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

Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xiii, [3], 173, [3] pages. Boxes. List of Boxes. Notes. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Small edge tear to fep. This is one of the New Series in NASA History. Howard E. McCurdy is professor of public affairs in the public administration and policy department at American University. McCurdy is considered an expert on space policy and NASA. In 1998, he was selected to be the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History, a fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum. McCurdy received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Washington and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. Elizabeth Hand reviewed McCurdy's history of the U.S. space program: "In Space and the American Imagination, Howard McCurdy doesn't give us the right stuff but the real stuff, the ... policy debate and political razzing that brought the space program into being..... McCurdy's ... book assembles a fascinating congeries of facts and fictions about trips to the moon, real or imagined. 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.