My conversation with Professor Raja Roy began by reflecting with him on the $200b+ cost of the development of the Space Shuttle. NASA worked on this effort with at least four major companies: Boeing/Rockwell, Lockheed, Martin Marietta, and Thiokol/Alliant Technsystems. I ask Raja why NASA couldn’t just procure the required parts through contracts. Why did a deep and enduring collaboration have to happen between these companies that were competitors with each other, and that had little other initial commercial interest in the technology. Raja explains that the goal of the Space Shuttle was reusability, and that this required a level of enduring commitment to work together to design wing configurations, for example, with implications across the entire system of components. He describes how there was learning over time that had to be exchanged between partners. Raja also emphasizes the central role of NASA in coordinating knowledge exchange.

We then turned to the organizational and governance challenges that NASA faced. This went way beyond the tech challenge. NASA’s goals were military, and involved economic development and technological leadership at a geopolitical level. The federal government is a major customer to these companies, including through the military. The real innovation was in Phase B where groups of companies had to work together in teams, including Pan Am and Dessault from Europe. The complexity and interdependencies required that there were a lot of companies involved to get the best technology. NASA was seeking to capitalize on the strengths of private company capabilities in its overall envelop of technologies, but this meant that the coordination and governance challenges were extensive.

Raja clarifies that getting technological goal alignment was key to progress. The original vision dating all the way back to the moonshot and JFK’s 1962 argument was military and geopolitical leadership to preserve the commercial and security opportunities in the skies. How could these goals be made consonant with the private commercial goals of the companies involved? Raja’s answer emphasized different ways in which the companies took in military orders from the Air Force and elsewhere. He describes how design choices reflected this goal alignment with a fascinating example of wing shape.

I asked Raja to overcome his historical rigor and to speculate about what will happen next. My next question speculated that NASA hadn’t been active recently relative to SpaceX and other private space explorers. Raja very politely disagreed by saying that NASA still owns governance over the skies. He explained that NASA will always be involved by setting the standards and making the rules and shaping private-sector commercialization in space. He drew an analogy between other technologies that had their origins in the public sector – agreeing with my example of the Internet – that become popularized in the private sector but that become so pervasive – so taken-as-given – that we almost forget how central the government is to their existence and sustainability. This role for government is something truly insightful that my other conversations so far haven’t unearthed at quite this level. Very grateful to Raja.

Postscript: After the recording stopped, Raja described with considerable passion his awe over the success of the Voyager project, which was designed starting in the 1965-1966 era, and launched initially before he was born (and when I was a kid). The research question he pitched: How has the Voyager survived so many generations of technological change? It’s truly transcendent and an example of how private-sector fueled public innovation can lead to profound achievements.