“Rescue Party,” a short story about NASA and SpaceX – written in 1946

“Rescue Party” is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke written in 1946, but it is also the first time I read, at age eleven, about NASA and SpaceX (or “new space,” generally.) That seems impossible, and off by about four decades, but it’s true. Metaphorically speaking. The story is about time, the different speeds at which people move about the adventure and the challenge of growing and living. It’s also a story about disruption and how complacency lies somewhere southwest of that. Without giving too much away on a sci-fi story that should be required reading for anyone trying to grasp the latest happenings in our space sector,  “Rescue Party” is the culinary equivalent of new space meets old space. (You can read the entire short story right here.)

I came upon this story again, an old friend nearly forgotten on a shelf as I packed my books for a new destination and adventure. This was a gift from my 6^th-grade teacher Mr. Brown – never one quick to smile, but always to be respected. He and Clarke gave me the gift of time travel, a wormhole connecting 1976 to 2023.

As aliens explore an abandoned Earth in Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rescue Party” – “What do you think of this?” he said. “Suppose we’ve completely underestimated this people? Orostron did it once – he thought they could never have crossed space since they’d only known radio for two centuries. Hansur II told me that. Well, Orostron was all wrong.”

A NASA partner in crime (even in retirement) is fond of saying, “We must often give up control for something better.” Yet early in my career, this meme was not a going concern. Barely months had passed since a new cadre of troops were added to the ranks, myself included, and we youngsters were corralled into a small, musty conference room for a scolding. Back then, in dilapidated complexes that never saw better days, even when new, every conference room gave off a vibe between abandoned and neglected.

This day, someone got eager, was too obviously rolling their eyes, or did not “get it” about how things are done at NASA. There are well-established ways of doing things, and mentors must ensure new hires appreciate these ways (air quotes, or better yet, a mystery voice is a must when saying “ways of doing things,” with emphasis on “ways.”) The gentle scolding went on a while, between noting we were all so young and impatient. Frankly, all I took away from the lecture was someone had gotten everyone else in trouble. Who screwed up? Though admittedly, given the encyclopedic amount of unspoken tradition in a place like Kennedy, everyone seemed as likely to have set off the abundant tripwires, inevitably, including me. NASA Kennedy Space Center naturally impressed us “youngsters” just out of college, but the awesomeness wore off more quickly than you would expect.

“The tile work on the Shuttles could be done much faster, but no one will listen.”

At the year mark, a handful of employees in my hiring class decided they would leave NASA (a year being when you would not have to pay back moving expenses.) Why? “They said this is my job, then I found out no one would let me do it.” She was not the only one. “The tile work on the Shuttles could be done much faster, but no one will listen.” Later others joined in, and to an extent, the counter-notion flourished that “not everyone is a good fit for NASA.” Good luck, and don’t let the door…well, you know the rest. Except the farewells left lingering questions.

Besides excessive optimism, perhaps the worse bias burdening NASA’s decision-making is the idea of sunk costs. The “sunk cost” fallacy is a trick of the mind, failing to pick the right card by over-valuing our investment in the past. It could be any investment, whether what we paid or spent over many years or time and energy. We might even feel we invested in gathering “stuff”; having held on to something for so long, we must keep it a while longer. It’s vintage!

Life may be the ultimate sunk cost fallacy. We are our past experiences and memories, or alternately “we” wander among the bookshelves filled with these, at arm’s length, whoever that “self” is casually walking along. We value and over value the past even as what’s done is done, inserting it into our calculations for what to do next. This is useful because remembering where the tiger almost got us last time, and the stillness in the air, is handy for increasing the odds the tiger will go hungry again. Yet economists remind us not to let the past delude us. Make your decision today, calculating only from now unto eternity or the relevant timeframe. We are warned to avoid the sunk cost fallacy, where we erroneously value the dollar already invested, irrelevant as it is to make a decision about the future. If you will make a million dollars, versus nothing, from today to ten years out, the calculation has no care for what you spent to date.

Decisions by the numbers are easier said than done. We are hardwired to look back, reminisce, and romantically value the past. Not so much on the looking forward with brutal honesty. Even as the world changes at warp factor five, we choose to go slow, holding on to tradition, the past, and “how things are done.”

NASA now faces the prospect of a flat budget in coming years. It’s time for hard decisions. Recently we learned the Mars Sample Return mission has a good chance of being the project that will “torch the whole science community.” Here we are, invested already. Alternately, there is a possibility the project is canceled, unless it can show an honest prospect of staying within a $5.3 billion cost cap. NASA’s plans to return to the Moon will also suffer, with the inevitable conversations around these monumental missions including some screaming about what NASA has already spent. How can we change course now? Will NASA, congress, and the Whitehouse seize the opportunities ahead, tacking into the wind, or will someone say we must stay every course, or worse, every detail – we’ve spent so much so far!

Twenty years from now, we’ll know the answer.