The legacy of Faster-Better-Cheaper: Too much risk or over-reaction to perceived failure?

From 1992 until 1999, NASA adopted the mission paradigm of Faster-Better-Cheaper (FBC)-i.e., a large number of relatively small, low-cost spacecraft-for its unmanned spacecraft. As many of the early FBC missions met their objectives (at much lower cost than traditional missions), the FBC approach appeared to be viable. However, after two Mars mission failures in 1999, the FBC paradigm was discontinued and came to be viewed by many to be a failed experiment. We reflect on the legacy of this program. In particular, we focus on the organizational learning literature to explore whether FBC, a stretch goal, was a good step for NASA, where a stretch goal is an extreme goal meant to intentionally generate internal crises to spark energy and to spur change. Previous examinations of the achievements of the FBC paradigm have focused on mission failure rates rather than on cost effectiveness, perhaps a more meaningful measure of performance for unmanned space missions. Therefore, we revisit the question of whether the Faster-Better-Cheaper paradigm was a success or a failure by examining all unmanned NASA missions launched between 1974 to 2007. In the analysis, we define mission performance in terms of the science output per dollar of mission cost, finding that FBC missions resulted in more scientific publications (and citation-weighted publications) per dollar of mission cost than did missions developed under other paradigms. In conclusion, we perceive many lasting benefits to current projects today from the adoption of the stretch goal of completing projects “Faster-Better-Cheaper” in the 1990's and perceive that NASA suffers from a bias against learning from the FBC era because of the stigma of the failed projects.