A lecture that attempts to establish the role of space historians in formulating space policy is presented. The discussion focusses on two adages and their relevance to space policy. The adages are as follows: 'write about what you know;' and 'good managers do things right; good executives do the right things.

Kraemer, Sylvia K.

English

NASA Technical Reports Server

(NASA-TM-lO9787)
SPACE POLICYt AND
LEADERSHIP (NASA)
SPACE HISTORY,
EXECUTIVE
7 p
N94-33067
Uncl as
G3/84 0012422
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19940028561 2020-06-16T12:18:15+00:00Z
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NASA-T_-109787
Space History, Space Policy, and Executive Leadership
Sylvia K. Kraemer ("_,,_: =,.%7_-,,'J,o
International Space History Symposium
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
October 14, 1993
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One decade ago, almost to the day, I abandoned a satisfying 20 year
career, toiling in the groves of academe, for the mysteries of Washington
politics and bureaucratic life--and for the highs and lows of the U.S. civil
space program. When asked about the differences between that earlier and
this Washington world, I can readily acknowledge that the level of
intelligence required is about the same, and the level of social awareness and
political astuteness required, much greater.
Filling in the details, however, can be tedious in the telling, and tedious
in the hearing. Suffice it to say that one learns over time to appreciate the
wisdom behind some of the sage advice and old adages by which, as we cross
the threshold into middle age, we convey the lessons of our experience. My
comments this atternoon on the need for space history in the groves of space
policy and executive leadership will be shaped around two of those adages.
The first is what every English teacher and editor tells the aspiring author:
Adage #1: Write About What You Know About
What I have learned is that the typical historian's work of researching
and writing monographs and journal articles does not naturally yield much of
a return to the society that subsidizes, through tuition fees and indirect tax
benefits, the solitary and occasionally communal pleasures of academic
scholarship. In many historical areas, including the history of aviation and
space travel, there has been a stream of books and magazines for the general
reader. In some areas--the Civil War comes to mind--that seemingly
unending stream is supplemented by volumes of historical "fiction," and video
productions.
Some contemporary policy areas have been well served by historians.
Economic policy, social policy, public health policy--all can draw on an
accumulation of historical work demonstrating what kinds of policies tend to
succeed at achieving certain kinds of ends, and why. Only this week
economic historians Douglass North and Robert Fogel were awarded the
Nobel prize for their substantial and, when new, pathbreakaing work on the
relationship of economic trends to social and regulatory institutions.
Or consider John Hope Franklin, a true historian's historian, who
prepared the critical background papers for the NAACP's brief in the
landmark 1954 civil rights ease, Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka,
Kansas. One thinks also of military history which, since antiquity, has been
rich in accounts of tactical and strategic triumphs and failures. Perhaps of all
historical subjects, military history has demonstrated best the convergence of
policy and executive leadership, or, for the soldier, strategy and good
generalship.
Historians have made contributions to public policy or strategy in
these areas notwithstanding academicians' and other skeptics' assertions that,
since history cannot be purely 'objective,' it offers nothing useful for policy at
all. But absolutes are not useful; just as there can be no absolutely accurate
history, there is no absolutely perfect policy. Reasonable people may argue
about the details of the Holocaust, or about World War II; but few sane
people argue whether they occurred at all. Aside from death and taxes, most
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of life is a matter of probabilities. (This is fommate, for otherwise life would
loose much of its interest, its comedy as well as its tragedies.)
Unfortunately for those who toil with the burdens of space policy and
executive leadership, there is no comparable reservoir of historical research
and understanding to draw upon to increase the probability that a policy or a
decision is the best possible under the circumstances. And now, for my
second adage, first told me by General Rosie Rosenberg:
Adage #2: Good managers do things right; Good executives do the
right things.
Why do I couple space policy with executive leadership? I do so
because elected policy makers tend to make policy primarily on the basis of
their perception of political necessity. This is as it should be. That is why
they were elected. But perceptions that appear perfectly astute for the near
term may prove disastrously myopic or misguided in the long run. What does
a particular policy entail? Is our administrative or institutional machinery
capable of doing what's promised? If the policy is mistaken, what can go
wrong? Suppose we fail? These are the kinds of things that good generals
tell their chiefs, and that good executives tell policy-makers. Executives
stand at the intersections of policy and possibility. And in the space arena,
policy makers and executives are badly in need of the kind of reservoir of
examined history that the Pentagon, for example, can draw upon.
The reason space policy and policy execution has this need is its
relative youngness in the total scheme of things. Space travel has been an
option for just over 30 years-just over a generation. There are no alluvial
layers of well-tilled soil from which to extract pertinent precedents or
examples. Our archives are uneven at best, and largely the product of an era
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)that has seen the general deterioration of tile written document, both in its
content and in its candor.
So there's a lot of work that has to be done. Here are only a few of the
issues facing contemporary space policy makers and executives to which
historians could bring some badly needed enlightenment:
(1) Technology transfer: The United States has an enormous
capacity, in its Federally owned and operated laboratories, for military and
aerospace technology development. Given the changing geopolitcal
landscape, do we let tiffs capacity atrophy? How do we demobilize this
