A post over on NASA Watch indirectly poses an interesting question: Should NASA have a Starfleet Academy?

I say yes – NASA would benefit from such a program, specifically a program that would train the agency’s next generation of leaders.  While the NASA Academy and the International Space University fit this type of need, they don’t specifically train young NASA civil servants.

For the most part, we tend to hire folks to fit a specific need, to replace someone who has retired, or for a specific role in a specific branch.  These folks are then effectively trained to be just like everyone else who has ever worked in that organization.

We need to find a new way to train our leaders, and it needs to start when they are hired.  I picture something like a NASA boot camp + a graduate school version of military academies.  It would attract college graduates from all across the country.  Each group would be trained together for several years, doing hands-on work on small, inexpensive, risky projects (perhaps at Wallops?).  More importantly, they would be trained as leaders, in team-building, critical thinking, communication, and all the other fields that are necessary to be effective in leadership positions.  In return, they’d promise to serve NASA for a particular number of years, and when they graduated from the program, they’d fill positions all across the agency.

How does that sound?