Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U. S. Space Program

Space exploration has always been one of the country's most expensive undertakings. The first moon landing cost $21 billion in 1969 dollars. The International Space Station currently under construction will cost at least $65 billion by the time it is finished. A single flight of the reusable space shuttle costs $400 million. In Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program, Howard E. McCurdy examines NASA's recent efforts to save money while improving mission frequency and performance.
Faster, Better, Cheaper takes its title from the initiative of the same name, which officials at NASA adapted after the high-profile failure of the Mars Observer spacecraft in 1993. Although that expedition was conceived in 1981 as the last in a series of lower-cost missions, its budget by launch had grown from $250 million to more than $800 million. To compensate for research opportunities lost during the hiatus since the last Viking mission in 1976, scientists in 1992 added numerous instruments while technicians added equipment to guard against failure. This effort should have resulted in a more reliable and better- performing spacecraft, and yet, as the Observer approached Mars on August 21, 1993, it disappeared.
McCurdy details the sixteen missions undertaken during the 1990s—including an orbit of the moon, deployment of three space telescopes, four earth-orbiting satellites, two rendezvous with comets and asteroids, and a test of an ion propulsion engine—which cost less than the sum traditionally spent on a single, conventionally-planned planetary mission. He shows how these missions employed smaller spacecraft and cheaper technology to undertake less complex and more specific tasks in outer space. While the technological innovation and space exploration approach that McCurdy describes is still controversial, the historical perspective on its disappointments and triumphs points to ways of developing "faster, better, and cheaper" as a management manifesto.

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After the highly publicized failure of the Mars Observer spacecraft in 1993, NASA decided that the problem was related to the many additions of instruments and equipment that had occurred since its original conception in 1981. In response, NASA adopted the "faster, better, cheaper" method in which spacecraft were designed for limited missions and budgets were kept down. McCurdy (public affairs, American U.) details the 16 missions that have occurred since the switch, discussing reasons for failure or success. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Howard E. McCurdy is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University.