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THE HIGH SPEED
FRONTIER
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- Chapter 3: Transonic Wind
Tunnel Development (1940 -1950)
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- COMMENT ON MANAGEMENT
METHODS
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- [117] In today's large
federal research agencies any program of comparable scope and
importance would be managed by a Program Director and his staff in
agency headquarters. Several committees of outside "specialists"
would be involved with senior agency managers to define a
structured program. Program definition would be followed by
promotions, approvals, negotiations for funds, and finally by the
start of work at the agency's centers and its contractor
establishments.
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- By contrast, the NACA wind tunnel
development program described in Chapter III was almost entirely
unstructured. Management assumed that research ideas would emerge
from an alert staff at all levels, rather than from outside
sources. On a problem of major proportions such as transonic
facilities any scheme for research that survived peer discussions
and gained section and division approvals was likely to be
implemented. In almost every instance the individual who proposed
the idea for the research was made personally responsible for its
execution. Thus each project was carried out by the one most
highly motivated to make it succeed. The interest and zeal of such
researchers is seldom seen on the staffs of today's project
offices which are likely to be assembled from individuals who
happen to be available from recently completed previous
assignments.
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- Large structured programs require frequent
reviews, coordination with other agencies, and repeated
justifications. These functions are major time consumers and
generators of enormous volumes of paperwork. Very little of this
was required in the simple NACA system. Occasional chats with his
division chief or department head, or a brief verbal report at
[118]
the monthly department meeting were about all that was required of
the NACA project engineer. The paperwork burden was almost nil; in
many cases the final technical report was the only significant
paperwork-surely the ideal minimum.
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- The ambitious Rocket-Model Program at
Wallops Island and the High-Speed Research Airplane Program were
exceptions to the simple pattern of the smaller projects. They
required interagency coordination which necessarily involved more
formal management structuring. Even so, by comparison to current
practice the management of these programs was delightfully simple,
direct, unobtrusive, and inexpensive.
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