Pretty much, though not exactly. NASA is, after all, made up of a vast number of people competing to get their own favourite projects funded. If a directive co

Pretty much, though not exactly. NASA is, after all, made up of a vast number of people competing to get their own favourite projects funded. If a directive comes down from on high that NASA's primary goal is to build a moonbase then it means that projects relevant to this goal start getting funded (and that projects irrelevant to this goal get a hasty rewrite to make 'em sound like they're relevant to this goal).