Ideas on How to Open NASA? Spill!
Are you someone who knows exactly what it takes to make NASA the best agency possible? Do you doodle ideas on cocktail napkins and mail them to a NASA Center? Do you wake up early in the morning to watch Space Shuttle launches (like this morning’s 4:14 a.m. EST STS-130 launch) or stay up all night for mission coverage of Space Station? Do you wish you could wear a NASA badge and sit in a cubicle somewhere in the bureaucratic maze at a NASA installation?
Have we got a job for you!
Social Media + Open Government
Yesterday, Amiko Kauderer (@amikokauderer), Joel Walker (@joelwalker), James McClellan (@jbmccl) and I (@skytland) had an opportunity to attend the Houston Social Media Club breakfast at the Houston Zoo to talk about NASA’s experiments in social media. I wanted to share the presentation with the openNASA community and also invite you to the Houston Zoo’s next event! So, if you are in Houston on Friday, February 26th, make sure to check out the “Tweets in Space” event at the Houston Zoo to meet some “twittering astronauts”! Here’s some information: Read more
The times they are a changing…
I, like many others here at NASA, have spent the past few days reading and thinking about the new plan the president has proposed for NASA and what it really means. I work in science research, so part of this new plan makes me happy. But other parts of this plan were harder to digest. Since its inception, NASA has always had a vision to achieve the impossible and push the boundaries. I feel that hasn’t changed with the new proposal. But I can see why people think it has.
Two years ago, I was fortunate enough to be a part of the group that came up with the 20 year vision for JSC. It was for “JSC to be a collaborative, innovative, and integrated space center, boldly expanding the frontiers of human space exploration.” I can’t help thinking that this new plan the president has laid out is the first step to get us exactly there.
I then started thinking about how we got to that vision. It was hard. Lots of long nights, frustration, arguments and running around in circles until one day it finally clicked. What are wonderful mentors were trying to get us to do was open our minds, erase the boundaries and think outside the box. Why was this seemingly easy concept so difficult? We are all trained in a system of rules, boundaries, goals, processes, etc. These aren’t bad things, they are needed to succeed. But they can come at a price. Some of these can hinder innovation, slow creativity and have so strong a focus that the big picture is lost. And yet we are so tied to them that the thought of going beyond them or even questioning why they exist is not something that crosses our minds often. After several months, our group had opened our minds and started to think about the big picture, started questioning and started really thinking. In the end we came up with something that was new and exciting. Many of my colleagues have continued to innovate and inspire and I see no signs of them stopping! I call upon them now to help make others see that NASA has now been given the same chance the 30 of us got 2 years ago.
Although at first glance the lack of a “mission” may feel like we have lost something, really look at the opportunity we have been given. It’s not going to be easy, harder for some then for others, but here at NASA we have people who really do achieve the impossible every day. With the knowledge and passion that every person in this agency has for the dream of exploration, we might even surprise ourselves in how far we can go when we are allowed to open our minds and let the creative process happen.
Looking back…
A few days ago, I woke up, half-dreading the 6-mile run I needed to complete in preparation for the half-marathon I’m signed up to run in just under two months. Whenever runs get torturous, or I’m having a terrible day and just don’t want to get out there, I tell myself that this is all in preparation for one day achieving my ultimate goal of becoming an astronaut. Somehow, that provides some internal inkling of motivation that gets me going every time. For many months, perhaps a year now, I’ve had a secret desire to run the internal perimeter of JSC – from gate to gate to gate…to gate (I think)…if not to just prove to myself that I could do it. That day, I decided, was the day, and I set about mapping my route and subsequently out the door.
It was, in some fashion, much like a glimpse through the evolution of the space center. From its inception as the Manned Spacecraft Center, the buildings, the employees, the land that Johnson Space Center rests upon have trudged through the beaten course through programs and changes galore.
Moon and Mars Not Out
Most people think that the end of the Constellation program, will impede NASA’s ability to go to the Moon and beyond. I believe that we can use the change in direction to get to the Moon or Mars faster than if we stuck to the Constellation program (at the very least we can get to Mars faster). The Constellation program, was projected to get us to the Moon by 2020. However, the program has been over-budget, and behind schedule. Given the lack of proper funding, I predict that if we choose to go through with the Constellation program we would not get to the moon until after 2020, maybe 2022 or 2025 if at all.
Eventhough, I agree that lack of proper funding is a major source of problems with the Constellation program, I still think that the Constellation program is a bad strategy for NASA. The reason that I think it is a bad strategy is because there are too many unknowns, too many things that need to be developed that can’t be developed until later in the program (or at the very least verified), and too rigid a box to get it done (it doesn’t help that we also don’t have the proper budget to get this done, but when you add physical constraints it makes life very difficult). Further the long development time, requires us to develop and work on technology that will be severely outdated by the time we get to use it.
Who Moved Our Cheese?
If you haven’t read “Who Moved My Cheese?” this might be a good time to go pick up a copy or steal one from your neighborhood “change and transition” specialist. It’s the story of two mice (named “Sniff” and “Scurry”) and two ‘Littlepeople’ (named “Hem” and “Haw”) who are beings who are as small as mice but who “looked and acted a lot like people today.”
The four are in search of cheese in a maze. Don’t ask why these “Littlepeople” don’t have access to alternative means of sustenance like water, tacos, or Snickers bars. Or why they’re the size of mice. They’re stuck in a maze and they just want cheese. (You wouldn’t crave a block of meuster if you were 5 inches tall and confined to a labyrinth of hallways with only mice as company?).
Read more
The challenge and the opportunity
The new NASA budget is a fundamental challenge to the way we operate in the human spaceflight community. It asks us to stop expecting Washington or another JFK to tell us what to do and demands that we determine what we can offer the nation and set out to break as many boundaries as we can, while respecting the fiscal realities this country faces.
We can either fight this “paradigm shift,” as some have called it, or we can embrace it and make it our own. Human space exploration is not going to die because of the cancellation of the Constellation program. The American human space program itself will only die if we fail to rise to this challenge. The NASA community has core assets and capabilities, such as the premier ability of JSC’s Mission Operations Directorate to conduct launch, ascent, and reentry of human crews, that must be conserved and shared if we are to succeed.
the context is decisive
While thinking about the news on the NASA budget today, I thought of the following story.
One time back in the 1960s, a NASA employee was roaming the halls of Kennedy Space Center. He came across a group of three janitors cleaning a restroom. Given his friendly nature, he stopped and approached the first one who seemed particularly dour.
“How’s it going?” he asked. In response, the first janitor growled “How do you think it is going? I’m stuck here cleaning toilets.”
The new NASA
The reports on the “death” of America’s manned space program are greatly exaggerated. Contrary to the opinions of some, I think the new budget proposal for NASA is a much-needed course correction that brings the agency back to a focus on its core strengths – research, development, and exploration.
Yes, the Constellation Program will be canceled. The Ares I and V booster rockets and the Orion crew exploration vehicle are going away. The Space Shuttle will be retired as scheduled. In their place will be a robust commercial Low Earth Orbit capability built on the premise of multiple providers competing to provide NASA the best offer for services. NASA will also fund a significant heavy-lift R&D program, likely based out of Marshall Space Flight Center, to develop “game changing” and affordable new rocket technologies.
