Stagnation through Competition

Continued from the previous post "Sliding into the inferno"

Excerpt
From a comment on In the beginning... there is the estimate Matt says:
"...way to compress [cost and schedule] is to deploy two development teams in competition with the same requirements"

In response to the July 19th posting, Matt suggested that competition might do away with "the faux rigor... [that keeps] the BOE hounds away."

I'm skeptical.

In its way, NASA is very competitive. Centers must compete for missions. Contractors¹ compete on RFPs. The NASA engineering cadre competes with contractors to keep the work in house. Researchers from a broad community compete for scarce NASA research funds. JPL engineers pass Ames and Goddard engineers in the halls of JSC and KSC competing for some human flight business. The smaller NASA centers like Glenn, Langley, Stennis, IV&V and Dryden all compete for a piece of the shrinking NASA budget in an epic struggle to survive. All the while, JSC, MSFC and KSC sit atop the crowded human-flight hill in an uncomfortable alliance nervously watching the fracas on the Hill.

But competition does not a free market make.

• Headquarters must keep all it's center-children alive or incur congressional wrath.
• Funds are allocated with all the hard-nosed selectivity of a jobs program
• Headquarters is highly attuned to influences on Congress and the contractor's have hired lobbyist to assist in the selection of this year's program.
• Centers are be mindful to the perception of favoritism. Everyone at the contractual table gets a piece of the pie.
• Contractors (i.e. the private sector)compete on price ensuring the new thing will be the same as the last thing.
• In-house engineers must match contractor prices so they too budget to build the same thing they built last time.

It's a competition for influence. Funds are awarded in a political-charged, bureaucratic milieu that is rife with ambition. The actual factors in a decision may never be known, but every decision will be carefully justified; a paper trail will secure a record of sound judgment. How could it be otherwise? There are billions of dollars in play before the watchful eyes of powerful competing interests and a cadre of auditors ready to throw a flag.

The leveling forces of a free-market competition do not work in this environment. Faux rigor is beneficial. It provides a sufficient foundation to ensure that the laws of 'business as usual' will produce a predicable outcome. And, if engineers like anything, they like a predicable outcome.

The consequence?

There is precious little incentive to break new ground. Rewards go to the proposals that preserve the past. Despite NASA's reputation as a technology leader, sellers cannot expect to win with a proposal that pushes technology boundaries and buyers cannot reasonably select one. If the past forecasts the future, we should expect NASA to continue to build the same basic system that was deployed in the Apollo era. The method of competition ensures it.

¹For example, Lockheed, Boeing, Orbital, Raytheon, BAE, Ball, Northrop Grumman, etc.