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Pathfinder: The Success of Better-Faster-Cheaper
Since the arrival of Dan Goldin as NASA administrator more than five years ago, the phrase "better, faster, cheaper" (or "faster, better, cheaper", or any number of other permutations using those or other, similar words) has become something of a mantra for the beleaguered space agency. The meaning, no matter how one phrased it, was clear: do more with less.
However, only recently has the application of this phrase, and this method of doing things, paid dividends, most publicly with Mars Pathfinder. A mission with a budget only about one-twelfth of the previous American Mars landing mission, Viking, and one-fourth the budget of the last American Mars mission altogether, which failed before even reaching the planet, succeeded in safely landing on the planet and returning data which already is reshaping the way we understand the Red Planet.
The concept of "better, faster, cheaper" rests on an the interconnection of decreased mission costs and increased risk. To be able to do significant missions with less money, NASA must be willing to accept increased risk through the use of untried or otherwise risky techniques or equipment that promise to do more for less money. For the normally risk-adverse space agency to accept increased risk, the stakes must be lower: tens or hundred of millions of dollars, not billions, must be on the line.
Expensive Failures
Pushing NASA in this direction were the twin forces of expensive failures and budget cuts. By the fall of 1993, less than 18 months into Goldin's tenure at NASA, he had seen a $1-billion spacecraft, Mars Observer, lost due to what turned out to be a simple failure of a propellant system that could have been easily corrected before launch had engineers thought about the problem.
At this time NASA has also all but written off any chance of opening the high-gain antenna on the Galileo spacecraft, another multi-billion dollar mission, due to a few stuck ribs. Use of the low-gain antenna and other tricks would ensure that some data would return, but the torrent of images expected from the mission would not happen.
In the fall of 1993 the repair of the optically-flawed Hubble Space Telescope was still in the near future. Moreover Space Station Freedom was undergoing the pains of another reorganization, including bringing Russia into the program, and the fate of the multi-billion station in Congress was very uncertain. NASA had shown that risk in expensive programs could not be eliminated, and when failures or problems happened, the stakes were much higher.
As NASA's budget was slowly trimmed over the next few years in Congress's newfound zeal to balance the budget, it was clear that the era of billion-dollar "megaprojects" was, at least temporarily, at an end. To keep space sciences alive between the budget pressures of the space station and the space shuttle, NASA needed less expensive projects. To get those smaller missions to do good science, the space agency needed to embrace something it had avoided for years: risk.
The Discovery Program
The embodiment of the "better, faster, cheaper" philosophy was the Discovery program. The goal of the program was simple: fly frequent, small missions throughout the solar system. Each mission had to cost less than $150 million in 1992 dollars (about $182 million in 1987) and be ready to fly within a few years of selection. The first two programs selected for the Discovery program were NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous), a mission to rendezvous with and study a near-Earth asteroid; and Mars Pathfinder.
To achieve the goals of the Mars Pathfinder mission within the tight budgetary constraints of the Discovery program, project officials were willing to embrace new technologies and techniques, such as an airbag-cushioned landing instead of the more traditional, and more expensive, landing legs and retrorockets. They also used new ways of working together, putting project personnel together in the same work space to allow more communication and interaction between team members, so they could find ways of improving the spacecraft and decrease its costs.
Not everyone approved of the unorthodox mission or way of doing business, according to outgoing project manager Tony Spear. Spear said, "The more diplomatic critics would say, 'Hey, Tony, you know you have little chance of succeeding.'" The less diplomatic critics, Spear said, would simply say "Stop this project now!"
The risks, for now, seemed to have paid off for Pathfinder, Goldin, and the space agency. Pathfinder has performed beyond the expectations of project officials. Combined with the recent successful flyby of the asteroid Mathilde by NEAR on its way to the asteroid Eros, the Discovery program has shown that small missions can do good science. The verification of the "better faster cheaper" paradigm has allowed Goldin to continue to spread it throughout the space agency, cutting costs for the space shuttle and keeping the International Space Station in line.
There are no plans to discontinue "better, faster, cheaper" applications within NASA. A JPL official pointed out in a news conference that the next two missions to Mars, Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter and Lander, are already 40 percent smaller -- and 40 percent cheaper -- than Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor.
Added to site: 1997 July 14