public Policy at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. A 30-year veteran of NASA, Hoban said the agency is trying to be less risk-averse, a philosophy already in full swing in the commercial world.

"In the past, you weren't entitled to take risks. Today NASA is saying let's lose a few, but do them a lot cheaper," Hoban said.

He gave kudos to Goldin for pushing hard and demanding faster-better-cheaper space projects.

"At some point in time, this is what commercial space is all about," Hoban said. "You make it cheap enough so if you lose one, you haven't gone bankrupt. That's what this is all about. I think we're driving toward commercial space with thisand that's the name of the game."

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/business/spear_report_000313.html

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How much education in biology is needed to be a botanist?

10 points to whoever knows. =]

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A man had to pack a sack of apples into packets but as each
packet had to have exactly the same number of apples he was
having difficulty.
If he packed 10 apples per packet, one packet only had 9.
If he packed 9 apples per packet, one packet only had 8.
If he packed 8 apples per packet, one packet only had 7.
If he packed 7 apples per packet, one packet only had 6.
If he packed 6 apples per packet, one packet only had 5.
If he packed 5 apples per packet, one packet only had 4.
If he packed 4 apples per packet, one packet only had 3.
If he packed 3 apples per packet, one packet only had 2.
If he packed 2 apples per packet, one packet only had 1.

How many apples did he start with?

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AS Level Physics

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For this problem, assume 10 males audition, one of them being Winston, 7 females audition, one of them being Margaret, and 5 children audition. The casting director has 3 male roles available, 1 female role available, and 2 child roles available.

How many different ways can these roles be filled if exactly one of Winston and Margaret gets a part?

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