Mars Mission

1. What is your evaluation of the FBC initiative? What were its aims? What did it do well? What, if anything, went wrong with it?

FBC is a good way to improve performance by being more efficient and innovative, and it should apply to every program. In the FBC framework, the team spirt is closely bound up team members. Its aims was to develop smaller, lower cost spacecraft and increase the number of missions that could be funded with a given budget, increasing the probability of mission success, while reducing the negative impact of a failure. In the case of the FBC, NASA would no more fund for big projects, such as Viking or Mars Observer. Instead, they would launch smaller spacecraft to the planet, taking advantage of the information generated in each mission to improve the next program.

The mission scope fit fairly well within the caps by the FBC, such as Mars pathfinder. But, the definition of FBC should be clearer, whether the implement would be hard. The team should know what an FBC project should look like, or some people should give the guidance how to do the work with a set of budget, time and weight constraints. Another problem is that the NASA wanted to push the project with FBC before it got feedback. Furthermore, NASA should have a systematic approach to learn and spread knowledge.

Also, based on the case, it is clear that a success of a FCB mission might escalate to tighter budget on future FCB missions. Under too tight budget, projects will not success.

2. Are smaller missions more or less risky than larger missions? What does the case data suggest?

From the case data, the successful rate of larger missions (traditional mission) is 86%, and the successful rate of smaller missions (FBC) is 50%. The smaller missions are more risky than larger missions according to the case data. Furthermore, according to the case, in smaller missions, they didn’t have enough budget or resources to achieve missions. This may because decision makers simply tend to think less budget is required for smaller missions. Therefore, under such a concept, smaller missions will tend to be high risk.

3. What should Naderi do with respect to the 2001 missions?

Naderi should make some important changes to address the need for greater coordination at the program level. He should re-think and re-define how to structure programs with limited mission budget. Most of the budget was used to flight system, he would have to focus more on technology re-use, developing designs that were expected to fulfill multiple missions. In addition, I recommend Naderi to review and analyze past successful missions. He will know why the project was successful in terms of budget and technology level at that time. Then, he may find appropriate amount of budget for future projects according to their missions.

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