"Faster, better, cheaper" approach

NASA management philosophy The "faster, better, cheaper" approach (FBC) was a management philosophy adopted by NASA under Administrator Daniel Goldin (1992–2001). Following the end of the Cold War and facing budget constraints, NASA sought to reduce mission costs and development time while maintaining scientific capabilities through smaller, more focused missions and increased use of commercial technologies. History NASA had a difficult period in the 1990s: with the Cold War and the Space Race between the US and the USSR finished, the agency saw dwindling budgets, and the new NASA administrator, Daniel Goldin, introduced the so-called "faster, better, cheaper" approach in 1992, which encouraged smaller, cheaper missions built with the help of third-party contractors, efficiently "commercializing" the research labs and forcing them to work with industry.208, 254 Goldin had experience with small satellites, and especially disliked long, expensive programmes, calling them "battlestar galacticas", like the Cassini mission that he threatened to cancel,261https://www.spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040612hurdles.html Spaceflight Now Cassini Mission has faced many hurdles and challenges www.spaceflightnow.com and urged for development of small and fast missions. The FBC approach was compared and likely originated from Lockheed Martin's skunk works approach developed by Kelly Johnson.Paxton Larry J. 'Faster, better, and cheaper' at NASA: Lessons learned in managing and accepting risk Acta Astronautica November 2007 61 10 954–963 10.1016/j.actaastro.2006.10.014 2007AcAau..61..954P Though it was promoted by NASA and was a de facto operational paradigm during Goldin's tenure, FBC was not institutionalized into NASA policies, being only a set of unwritten ideas.Eaton Casey Patel Shivani Glandon K. Loveday Weger Kristin Mesmer Bryan Moreland Robert Legacy of Faster, Better, Cheaper? Cost, Schedule, and Performance Objectives: Understanding the Impact of NASA Policy on Perceptions of Failures Space Policy November 2022 62 101515 10.1016/j.spacepol.2022.101515 2022SpPol..6201515E free The "faster, better, cheaper" approach was described as:Dumas Larry N. Walton Amy L. Faster, better, cheaper: An institutional view Acta Astronautica July 2000 47 2–9 607–621 10.1016/S0094-5765(00)00099-0 2000AcAau..47..607D Faster applies to project development time, which for convenience can be defined as the period from project approval to launch. Rapid development cycles help control costs and enable the incorporation of the latest advances in technology, because the design freeze date is closer to the launch date. Better applies to the capability of the flight system as a scientific instrument, improvement here is based on the use of advanced technologies, and on better-focused science based on the knowledge gained from earlier exploration missions. Finally, cheaper denotes both lower cost per mission and, through clever design and use of technology, more effective use of available funds. thumb|NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin poses with the Sojourner rover from the Mars Pathfinder mission. The mission is the best-known, "model" example of the FBC. In 1991, Edward C. Stone–a well-known, enthusiastic and respectable scientist, the project scientist of Voyager program–was made the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) director.https://books.google.com/books?id=YXSxmgVLhskC Part III. Beyond the Cold War: The Stone Years, 1991–2001 Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976-2004 978-0-300-13458-2 Westwick Peter J. October 2008 Yale University Press 207 JPL had little experience in small missions at the time: its "flagship" missions, like Voyager, Cassini, and Galileo, employed hundreds of people for decades. Cassini, for example, "directly supported maybe 500 work-years, about 10 percent of total lab staff [and] provided close to 20 percent of the lab budget".223 In order to comply with budget restrictions and save the mission, Cassini was downsized; to save $250 million, the scan platform had to be removed from the plans.260–261 Stone himself saw the "faster-better-cheaper" as a cultural change of the lab's engineering practices.223 upright=0.7|thumb|Mars Climate Orbiter undergoing acoustic testing. The mission failed because of a metric/imperial units error. The most successful, "model" example of