The "faster, better, cheaper" approach (FBC) was a management philosophy adopted by NASA under Administrator Daniel Goldin (1992–2001). Following the end of the Cold War and facing budget constraints, NASA sought to reduce mission costs and development time while maintaining scientific capabilities through smaller, more focused missions and increased use of commercial technologies.
History NASA had a difficult period in the 1990s: with the Cold War and the Space Race between the US and the USSR finished, the agency saw dwindling budgets, and the new NASA administrator, Daniel Goldin, introduced the so-called "faster, better, cheaper" approach in 1992, which encouraged smaller, cheaper missions built with the help of third-party contractors, efficiently "commercializing" the research labs and forcing them to work with industry. Goldin had experience with small satellites, and especially disliked long, expensive programmes, calling them "battlestar galacticas", like the Cassini mission that he threatened to cancel, and urged for development of small and fast missions. The FBC approach was compared and likely originated from Lockheed Martin's skunk works approach developed by Kelly Johnson. Though it was promoted by NASA and was a de facto operational paradigm during Goldin's tenure, FBC was not institutionalized into NASA policies, being only a set of unwritten ideas.
The "faster, better, cheaper" approach was described as:
In 1991, Edward C. Stone–a well-known, enthusiastic and respectable scientist, the project scientist of Voyager program–was made the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) director. JPL had little experience in small missions at the time: its "flagship" missions, like Voyager, Cassini, and Galileo, employed hundreds of people for decades. Cassini, for example, "directly supported maybe 500 work-years, about 10 percent of total lab staff [and] provided close to 20 percent of the lab budget". In order to comply with budget restrictions and save the mission, Cassini was downsized; to save $250 million, the scan platform had to be removed from the plans. Stone himself saw the "faster-better-cheaper" as a cultural change of the lab's engineering practices.
The most successful, "model" example of the FBC was the Mars Pathfinder lander and the first Mars rover, the Sojourner. The mission cost around 200 million dollars and was widely reported in the press, appearing on the covers of Time and Newsweek. FBC also promoted the usage of commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software in spacecraft; for example using commercial CPUs instead of specialized radiation hardened ones usually used in spacecraft. This approach was successfully used for the Sojourner.
Other missions were less fortunate: in 1998–1999, six missions were launched; four of them failed. Both JPL (Stone) and the NASA administration (Goldin) acknowledged that they pushed too far with the FBC; no project manager of the failed missions was fired. Goldin took all the blame, speaking at a press conference at JPL after two Mars mission failures:
After Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, and Deep Space 2 failures, a governmental commission, the Mars Program Independent Assessment Team, was created to investigate the issues that led to it. The commission issued a Mars Program Independent Assessment Team Report, commonly known as the Young Report after its chairman Tom Young.
After two Mars spacecraft failed, "the Mars program had retrenched and returned to more conservative and traditional management with significantly more funding": the next mission, Mars Exploration Rover (launched in 2003), was redesigned, and eventually cost around $800 million; as Norman Haynes put it, MER sucked up "all available money from NASA and JPL".
The Goddard Space Flight Center operated the Small Explorer Project (SMEX) under the FBC; in 2001, five satellites were operational with just one instrument anomaly.
Because of the FBC, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was "forced" to change, resulting in "simplified instruments, solar orbit and warm-launch architecture".
Assessment and legacy The "Faster, better, cheaper" philosophy is often criticized, with many opponents saying that one can only "pick two" out of three desired qualities. However, even its critics acknowledge that under Goldin the flight rate became higher, and that Goldin "rescued space science from the tedium and inherent risk of flying one giant mission every five or ten years". The FBC philosophy was noted by multiple authors to be a success by different criteria.
The FBC missions had strict budgets. Mars Pathfinder, together with the Sojourner rover, cost only 6.7 percent of what was spent on the Viking mission. All 16 missions launched in the FBC era cost less than Cassini. Dan Ward from the US Air Force concludes that "FBC delivered 10 successful missions (plus six unsuccessful ones) for less than the price of one traditional mission. ... suggest that success-per-dollar is a more meaningful measurement of achievement than success-per-attempt because there is no limit to the number of attempts we can make" and writes that FBC "reveals an admirable record of success".
Another metric which shows that FBC was a successful approach is "the science output per dollar of mission cost": "FBC missions resulted in more scientific publications (and citation-weighted publications) per dollar of mission cost than did missions developed under other paradigms". Dillon and Madsen, 2014 concludes that "NASA suffers from a bias against learning from the FBC era because of the stigma of the failed projects".
Giovanni F. Bignami wrote that the "popular belief" is wrong to target the FBC approach, and shows that the percentage of failed missions was not much lower before FBC than during the FBC.
