ABSTRACT
In advanced technologies the project manager must coordi nate scientists and their work. Most such projects use out side technical experts as consultants and experimenters. These may be the self-same prestigious professionals, uni versity or “think tank” based, whom we described in Chap ter 3. While the sponsor as a whole may be concerned with how much relative weight to give the interests and voice of the scientific community in establishing its objectives, the project manager must be concerned with the more mundane but critical task of integrating these outsiders, as well as their work, into an ongoing development effort. □ Few outside scientists care to serve on NASA advisory boards or attend planning conferences out of any love of administrative work. Their service is offered primarily be cause they can help the cause of space science in general, and help themselves and their field of specialization in par ticular. As advisors they can promote missions and experi ments in which they can participate in hopes of advancing their professional careers. No other agency can offer the rockets, launching facilities, and communications network necessary for research in space. □ NASA requires research investigators (or principal in vestigators-P.I.’s-as they are called) for two overlapping, reinforcing purposes. The first is to gather and develop operational information about the space environment. Operational missions such as placing communication satel lites in orbit and maintaining them, launching earth-orbiting spacecraft for lengthy surveillance of oceans, croplands, and weather, and orbiting and servicing manned labora tories require a detailed, thorough knowledge of the effect both of the emptiness of space and of the matter and energy that pervade it. The second purpose is to gather scientific knowledge of space for its own sake, a purpose designated by the President and approved by Congress. In 1958, when President Eisenhower proposed that NASA have responsibil ity for civilian space science and authority to conduct re
search in its own facilities or by contract,1 he made it clear that space should be primarily an area for scientific explora tion and that NASA should do all that it could to further this objective. President Kennedy, four years later in 1962, re iterated the nation’s purposes in sponsoring scientific ex perimentation in space:
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it becomes a force for good or ill depends on us, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new, terrifying theatre of war.2