capacity, assuming we want to? Politics and common sense tell us, no; we
don't let this capacity atrophy; we learn to turn our swords into ploughshares.
But do we really know very much about transforming Federal laboratories
into nurseries of commercially viable technologies for the producers' and
consumer market? No, we don't. Historians need to identify approximate
parallels and accumulate some comparative studies of what has been tried,
what works, the institutional and regulatory practices that tend to lead to
success, and the ones that tend to lead to costly failures.
(2) Technology and Economic Competitiveness: A national anxiety
over "Economic competitiveness" has replaced the "Better Dead than Red"
slogan as a driver of much of contemporary politics. And yet we know very
little about the relative weight and complex interactions of the various
elements that make up a vigorous economy. We know certain things are
necessary, and we have our productivity formulas and statistics. But statistics
only map results, and many of the formulas are based more on inadequately
proven theory than on practice. For example, what will result from trying to
stimulate the movement of young people into science and technical careers
while, at the same time, firms like IBM and the aerospace industry are
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streamlining by adding thousands of highly trained people to the numbers of
tile tmemployed or underemployed?
Or, to take another examapke, assuming that government-industry
partnerships have played the role claimed for them in Jap/m's dramatic
economic recovery from the ashes of World War II, will such partnerships
have the same consequences here? If we spend $1 million tax dollars on X,
what will that produce for Y? And by what mechanism? Not only do we
need to learn more about previous and comparable efforts to use "technology
push" tactics to revive economies, we also need to consider which
technologies produce the best return to the national economy, and how to
measure that return.
I'm referring here to distinctions between tractors and hand-held
calculators, or between increasing the number of CAT scanners vs. increasing
the number of good but cheap eye-glasses and hearing aids. Are there trade-
offs between stimulating advanced technologies or increasing the availability-
-through cheaper production and distribution methods--of ordinary
technologies? As you can see, economic and technology policy issues can be
inextricably intertwined with social and ideological issues. Historians have
been pretty skilled at detecting and tracing these nuances.
(3) Government Acquisition Policy and Space Technology: Now
here's a real sleeper-procurement policy. If only procurement policy were
less of a sleeper, we might be far wiser about the real history of not only our
own space technologies, but those of the other space-faring nations. Now we
all know that no bureaucrat ever produced a piece of space hardware. In this
country, at least, space hardware is manufactured, and by in large designed,
in the private sector. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the government
operations divisions in our large aerospace corporations are the most
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itechnologically conservative divisions in those firms. Does the government-
as-buyer promote or dissuade cutting-edge technology? If so, why?
Federal acqusitions policy has been shaped more by ideology and
politics than by anything else. And that will continue to be the case until
policy-makers, well-armed with closely examined experience, can make a
convincing case that the way Uncle Sam buys things does, or does not, foster
technological innovation or cost reduction, whatever else it may do.
Acquisitions or procurement policy raises another set of issues begging for
some historical understanding, namely:
(4) The role of institutions in affecting technological change, and
how mutual adaptations between public and private sector institutional
requirements impede or promote technological innovation. The Federal
government interacts with the private sector in a myriad of ways, direct and
indirect, of which tax policy, banking regulations, and acquisitions policy are
only a few of the most familiar. The history of the U.S. space program-
indeed, the history of all our space programs-would be much enriched if we
could begin to appreeiate the affects of different institutional dynamics on the
emerging technologies they bringto the public or private marketplace.
Similarly, I think we could make space policy more confidently if we had a
better feel for the ways the private sector tends to adapt to various
government impediments as well as opportunities.
Consider, for example, the U.S. need for a policy to promote the
production of ample, cheap, reliable, and variously sized launch vehicles. Last
year, as part of a literatm'e seareh for a launch vehicle study then underway, I
counted over 800 published launch vehcle policy studies. Virtually all of
them were studies of technological solutions to the essentially technological
problem of lofting so much mass to such and such altitude at such and such
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frequency, for such and such cost. Unfortunately, these studies will continue
along with the search for an effective launch vehicle policy until we acquire a
convincing and effective in its grasp of the issues ! have just described.
When policy is that well founded, which is to say, well founded at all, it will
survive the quadrennial transitions in the White House.
Notwithstanding my affection for the many fine students I taught in a
previous incarnation, this historical work is not work for graduate students. It
is work for historians who have acquired, one way or another, a little
sophistication when dealing with large organizations, and I don't mean the
monthly faculty meeting. It is work for space historians who have overcome
the narrow specialization to which almost all of us have been trained, and
learned to talk with, and read the work of, political scientists, students of
public administration, and historians of business. We should all be
challenged to produce, within another generation, a history of technology
originally framed by the policy issues raised by space travel, useful for
executives, and worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Thank you.
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Space history, space policy, and executive leadership

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