Larry J. Paxton thought that FBC "did revitalize science at NASA": during the Goldin administration there were many missions in contrast with the "flagship" Voyager and Galileo. New NASA programs were created, including the Discovery program and Living With a Star. He also wrote that FBC proves that large organizations like NASA can be changed and adapted to the needs of its "customers": "For NASA, that customer base included politicians, scientists, and the public."
Howard E. McCurdy writes that "history may view Goldin's administration as a bold first step towards displacing an inappropriate and unsustainable culture of uncontrolled spending on space".
Daniel Goldin was NASA administrator under three presidents, from 1992 to 2001, the longest tenure of all NASA directors. According to W. Henry Lambright, "he was hailed at one point as a miracle worker and poster boy of government reinvention for his 'faster, better, cheaper' strategy of 'doing more with less'. But Goldin left the agency under fire for cost overruns and reforms that reached too far".
Influence on other agencies Though ESA never adopted NASA's FBC, the agency was also looking into low-cost missions in the early 2000s. The first European planetary mission, the Mars Express orbiter and the Beagle 2 lander, cost only $60 million, and had a "streamlined design and thrift [which] echoes a previous NASA mantra: 'faster, better, cheaper'". ESA described it as "the first example of ESA's new style of developing scientific missions: faster, smarter and more cost-effective, but without compromising reliability and quality". ESA stated that "there was immense pressure on ESA from its Members States to demonstrate similar principles" to FBC. ESA science director David Southwood adapted the FBC as "faster, smarter, cheaper". The orbiter mission succeeded, but the lander failed.
European smallsats PROBA were designed according to the FBC principles; the first satellite, PROBA-1, was launched in 2001.
In 1997, ESA proposed to "radically restructure" the Horizon 2000 program "to make missions faster and cheaper".
Takahiro Yamada of JAXA wrote positively of the FBC approach: ""Far faster, far better, far cheaper” may be difficult, but “a little faster, a little better, a little cheaper” must be within the scope of our endeavors."
Missions Sources usually mention 16 missions launched during the FBC era, though several more missions are also attributed to it by others.
Mission Name Program Operator Launch Date Budget (million USD) Operation Period Outcome Notes Refs. Clementine DSPSE BMDO / NRL 25 January 1994 ~$75 1994 Completed global lunar mapping; planned fly-by of 1620 Geographos cancelled after attitude failure. Mission became the basis of FBC. SAMPEX SMEX GSFC July 3, 1992 ~$55 1992–2004 First SMEX mission, studied cosmic rays and magnetospheric particles NEAR Shoemaker Discovery APL/JHU February 17, 1996 $110–150 1996–2001 First spacecraft to orbit and land on an asteroid. Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover Discovery JPL December 4, 1996 $280 1996–1997 First Mars rover, 85 days operation. Mars Global Surveyor Mars Surveyor JPL November 7, 1996 $154 1996–2006 9+ years of Mars mapping, 240,000+ images. FAST SMEX GSFC August 21, 1996 ~$35 1996–2009 Auroral research, exceeded design life. Lewis Small Satellite Technology Initiative NASA Glenn/TRW August 23, 1997 ~$62 Failed 3 days post-launch Attitude control system failure. Clark Small Satellite Technology Initiative NASA Stennis Planned 1997 ~$60 Canceled February 1998 SSTI program termination. Lunar Prospector Discovery NASA Ames January 6, 1998 $62.8 1998–1999 Found evidence of lunar water ice. Deep Space 1 New Millennium JPL October 24, 1998 ~$150 1998–2001 Technology demonstration, ion propulsion. Mars Climate Orbiter Mars Surveyor JPL December 11, 1998 $125 1998–1999 Lost due to metric/imperial units error. SWAS SMEX GSFC December 5, 1998 ~$70 1998–2008 Submillimeter astronomy observations. TRACE SMEX GSFC April 1, 1998 ~$75 1998–2010 Solar corona imaging and research. Stardust Discovery JPL/Lockheed Martin February 7, 1999 ~$200 1999–2011 First comet sample return mission. Deep Space 2 New Millennium JPL January 3, 1999 $28 1999 Lost with Mars Polar Lander. Mars Polar Lander Mars Surveyor JPL January 3, 1999 $165 1999 Lost during landing attempt. WIRE SMEX GSFC March 4, 1999 ~$80 1999 Premature ejection of telescope cover. TERRIERS Explorers Program Boston University May 18, 1999 ~$6.1 Failed after launch Attitude control system failure, lost power. Genesis Discovery JPL / Lockheed Martin 8 August 2001 $264 2001–2004 Collected solar-wind samples; return capsule parachute failed—samples still largely recovered. CONTOUR Discovery APL / JHU 3 July 2002 ~$159 2002 Lost contact after solid-rocket motor burn; spacecraft presumed destroyed.
Further reading
References
External links The Breaking Point (2025), PBS film