Freedom ADMINISTRATION
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Figure 6.3.-NRL Artificial
could include adjunct professorships as well as sponsoring graduate student thesis research at NASA facilities. This could prove to be an effective recruiting device. The agency may also wish to consider student loan programs for graduate students, wherein part of the loan is forgiven if the student completes an advanced degree and comes to work for NASA. A final suggestion is to sponsor Ph.D. thesis competitions, in which a "Space Technology Award," say, of perhaps $5000 is awarded annually to the best thesis relating to problems relevant to NASA. In general, the CS&T study group believes that there are many institutional programs which will cost NASA very little, yet can do much to maintain a NASA capability once it is obtained. Within NASA are examples of how programs such as these have succeeded particularly well in physics and the space sciences.
6. 6. 7 Summary and Conclusions The primary technical components of a NASA program in Computer Science and Technology include research in CHIEF SCIENTIST
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Intelligence Laboratory organization. machine intelligence, real-time systems, information retrieval, supervisory systems, and computer systems. NASA's computing and communications facilities require substantial upgrading in order to perform the proposed research and to attract competent personnel. An interactive, on-line programming environment appears essential, as well as a move by NASA to provide extensive communication capabilities among its computers and evolve toward an agency-wide computer network. It is further recommended that NASA consider the potentials of office automation technology for routine administrative work and document management, and explore the utility of machine intelligence in project management and policy analysis. The organizational structure required to perform both state-of-the-art research and to apply modern CS&T was considered. The team concluded that this topic deserves a complete organizational analysis of alternatives, a task which can most effectively be done within NASA it self. Such a study should be given high priority in consideration of responses to requirements for implementing an advanced machine intelligence based program within NASA.
