WASHINGTON — NASA is searching for public enter on tips on how to prioritize practically 200 matters in house expertise to enhance the way it invests restricted funding on them.
The company has launched an inventory of 187 “expertise shortfalls,” or matters the place present expertise requires extra growth to satisfy NASA’s future wants. The shortfalls are in 20 areas starting from house transportation and life help to energy and thermal administration.
By way of a web site, the company is inviting individuals to overview the listed applied sciences and fee their significance via Might 13. NASA will use that enter to assist prioritize these applied sciences for future funding to bridge the shortfalls.
That is a part of an effort by the company’s House Know-how Mission Directorate (STMD) to supply a extra rigorous strategy to the way it helps expertise growth. “NASA has gotten right into a battle rhythm with our stakeholders the place we’re setting our priorities extra within the house of the actions that we’re participating in and never, initially, about the issue house: the issues that we’re fixing,” mentioned Kurt “Spuds” Vogel, NASA affiliate administrator for house expertise, at an April 23 assembly of the Lunar Floor Innovation Consortium.
The outdated strategy, he mentioned, runs the danger of turning NASA’s house expertise program right into a “passion store,” he mentioned, topic to whims from policymakers. “That’s the incorrect focus.”
By prioritizing expertise shortfalls, he argued NASA will probably be higher in a position to make investments its funding on a very powerful ones. “We’re degree of effort. Meaning we wouldn’t have a price range to deal with all of those issues abruptly, so we now have to prioritize the restricted {dollars} that we’re blessed with to assault the issues which are most vital to our stakeholders.”
By way of this course of, individuals will be capable of fee the significance of some or all the expertise shortfalls NASA has recognized. They’ll additionally record applied sciences they suppose needs to be included or establish these shortfalls that they imagine have already been solved.
NASA will use the enter from that course of, in addition to a separate inner company effort, to develop a ranked record of applied sciences. That needs to be prepared by this summer season, mentioned Alesyn Lowry, director of strategic planning and integration at STMD, at a separate presentation on the assembly April 24.
Whereas NASA is not going to launch particular person inputs, it does plan to reveal how completely different stakeholder teams in business and academia ranked applied sciences. However Vogel emphasised the general public inputs will probably be only one issue within the total prioritization.
“It’s a software, not the software,” he mentioned, describing the inputs as a part of an “audit path” used to hyperlink applied sciences to issues. “It’s going to affect what we do, however we’re going to make the ultimate choices.”
The variety of shortfalls might change in future years based mostly on the inputs to this shortfall evaluation, he mentioned, going up or down. Vogel mentioned he anticipated NASA to replace the prioritization yearly. “The primary yr or two goes to be the place many of the modifications are going to occur. After that it’ll clean out, and also you’ll see it as a software you should use in the same method we’re going to make use of it as nicely.”
