From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Watchdog Report #3: Key Issues Facing NASA
Audio interview with Cristina Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and 
Sourcing Management 

February 3, 2010

[ Music ] 

[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news 
and information from the Government Accountability Office. It's 
February 3, 2010. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 
or NASA, is experiencing many changes in one of the most challenging 
periods in its history. Christina Chaplain, a director in GAO's 
Acquisition and Sourcing Management team, recently testified before 
Congress about some of the key management and program challenges NASA 
faces. GAO analyst Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Christina to learn more.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] NASA is in the midst of some major programmatic 
changes right now. Can you tell us about some of the most significant 
ones? 

[ Christina Chaplain: ] Yes, NASA's currently in an era where it’s 
been trying to retire the space shuttle as it's come to a close of its 
long life and at the same time develop new systems for human space 
flight, complete the international space station, and undertake an 
array of many other science projects. And NASA's been doing this amid 
a great deal of uncertainty as to what its budget's going to be and 
within very confined budgets for a long period of time. As well as a 
lot of uncertainty as to the future direction of the agency; that is 
where should the U.S. put its money when it comes to space--Should we 
invest in human space flight? Should we be going to the moon? Or 
should we be concentrating on things like earth science systems? 

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] In light of these changes what challenges has GAO 
identified as crucial for NASA to address? 

[ Christina Chaplain: ] One of the key challenges we've identified is 
just managing programs in an effective manner. For a very long period 
of time NASA programs have been considerably over cost and over budget 
and this of course takes away its ability to invest in other efforts. 
NASA really needs to make a concerted effort to improve how it 
approaches programs and manages them so that it can continue to manage 
within budgets that are uncertain and confined. 

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What insights has GAO offered that can help NASA 
effectively manage these challenges? 

[ Christina Chaplain: ] One thing we've advocated is knowledge-based 
acquisition management, and by that we just mean knowing certain key 
pieces of information before moving programs forward into more complex 
phases. For example before you start a very large, intertwined program 
you should know that the key technologies you have aboard that space 
craft can work as intended. The more NASA can build knowledge into its 
approach the less it will encounter technical and design issues that 
occur late in programs that cause all sorts of disruptions and cost 
overruns. 

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] How prepared is NASA to extend the life of the 
international space station to 2020, especially given the impending 
retirement of the space shuttle program? 

[ Christina Chaplain: ] NASA has been studying ways that it can extend 
the life of the space station but it certainly faces very considerable 
challenges. Right now there's no other vehicle that can take cargo to 
the size and weight that the shuttle can do now and NASA's going to 
have to wait several years before new vehicles that can even do a 
portion of that come along. The other key challenge for NASA is 
finding ways to optimize the station itself to make sure the science 
is all that it can be. 

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] One NASA project that has received a lot of 
attention lately is the development of a new means of human space 
flight. What can you tell us about this? 

[ Christina Chaplain: ] Ah, you're referring to the programs known as 
Aries 1, Aries 5, and Orion, which include new rockets to take humans 
to space and equipment to space as far as the moon, as well as the 
space craft itself that will carry humans. These programs are based on 
technologies that are pretty much well understood but even with that 
we've identified over the years very significant technical risks, 
design risks, and engineering risks to the programs, and over the 
period of time that they have been working on these new programs it's 
been clear that there hasn't been enough resources, time, and money 
available to complete these very complex programs. 

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You mentioned budget and financial management 
issues as significant concerns for GAO and assessing NASA's major 
projects. What impact could these issues have on the future of the 
space program? 

[ Christina Chaplain: ] I think the budget as it's coming out now will 
clearly show that NASA needs to do the best it can within the limited 
amount of money it has, so it will be more important than ever to 
manage programs just very efficiently and very wisely even if there's 
more money available to NASA in the near future, there's still going 
to be a lot of competition for it. Money's going to be needed to keep 
the space station flying for another 5 years, money's going to be 
needed to retire the space shuttle and move on to other programs, 
money's going to be needed to develop commercial suppliers so that 
they can serve the station and other NASA entities in the future. So 
all this points to the need to just manage wisely going forward. 

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[ Narrator: ] To learn more visit GAO's Web site at gao.gov and be 
sure to tune in to the next addition of GAO's Watchdog report for more 
from the Congressional Watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.