...it wasn't like NASA was about to do something huge and cooperation with India puts that goal at risk...
Your nested counterfactuals are a little hard to unpack, but if I understand you correctly, it is somewhat the contrary, at least with NISAR. (Oops, I added another counterfactual.) NASA was about to NOT do something huge and the collaboration enabled it happen.
That is, before it became NISAR, the Earth-observing biomass/seismicity SAR mission was called Desdyni (http://decadal.gsfc.nasa.gov/desdyni.html). This mission was referred to as desirable in a 2007 National Academies decadal roadmap (covering the next 10 years), but there were too many other even higher-ranked missions in the pipeline. So it seemed like Desdyni was not going to get on the NASA roadmap any time soon.
The Indian contribution seems to have (for the moment) been enough to get it going, because in February NISAR entered "Phase A" which is NASA-speak for "we are starting the mission". There are later decision points depending on how ready the overall concept proves to be.
Your nested counterfactuals are a little hard to unpack, but if I understand you correctly, it is somewhat the contrary, at least with NISAR. (Oops, I added another counterfactual.) NASA was about to NOT do something huge and the collaboration enabled it happen.
That is, before it became NISAR, the Earth-observing biomass/seismicity SAR mission was called Desdyni (http://decadal.gsfc.nasa.gov/desdyni.html). This mission was referred to as desirable in a 2007 National Academies decadal roadmap (covering the next 10 years), but there were too many other even higher-ranked missions in the pipeline. So it seemed like Desdyni was not going to get on the NASA roadmap any time soon.
The Indian contribution seems to have (for the moment) been enough to get it going, because in February NISAR entered "Phase A" which is NASA-speak for "we are starting the mission". There are later decision points depending on how ready the overall concept proves to be.