Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976–2004 (review)

Into the Black is a sequel to Clayton R. Koppes's JPL and the American Space Program: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1982), which covers the history of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory up to 1976. Like its predecessor, Peter Westwick's book is an institutional history examining JPL's roles and achievements, its management and culture, and its organizational strategies and external relations.

JPL is a national laboratory, carrying out NASA's programs and managed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). As Koppes has shown, the triangular institutional relationship among JPL, NASA, and Caltech has shaped the character of JPL ever since it withdrew from army missile projects and started developing deep-space robotic spacecraft for NASA in 1959. Westwick argues that the triangle tilted toward Caltech in the 1970s and 1980s, as JPL increased its autonomy from NASA by diversifying its work into energy research and military projects. Then in the 1990s, most non-NASA work phased out, and the triangle tilted back toward NASA. In Westwick's account, diversification is a key parameter in understanding JPL's institutional evolution.

Westwick's analysis of JPL's involvement in military work is suggestive. In the late 1970s, JPL began developing defense systems as well as pursuing research on war-gaming and combat simulation, in the face of opposition from many Caltech professors. This was a response to NASA's declining budget, and JPL could avoid drastic cutbacks that other NASA centers suffered. Westwick argues that military funding spurred development of new technologies, which then flowed into civilian programs. Civilian engineering also fed into military programs, so the two became almost integrated with each other. More important, Westwick points out that JPL's acquisition of military technologies and management models drove a shift in the 1990s toward the "faster, better, cheaper" approach, which paralleled that of NASA as a whole.

The book is divided into three parts: first, from 1976 to 1982, when a young, aggressive director Bruce Murray responded to a shrinking NASA budget by political lobbying and diversification; then, from 1982 to 1991, when a more restrained, pragmatic director Lew Allen renewed JPL's connection to the military while also improving its relationships with NASA; finally, from 1991 to 2001, when director Ed Stone, embracing new management theories, sought to reorient JPL's culture to adapt to the faster, better, cheaper approach in the post–cold war environment. Westwick believes that each director strongly influenced the culture of JPL. In the epilogue he briefly examines JPL under current director Charles Elachi.

Westwick often discusses JPL's culture, which is quite natural for an institutional history. He regards JPL's strength in systems engineering and its emphasis on collective rather than individual achievements as aspects of its culture. It is true that project managers such as Robert Parks, Jack James, and John Casani rigorously enforced a systems engineering regime. But did the laboratory as a whole really turn to systems engineering? As Westwick notes in summarizing Koppes's book, during the 1960s JPL's engineers had a strong inclination toward individualism and a loose, academic style of operation. Had initiatives by a relatively small number of engineers really eradicated such institutional tradition by the mid-1970s? To what extent was JPL's culture stable and pervasive? Such questions could have been dealt with more carefully.

Be that as it may, Into the Black solidly covers the history of JPL from 1976 to 2004. There are adequate accounts of the technologies the laboratory developed and the projects it carried out, including Voyager, Mars Pathfinder, and Cassini, as well as other major and minor efforts. It describes the lab's changing demography, relations with the local community, and public perceptions of its achievements. It identifies complex tensions between human and robotic exploration, between JPL and the aerospace industry, between scientists and technologists, and within the scientific community. Not only that, it offers overall...