Faster, Better, Cheaper

Exploring space has long been one of the costliest pursuits this country has taken on. The first Moon landing came to $21 billion in 1969 dollars, the International Space Station still under construction is expected to cost at least $65 billion when finished, and a single flight of the reusable shuttle runs about $400 million. Against this backdrop, Howard E. McCurdy looks at how NASA has tried in recent years to cut expenses while flying missions more often and getting better results from them.

The book takes its name from a NASA program of the same name, which agency leaders introduced after the highly publicized failure of the Mars Observer spacecraft in 1993. The Observer was first planned in 1981 as the last of a series of cheaper missions, yet by launch its budget had climbed from $250 million to more than $800 million.

To make up for research lost during the long gap since the last Viking mission in 1976, scientists added many instruments to the Observer in 1992, and technicians installed extra equipment to guard against failure. The aim was a more reliable and capable spacecraft. Even so, as the Observer neared Mars on August 21, 1993, it disappeared.