Tribune. The United States Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) has done a great job once again, with Perseverance landing like a flower on Mars. She also returned to the ambitions of conquering the Moon in 1969 by wanting to establish a permanent presence around (and perhaps on) the Moon, not to mention Mars.
But between perfecting what she has already accomplished (probes to Mars) and the unknown of a presence on the Moon and an inhabited journey to Mars, there is a difference. Today’s NASA is no longer that of 1969. There, it did everything itself with its Mercury or Apollo programs.
Safety and success
Who would still dare not to outsource anything today? Well not even NASA anymore! It is already asking a Boeing or a SpaceX to take over for manned flights to the International Space Station (ISS), after an inglorious dependence on the Russians. She also intends to resort to the private sector for Mars and the Moon.
If even NASA is outsourcing, which has never been done before except by them, why would companies go without? This is precisely the subject of the report of the NASA Security Advisory Council (” Nasa’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Releases 2020. Annual Report »). NASA in its flirtation with the impossible gets rid of its finery.
This is the perennial question of “make or buy” with an advantage over “buy”, but the objective of the advisory board is not the profitability of one or the other, but, more subtly, the safety and rapid success of missions never attempted before.
With Mercury, Apollo or Skylab, NASA formulated the missions, defined the specifications for the equipment on the ground and in flight and took care of the reception and the validation of all the equipment manufactured by the industry. It was again NASA which played the role of integrator and which took total responsibility, launch and mission included. With the space shuttle, NASA agreed to delegate a little more development and testing to main subcontractors, but the agency remained strongly committed through its most senior experts.
Risk zone
In 2006, NASA took a further step with its Commercial Crew & Cargo Program (CCP), to resume manned flights and supply the ISS station. It was no longer a question of setting high-level demands on performance, security and interfaces so that whatever it commands can interconnect and integrate. This gives contractors the freedom to innovate in design, development and manufacturing. For the “cargo” part, we have to admit that it works quite well but the expertise was already there, both at NASA and in the industry.
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