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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

In this study, Kay examines the recent problems of the U.S. space program and finds that NASA's failures, like its earlier successes, are ultimately traceable to the way the American political system operates. Asking "can democracies fly in space?", the author suggests that the traditional workings of democratic politics actually exacerbates those very features of space projects - size, expense, and complexity - that make their development so difficult in the first place.

(Extracted from the press release).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Preface.

-Part I. Introduction: Where Did We Go Wrong?

1. A Program Adrift.
2. In Search of the Magic Bullet: Critiques of U.S. Space Policy.

-Part II. The Space Program from the Ground Up.

3. NASA: The Eye of the Storm.
4. ...and a Cast of Thousands.
5. "Shoe Pinching" vs. "Too Many Cooks".

-Part III. Prospects for Reform.

6. A World without Borders.
7. From Henry Ford to Captain Kirk.
8. Conclusion: Can Democracies Fly in Space?

-Bibliography.

-Index.

OUR REVIEW

The impression that the American space program has had some difficult moments, basically due to a series of great technical problems (the explosion of the shuttle Challenger, a defect in the Hubble space telescope...), has caused many people to wonder whether this is not the result of the very political development of the United States, which would provoke such situations in an involuntary manner. The question on whether the democracies can really succeed in space, or at the very least be effective, is somewhat hard yet it has its merit.

Kay examines the American example, to end up concluding that, in actual fact, the western democracies, in their current format, promote the creation of space programs that eventually will encounter the problems of colossalism and excessive complexity as well as an uncontrolled cost affecting the NASA and other American agencies. As what matters is the future, the author makes a series of proposals about how to prevent all that, including a series of reforms at a budgetary as welll as a managerial level.