"I think that NASA, in its current configuration, can't pull this job off," Payton said during a hearing before the President's Commission on the Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy. "When I was there, NASA was made up of 11 different fiefdoms, each interested in their own legacy and history, each with its own liaison office that would often work without the cooperation of the national office."
The commission was appointed by President Bush to sketch out the requirements needed to refocus NASA and send humans to the moon, Mars and beyond. Today's hearings are being held at the Georgia Centers for Advanced Telecommunications Technology at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Payton, a one-time NASA manager, said that NASA must work as a cohesive system of systems akin to the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, which has folded several Army, Navy and Air Force programs into one, targeted effort.
He also cautioned the commission that, while preserving the workforce for NASA projects is important, so is proper management of those aerospace professionals who come from the private sector to work for the space agency.
In the military, he added, officers change locations between seven and 12 times in their career, holding as many as 20 different jobs, with each move intended at increasing individual experience. At NASA today, it's possible to reach the equivalent position of a military flag officer without ever seeing the efforts of other agency centers.
"The problem is that you have these bright, young college graduates who can come in at the bottom floor and work their way to the top without ever leaving a single NASA center," Payton said. "They don't see the breadth of what NASA is trying to do."
Future space workforce
The importance of stemming the decline of young aerospace workers, on whom NASA will depend to build tomorrow's space ships, was also impressed on the commission by aerospace industry representatives.
"While our ambitions are going up our capabilities are going down," said Charlie Bofferding, executive director of the Council of Engineering and Scientists. "University's are graduating less and less engineers."
Bofferding said that very few aerospace engineers working on the space effort are under 30 years of age, and soon the entire generation of scientists that worked on the Apollo mission will retire soon.
"We have concerns right now about America's ability to sustain its technology," Bofferding added.
Aerospace industry analysts said that for NASA to ensure its tomorrow's workforce, it must redouble efforts to reach today's children through additional outreach programs, student site visits to NASA centers and highlighting the efforts of individual astronauts to recapture the public's sense of awe and heroism seen during the agency's earlier days.
"I think that we're going to have to make it clear that the space program is everybody's program," said Michael Balzano, executive director of the National Industrial Base Workforce Coalition.
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