- “Culture eats strategy for lunch” (something to ponder considering the thread above).

- “We need a 100 year vision, and then do what we need to do, step by step, in order to accomplish the construction of a beyond speed of light/time warp-capable vehicle.” (86 year old technologist responding to my questions about how we currently bound development. He went on to offer specific examples of exactly what needed to be achieved in technology and science to achieve this goal…but what he was really focusing on was the importance of a mindset and an aesthetic).

When a few people heard “100 years” they all said they would be dead and dismissed the thought (culture eats stategy for lunch again).

It made me wonder about the role or importance of an altruistic mindset, and the nature of people willing to make personal sacrifice and investement for a result they may not see in their lifetime, and willing to work toward a reward others will likely receive.

I am wondering if these qualities are key ingredients for progress, regardless of physical age or experience (?)

Mike Hawes, thank you for taking the time to write your comments. I will try to be a better leader and less of a complainer.

I felt I needed to delete the last comment. The implications were not fair.

1. Instant Messaging not only allows point to point interaction it also allows a leveling of the workforce. Alas, NASA is a hierarchical organization and often spends inordinate amounts of money and effort to retain and reinforce that structure. It would be a simple matter to create a separate IM network – isolated from the main network – for people to use for non proprietary information. But when you look at how ODIN charges many times the purchase cost of a computer to “maintain it, you have to ask if NASA actually wants to be efficient.

2. “do or create something useful on your own”. Also agree. It is one thing to poke at how bad things are. Anyone can do that. But not just anyone can fix things and improve on them. To get a seat at the big table you need to earn it. This is how the real world works outside of NASA -and inside as well. Do you really want people to be promoted because they ask to be promoted or to promote them because they have proven their worthiness? Alas, proving your worthiness takes time and effort. Gen Y is used to instantaneous feedback and action.

Take instant messaging for example, in many enterprises today IM is an invaluable tool. But its one that the IT department has little to no influence over since people generally use AIM, Yahoo, or MSN. People just started using it at work because it solved a problem (the same is going for twitter). No one went to IT and asked permission to create an enterprise wide instant messaging strategy.

When I first started working at Georgia Tech in 1990 I was already somewhat aware of the Internet and how it worked. My first job was as glorified tape monkey in the machine room. But I had access to a Sun workstation and the Internet. So I installed gopher and WAIS and started building services for students that I thought they might like. I didn’t ask permission from anyone. Within 6 months I was saving the university hundreds of thousands in software costs and giving students services they’d been screaming for. I paid my own way to IETF meetings, hacked code on my own, and lead by doing things, not by asking permission or waiting to be invited to the higher up meetings about IT strategy.

If you want to be respected, treated as an equal, and have your ideas adopted, then do or create something useful on your own. The people you are talking to manage billion dollars budgets, fly men into space on a regular basis, and build amazing pieces of technology. And they have been doing it for years. To be treated as an equal you have to show that you can do that to. Where is your “Get’s Useful Shit Done” evidence?

That’s why I took the job I’m in now over a competing offer that would have stuck me doing engineering database management. One of my professors at Rice, John Muratore, told me that some of the best jobs were the ones that forced him out of his comfort zone and to learn something new. I’ve tried to take that to heart.

For those of you that don’t know him, John is the former X-38 lead and a former space shuttle chief engineer. I consider myself very fortunate to have studied flight test engineering under his tutelage.

1. I also learned the basics of payload integration from Apollo, Skylab and early shuttle folks. These were people who lived Apollo 13. John Aaron and Gene Kranz were at meetings. So was T.K. Mattingly and Fred Haise. I used to hear people complaining about software since “we used relays and solenoids in Skylab and everything worked just fine”.

2. The IT weenies at Space Station Freedom Program Office shut my Internet access off more than once – I just broke into the network room plugged it back in. They explained their actions by saying that they did not exactly understand how I got access to the “Internet” and what I was doing with that access. Too late I had learned how to email my friends in Antarctica

3. Gopher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)

“Gopher is a distributed document search and retrieval network protocol designed for the Internet. Its goal is to function as an improved form of Anonymous FTP, enhanced with hyperlinking features similar to that of the World Wide Web.”

4. Mosaic (web browser) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)

“Mosaic was the first popular World Wide Web browser and Gopher client. It was reliable and easy to install, which opened the Web up to the general public. Mosaic was the first browser to actually implement images embedded in the text, rather than displayed in a separate window.”‘

5. I named the Centrifuge Accommodation Module (CAM). Ask Mike. He was there – and he had my Ricky the Space Rat hand puppet with him …

As a manager /leader i am very concerned about comments implying mindless following of rules. Perhaps because I didn’t follow them very well myself…

I don’t follow blogs much but am happy to talk to folks as I can. I have a Facebook profile (my kids are 17 and 19 ). I am also on the NASA network there…

Perhaps I should qualify that just a bit. As a piece of what NASA does (and is supposed to do), communication is small. Admittedly, they could do better, as Keith points out on a regular basis, but there are technical and organizational issues to tackle as well. Communication is necessary and important, but it is also important that NASA has something to communicate ABOUT.

A gripe I hear from old hands in the space business is, “Gen Y keeps harping on communication. Are they ever going to DO anything?” There’s clearly a cultural gap here. Younger generations are more interested and adept at communicating EVERYTHING. We don’t necessarily understand, accept, or agree with the stoic, say-nothing-unless-it’s-necessary attitudes of our elders. However, some folks just want to do the job (engineering, science) and not talk so much about it–let the results speak for themselves.