the FBC was the Mars Pathfinder lander and the first Mars rover, the Sojourner. The mission cost around 200 million dollars and was widely reported in the press, appearing on the covers of Time and Newsweek.267–270 FBC also promoted the usage of commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software in spacecraft; for example using commercial CPUs instead of specialized radiation hardened ones usually used in spacecraft. This approach was successfully used for the Sojourner.Delaney B. Faster, better, cheaper-NASA visualizes the solar system IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications November 1997 17 6 10–15 10.1109/38.626958 Other missions were less fortunate: in 1998–1999, six missions were launched; four of them failed.276 Both JPL (Stone) and the NASA administration (Goldin) acknowledged that they pushed too far with the FBC; no project manager of the failed missions was fired.283 Goldin took all the blame, speaking at a press conference at JPL after two Mars mission failures:Henry Lambright W. Leading change at NASA: The case of Dan Goldin Space Policy February 2007 23 1 33–43 10.1016/j.spacepol.2006.11.011 2007SpPol..23...33H I asked these people to do incredibly tough things, to push the limits. We were successful and I asked them to push harder and we hit a boundary. And I told them they should not apologize. They did terrific things and I pushed it too hard. And that's why I feel responsible. After Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, and Deep Space 2 failures, a governmental commission, the Mars Program Independent Assessment Team, was created to investigate the issues that led to it. The commission issued a Mars Program Independent Assessment Team Report, commonly known as the Young Report after its chairman Tom Young.https://www.aip.org/fyi/2000/house-science-committee-holds-hearing-mars-missions House Science Committee Holds Hearing on Mars Missions April 21, 2000 AIPhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsreports/marsreports.html Mars Reports webharvest.gov 2025-06-05 2004-10-30 https://www.webharvest.gov/peth04/20041030060135/http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsreports/marsreports.html bot: unknown After two Mars spacecraft failed, "the Mars program had retrenched and returned to more conservative and traditional management with significantly more funding":https://appel.nasa.gov/2008/09/01/success-failure-and-nasa-culture/ Success, Failure, and NASA Culture APPEL Knowledge Services September 1, 2008 the next mission, Mars Exploration Rover (launched in 2003), was redesigned, and eventually cost around $800 million; as Norman Haynes put it, MER sucked up "all available money from NASA and JPL".285–286 The Goddard Space Flight Center operated the Small Explorer Project (SMEX) under the FBC; in 2001, five satellites were operational with just one instrument anomaly.Watzin Jim Observations from over a decade of experience in developing faster, better, cheaper missions for the NASA small explorer program Acta Astronautica March 2001 48 5–12 853–858 10.1016/S0094-5765(01)00060-1 2001AcAau..48..853W Because of the FBC, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was "forced" to change, resulting in "simplified instruments, solar orbit and warm-launch architecture".https://www.kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/irsubmm/presentations/lysek.pdf Spitzer Thermal Architecture M. Lysek Jet Propulsion Laboratory 2009 Assessment and legacy The "Faster, better, cheaper" philosophy is often criticized, with many opponents saying that one can only "pick two" out of three desired qualities.A Goldin legacy Nature October 2001 413 6858 757 10.1038/35101722 11677557 2001Natur.413R.757. 431045180 Leary Warren E. NASA's Learns That Faster And Cheaper Isn't Always So https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/15/science/nasa-s-learns-that-faster-and-cheaper-isn-t-always-so.html The New York Times 15 September 1998 subscription However, even its critics acknowledge that under Goldin the flight rate became higher, and that Goldin "rescued space science from the tedium and inherent risk of flying one giant mission every five or ten years".https://www.nasa.gov/history/30-years-ago-daniel-goldin-sworn-in-as-nasas-ninth-administrator/ 30 Years Ago: Daniel Goldin Sworn in as NASA's Ninth Administrator - NASA April 1, 2022 The FBC philosophy was noted by multiple authors