NASA reform is a challenge, but a very necessary one

It is perilous to pine for the past, to a time we now perceive as NASA’s high water mark — the Apollo era. The agency seemingly did the impossible, landing 12 astronauts on the Moon and returning them all safely to Earth.

Today, more than 50 years after the last moon landing, NASA is trying to repeat the feat and go further. But amid many setbacks new NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman recognizes the need for a change of approach, and he is already adjusting key aspects of the Artemis Program.

Some changes have been more significant than others. One that was largely irrelevant to the future of the space program was the elimination of NASA’s chief economist position a year ago amid early Trump 2.0 efforts at government efficiency.

Some are breathlessly suggesting that NASA is rudderless without a chief economist. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The chief economist role, created in 2019, has never played a significant role in influencing the numerous programs and projects at NASA.

The real driver of stagnation at NASA is a combination of multiple factors: hardening of institutional bureaucracy (including fear of failure), lower budgets, partisan politics and parochial interests.

A good example of the real reform needed is the next-generation commercial space station program to replace the aging International Space Station. Constructed over the course of a decade in the early 2000s, the old space station is now understood to be very expensive to maintain (around $3 billion a year) and one failure away from the end of its useful life.

But from the perspective of parochial interests, the high cost of maintaining the International Space Station has been a feature, not a bug. It provides hundreds and thousands of jobs both at NASA and in its contractor workforce. Hence, while the replacement space station program was starved of cash, Congress has repeatedly extended the projected end of the International Space Station to “prevent a gap.”

Last year, the Trump administration leadership attempted to fix this problem without the help of a chief economist. First came Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request, which provided $2.1 billion over five years for the replacement space stations — much more than Congress has appropriated to date.

Subsequently, using this new budget as a baseline, NASA leadership addressed the key aspects of the struggling program through a directive, signed by Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. The directive addressed all three axes that determine the success of a NASA program: cost, schedule and performance.

Previous NASA Administrator Dan Goldin had famously instituted an approach to address all three simultaneously, which he dubbed “Faster, Better, Cheaper.” Duffy was very much acting in that spirit.

The “faster” part was straightforward: The directive recognized that NASA had been dithering for years on a final request for proposal for the successor space stations. Hence, a two-month deadline was imposed on the NASA team to issue a solicitation in a timely manner, and to make an award shortly thereafter. Further, the directive mandated use of NASA’s Space Act Agreement — a streamlined procurement process that requires much less paperwork and puts money into the hands of industry partners more quickly.

On the “better” front, NASA had been creating too many requirements for its replacement space stations. Industry had been pushing back — but not too hard, as they did not want to alienate the customer whose money they coveted. The directive therefore called for a minimum set of requirements, including a space demonstration that would allow NASA to choose the best of competing solutions, instead of locking in one industry partner early on.

Finally, when it came to “cheaper,” the directive brought to light that NASA’s previous acquisition strategy suffered from a $4 billion budget shortfall. In short, NASA was demanding more than it could afford. The new strategy lowered the initial requirements to something more manageable: a minimum one-month stay for the initial demonstration.

The plan was mirrored after the highly successful Commercial Crew Program that gave us SpaceX crew and cargo capability through the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon space capsule. In fact, the now-retired NASA architect of that program weighed in shortly afterward with a LinkedIn article calling the new acquisition strategy “genius.”

Recently, the Senate expressed interest in its new authorization bill in reinstating the role of a NASA chief economist. All that proves is that bureaucracy is hard to kill — not that a chief economist is essential to reform NASA’s commercial space programs and projects.

Ryan Whitley, a former NASA engineer and executive vice president of engineering at the Japanese company ispace, served as a senior adviser to the NASA administrator in 2025.