Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space Program (New Series in NASA History)

<p>Inside NASA explores how an agency praised for its planetary probes and expeditions to the moon became notorious for the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and a series of other malfunctions. Using archival evidence as well as in-depth interviews with space agency officials, Howard McCurdy investigates the relationship between the performance of the American space program and NASA's organizational culture. He begins by identifying the beliefs, norms, and practices that guided NASA's early successes. Originally, the agency was dominated by the strong technical culture rooted in the research-and-development organizations from which NASA was formed. To launch the expeditions to the moon, McCurdy explains, this technical culture was linked to an organizational structure borrowed from the Air Force ballistic-missile program. Changes imposed to accomplish the lunar landing—along with the normal aging process and increased bureaucracy in the government as a whole—gradually eroded NASA's original culture and reduced its technical strength.</p>

History

McCurdy, Prof Howard E. E.

Americas

Johns Hopkins University Press

<p>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. 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.</p>

Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program (New Series in NASA History)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McCurdy, Prof Howard E. E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by McCurdy, Prof Howard E. E.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McCurdy, Prof Howard E. E.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space Program (New Series in NASA History)

Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program (New Series in NASA History)