to be a success by different criteria. The FBC missions had strict budgets. Mars Pathfinder, together with the Sojourner rover, cost only 6.7 percent of what was spent on the Viking mission. All 16 missions launched in the FBC era cost less than Cassini. Dan Ward from the US Air Force concludes that "FBC delivered 10 successful missions (plus six unsuccessful ones) for less than the price of one traditional mission. ... suggest that success-per-dollar is a more meaningful measurement of achievement than success-per-attempt because there is no limit to the number of attempts we can make" and writes that FBC "reveals an admirable record of success".AD1016355 Ward Dan Faster, better, cheaper revisited: Program management lessons from NASA Defense AT&L 213 2 2010 48–52 Another metric which shows that FBC was a successful approach is "the science output per dollar of mission cost": "FBC missions resulted in more scientific publications (and citation-weighted publications) per dollar of mission cost than did missions developed under other paradigms". Dillon and Madsen, 2014 concludes that "NASA suffers from a bias against learning from the FBC era because of the stigma of the failed projects".10.1109/AERO.2014.6836168 The legacy of Faster-Better-Cheaper: Too much risk or over-reaction to perceived failure? 2014 IEEE Aerospace Conference 2014 Dillon Robin L. Madsen Peter 1–10 978-1-4799-1622-1 Giovanni F. Bignami wrote that the "popular belief" is wrong to target the FBC approach, and shows that the percentage of failed missions was not much lower before FBC than during the FBC.Bignami Giovanni F. 'Faster, Better, Cheaper'? Agencies and Scientists Science 17 November 2000 290 5495 1297 10.1126/science.290.5495.1297 Larry J. Paxton thought that FBC "did revitalize science at NASA": during the Goldin administration there were many missions in contrast with the "flagship" Voyager and Galileo. New NASA programs were created, including the Discovery program and Living With a Star. He also wrote that FBC proves that large organizations like NASA can be changed and adapted to the needs of its "customers": "For NASA, that customer base included politicians, scientists, and the public." Howard E. McCurdy writes that "history may view Goldin's administration as a bold first step towards displacing an inappropriate and unsustainable culture of uncontrolled spending on space".McCurdy Howard E Daniel S. Goldin's legacy at NASA Space Policy May 2002 18 2 95–97 10.1016/S0265-9646(02)00012-7 2002SpPol..18...95M Daniel Goldin was NASA administrator under three presidents, from 1992 to 2001, the longest tenure of all NASA directors. According to W. Henry Lambright, "he was hailed at one point as a miracle worker and poster boy of government reinvention for his 'faster, better, cheaper' strategy of 'doing more with less'. But Goldin left the agency under fire for cost overruns and reforms that reached too far". Influence on other agencies Though ESA never adopted NASA's FBC, the agency was also looking into low-cost missions in the early 2000s.Whitcomb G.P The ESA approach to low-cost planetary missions Acta Astronautica January 2003 52 2–6 79–86 10.1016/S0094-5765(02)00141-8 2003AcAau..52...79W The first European planetary mission, the Mars Express orbiter and the Beagle 2 lander, cost only $60 million, and had a "streamlined design and thrift [which] echoes a previous NASA mantra: 'faster, better, cheaper'".https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97630&page=1 Europe's Faster, Cheaper Mars Mission ABC News May 29, 2003 ESA described it as "the first example of ESA's new style of developing scientific missions: faster, smarter and more cost-effective, but without compromising reliability and quality".https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Mars_Express_how_to_be_fastest_to_the_Red_Planet Mars Express — how to be fastest to the Red Planet www.esa.int ESA stated that "there was immense pressure on ESA from its Members States to demonstrate similar principles" to FBC.https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/711/71107.htm House of Commons - Science and Technology - Twelfth Report publications.parliament.uk ESA science director David Southwood adapted the FBC as "faster, smarter, cheaper".https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/mars-express Mars Express Discover Magazine May 2003 The orbiter mission succeeded, but the lander failed. European smallsats PROBA were designed according to the FBC principles; the first satellite, PROBA-1, was launched in 2001.Instead, attention is turning to so-called 'smallsats', whose design, build and deployment programme is intended to follow the principles of the 'faster, better, cheaper' initiative... 