Life Sciences in the Space Program 



Recommendations 



• Senior NASA management should support current efforts to enunciate Life 

 Sciences program goals and should provide stable policy and fiscal support 

 for the Life Sciences Division that will allow these initial planning efforts to 

 develop and continue. 



• The Life Sciences Division should assist the disciplinary groups and senior 

 management by anchoring these efforts within a broader framework — 

 developing overall goals for the Division that reflect the alternative long- 

 range plans now being considered for the Agency. 



Life Sciences Organization 



Findings 



• Throughout its history, NASA's total effort related to life sciences has been 

 complex and extremely fragmented in terms of organization structure and 

 decision processes. 



This fragmentation has resulted from the complexity of the program effort 

 and NASA itself. Implementation of life sciences research involves some 

 degree of effort by every major NASA program office, particularly those 

 responsible for the NASA Centers. 



This fragmentation of responsibility makes it more difficult to coordinate 

 the activities of scientists and administrators in the Centers and those in 

 NASA 1 leadquarters 



— In addition, life sciences efforts must balance the separate imperatives of 

 flight and ground research, as well as the differing perspectives of inside 

 and outside researchers. 



• At the present time, the Life Sciences Division lias worked to manage the 

 differing but complementary perspectives of these various participants. 



The newly developed Program Disciplinary Planning process seeks to 

 integrate the ground and flight, intramural and extramural, and 

 international components of the program. Through this process, the roles 

 of the Centers and Center staffs will be clarified and meshed with research 

 plans involving outside scientists 



— If funds are available, the program plans to institute Specialized C enter ol 

 Research (SCOR) efforts. 



[Tie reorganization ol the Flight Programs office also clarifies the appro- 

 priate levels of overlap between flight and ground activities and, at the 

 same tune, emphasizes the special program and project nature of flight 

 efforts. 





