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America’s Future in Space: Aligning the Civil Space Program with National Needs
believes that the process of aligning roles and responsibilities for space activities, making resource commitments, and coordinating across departments and agencies needs to be carried out at a sufficiently high level so that decisions are made from the perspective of addressing the larger national issues whose resolution space activities can help achieve. How this process is accomplished might change from administration to administration, but the need for an approach that will elevate attention to the proper level remains essential.
Organizing to meet national needs. The President of the United States should task senior executive-branch officials to align agency and department strategies; identify gaps or shortfalls in policy coverage, policy implementation, and resource allocation; and identify new opportunities for space-based endeavors that will help to address the goals of both the U.S. civil and national security space programs.
The effort should include the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and should consider the following elements:
Coordinating budgetary guidance across federal departments and agencies involved in space activities;
Coordinating responsibility and accountability for resource allocations for common services and/or infrastructure;
Coordinating responsibility and accountability for stimulating, nurturing, and sustaining a robust space industrial base, including the commercial space industry;
Coordinating responsibility and accountability for initiatives to recruit and develop a competent aerospace workforce of sufficient size and talent, anticipating future needs;
Identifying, developing, and coordinating initiatives to address long-range technological needs for future programs;
Identifying, developing, and coordinating initiatives to establish and strengthen international space relationships;
Harmonizing the roles and responsibilities of federal agencies to eliminate gaps and unnecessary duplication in the nation’s space portfolio; and
Regularly reviewing coordinated national space strategies and their success in implementing overall national space policy.