10.1109/TGRS.2004.827260 The PROBA/CHRIS mission: A low-cost smallsat for hyperspectral multiangle observations of the Earth surface and atmosphere 2004 Barnsley M.J. Settle J.J. Cutter M.A. Lobb D.R. Teston F. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 42 7 1512–1520 2004ITGRS..42.1512B In 1997, ESA proposed to "radically restructure" the Horizon 2000 program "to make missions faster and cheaper".Redfearn Judy ESA goes for faster missions Physics World 1997 10 6 5 10.1088/2058-7058/10/6/2 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-7058/10/6/2 subscription Hellemans Alexander Europe Tries 'Fast and Cheap' Missions Science 1997 276 5319 1641 10.1126/science.276.5319.1641a https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.276.5319.1641a subscription Takahiro Yamada of JAXA wrote positively of the FBC approach: ""Far faster, far better, far cheaper” may be difficult, but “a little faster, a little better, a little cheaper” must be within the scope of our endeavors."https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/forefront/2004/yamada/index.shtml ISAS | Standardizing and Digitizing Space Development / The Forefront of Space Science www.isas.jaxa.jp Missions Sources usually mention 16 missions launched during the FBC era,McCurdy 2001 6-7 though several more missions are also attributed to it by others. Mission Name Program Operator Launch Date Budget (million USD) Operation Period Outcome Notes Refs. Clementine DSPSE BMDO / NRL 25 January 1994 ~$75 1994 Completed global lunar mapping; planned fly-by of 1620 Geographos cancelled after attitude failure. Mission became the basis of FBC. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/clementine/ Clementine - NASA Science November 30, 2017 An accounting of Clementine's legacy should include the fact that methods developed for the project became the basis for NASA's "Faster, Better, Cheaper" initiative which ultimately paved the way for the Agency's Discovery program.Dennehy Cornelius J. Lebsock Kenneth West John GN&C Engineering Best Practices For Human-Rated Spacecraft Systems https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070032801/downloads/20070032801.pdf American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Note that the Clementine spacecraft was designed and developed using an acquisition and management philosophy very similar to NASA's "Faster, Better, Cheaper" (FBC) approach.Assessment of Mission Size Trade-offs for NASA's Earth and Space Science Missions 2000 The National Academies Press Washington, DC https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/9796/chapter/3#15 en Chapter: 1 Issues and Considerations in the Assessment of Mission Size Trade-offs in the Earth and Space Sciences The faster-better-cheaper missions included in the data set were NEAR, Mars Pathfinder, SWAS, TRACE, MAP, Deep Space-1, Earth Observer 1, Lewis and Clark, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars '98 lander and orbiter, and Clementine. 10.17226/9796 978-0-309-06976-2 SAMPEX SMEX GSFC July 3, 1992 ~$55 1992–2004 First SMEX mission, studied cosmic rays and magnetospheric particles McCurdy 2001 6-7 NEAR Shoemaker Discovery APL/JHU February 17, 1996 $110–150 1996–2001 First spacecraft to orbit and land on an asteroid. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover Discovery JPL December 4, 1996 $280 1996–1997 First Mars rover, 85 days operation. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Mars Global Surveyor Mars Surveyor JPL November 7, 1996 $154 1996–2006 9+ years of Mars mapping, 240,000+ images. McCurdy 2001 6-7 FAST SMEX GSFC August 21, 1996 ~$35 1996–2009 Auroral research, exceeded design life. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Lewis Small Satellite Technology Initiative NASA Glenn/TRW August 23, 1997 ~$62 Failed 3 days post-launch Attitude control system failure. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Clark Small Satellite Technology Initiative NASA Stennis Planned 1997 ~$60 Canceled February 1998 Canceled SSTI program termination. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Lunar Prospector Discovery NASA Ames January 6, 1998 $62.8 1998–1999 Found evidence of lunar water ice. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Deep Space 1 New Millennium JPL October 24, 1998 ~$150 1998–2001 Technology demonstration, ion propulsion. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Mars Climate Orbiter Mars Surveyor JPL December 11, 1998 $125 1998–1999 Lost due to metric/imperial units error. McCurdy 2001 6-7 SWAS SMEX GSFC December 5, 1998 ~$70 1998–2008 Submillimeter astronomy observations. McCurdy 2001 6-7 TRACE SMEX GSFC April 1, 1998 ~$75 1998–2010 Solar corona imaging and research. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Stardust Discovery JPL/Lockheed Martin February 7, 1999 ~$200 1999–2011 First comet sample return mission. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Deep Space 2 New Millennium JPL January 3, 1999 $28 1999 Lost with Mars Polar Lander. McCurdy 2001 6-7 Mars Polar Lander Mars Surveyor JPL January 3, 1999 $165 1999 Lost during landing attempt. McCurdy 2001 6-7 WIRE SMEX GSFC March 4, 1999 ~$80 1999 Premature ejection of telescope cover. McCurdy 2001 6-7 TERRIERS Explorers Program Boston University May 18, 1999 ~$6.1 Failed after launch Attitude control system failure, lost power. NASA: Fewer and Better https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-08-me-826-story.html Los Angeles Times 13 June 2025 8 August 2000 Genesis Discovery JPL / Lockheed Martin 8 August 2001 $264 2001–2004 Collected solar-wind samples; return capsule parachute failed—samples still largely recovered. David Leonard Shattered Genesis spacecraft yields scientific discoveries 20 years after crash landing https://spacenews.com/shattered-genesis-spacecraft-yields-scientific-discoveries-20-years-after-crash-landing/ SpaceNews 9 December 2024 "The mission will be remembered as coming from the 'faster, better, cheaper' era, and fortunately, its samples and science survived in spite of its low budget and its crash landing," he saidThis Month in NASA History: Genesis Launches APPEL Knowledge Services https://appel.nasa.gov/2011/08/29/ata_4-6_genesis_launches-html/ NASA 29 August 2011 The board identified six root causes for the mishap: ... Faster, better, cheaper philosophy CONTOUR Discovery APL / JHU 3 July 2002 ~$159 2002 Lost contact after solid-rocket motor burn; spacecraft presumed destroyed. Holdridge Mark E. Applying successful near mission operations approaches and refining for contour mission operations Acta Astronautica 1 January 2003 52 2 343–352 10.1016/S0094-5765(02)00174-1 2003AcAau..52..343H Both NEAR and CONTOUR share ambitious 'Faster, Better, Cheaper' goals.NASA fears for Contour after signal disappears https://www.flightglobal.com/nasa-fears-for-contour-after-signal-disappears/44632.article Flight Global 27 August 2002 en Contour is the sixth mission in the Discovery series introduced by former NASA administrator Dan Goldin under the agency's "faster, better, cheaper" approach. Further reading E. Pate-Cornell R. Dillon Challenges in the management of faster-better-cheaper space missions 1998 IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings (Cat. No. 98TH8339) Snowmass, CO, USA 1998 507–514 5 10.1109/AERO.1998.685861 Space Policy 14 2 1998 89–94 International coordination in the era of faster, better, cheaper Lisa R. Shaffer 10.1016/S0265-9646(98)00003-4 1998SpPol..14...89S https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19990100660 The Faster, Better, Cheaper Approach to Space Missions: An Engineering Management Assessment Joseph W. Hamaker 1999 ntrs.nasa.gov none Andrew Lawler 'Faster, Cheaper, Better' on Trial Science 288 32–34 2000 5463 10.1126/science.288.5463.32 https://books.google.com/books?id=5Dy6z6DQDNoC Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program McCurdy Howard E. 2001 JHU Press 978-0-8018-6720-0 https://books.google.com/books?id=YYsBAAAACAAJ 978-1-930235-46-5 High Velocity Leadership: The Mars Pathfinder Approach to Faster, Better, Cheaper 2004 Babbage Press Brian K. Muirhead William L. Simon none https://books.google.com/books?id=43pJEAAAQBAJ George H. Rieke The Last of the Great Observatories: Spitzer and the Era of Faster, Better, Cheaper at NASA George Henry Rieke University of Arizona Press 2006 978-0-8165-2558-4 none References External links The Breaking Point (2025), PBS film Category:NASA Category:Space policy of the United States Category:Articles with quotation marks in the title