Note: I am posting this because I want people to see a realistic view of things at NASA, not a sugar-coated version. This is as real as it gets.

This week I volunteered for an upcoming layoff from my job as a space shuttle technician. I will be leaving after 8.5 years of service on October 1st, 2010. Since many people would give their right arm to work on the shuttle program, you might think I’m crazy to volunteer for this. Leaving the shuttle program is a tough decision for sure, but it really isn’t a matter of if, only when. I am not choosing to leave, I am just choosing the time it will happen. Ultimately, the vast majority of shuttle workers will be let go. So why go before I am forced? Here’s an explanation so you can see it from my perspective.

One of the biggest reasons I am taking this layoff is that it will allow me to plan for my future. It is nearly impossible to make plans or look for a new job when you have no idea when your end date at work will be or what the future holds. We hear a different story every week about what is happening with the program, or with our benefits/severance. The uncertainty is exhausting. I’m not blaming my management for this- I think they are in the same boat. By volunteering for this layoff, I now know what is going to happen to me and when. Crazy as it seems, that feels good. Now I can start figuring out a good strategy to move forward.

Along the same lines, morale was a big push for me to self-nominate for this layoff. You can’t imagine what it is like to be at work surrounded by constant doom and gloom, now with a dash of panic. It is not pretty. Once the people who are to be laid off involuntarily are notified- which will be at the end of July- I expect that it will be even worse. As far as the work goes, we are finishing up with Discovery’s right OMS Pod now, and will deliver it for reinstallation this week. After that I have a few thrusters to bench test for Atlantis, which is being processed for launch on need (in case of emergency). Once that is complete, the bulk of the work we will have left in my area is decontamination of our facility for shutdown, or Transition & Retirement as NASA likes to call it. I started working on the shuttle program because I wanted to contribute to something incredible, human space exploration. I don’t find decontamination and shutdown very inspirational. In fact, it is downright depressing. For many workers, it is just a job and they don’t care what goal they’re working towards as long as they are paid. To me, it makes a difference, and I would much rather try to find work I can feel good about again.

Other reasons for taking this layoff are more practical than emotional. Leaving early gives me a better chance of finding a new job or pursuing other options because the market won’t be flooded with thousands of others doing the same. Also, it makes sense for my particular situation, because my husband works on the shuttle program as well. He will have work to do up until the last launch because he works at the launch pad. We figure that it will be best for us to take a phased approach rather than both being laid off at the same time. This way, hopefully I can get something figured out and can carry him once his job is complete, sometime next year.

So, that’s basically it. This is the reality of the situation. It is sad to see it coming to an end, but it is also a new beginning in so many ways. I am hopeful for the future of NASA, it just isn’t quite ready for me yet, so I’ll make my exit now, gracefully. I’m not looking for sympathy; I’m not feeling sorry for myself and you shouldn’t feel sorry for me either! I am looking for my next great adventure, whatever it may be…

I frequently get asked what I think about the direction NASA is taking. I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago but didn’t post it at the time. I’m not really sure why. This post does not outline my personal take on what we should be doing with our space program; it just provides a little bit of perspective on things from where I sit.

Written on April 20th:

After the president’s visit to Kennedy Space Center last week where he laid out the emerging plan for NASA to go forward, I’ve noticed a fair amount of negativity in the space community. Personally, I have high hopes for our nation’s future in space. It isn’t because anything particularly revolutionary was disclosed at Obama’s Space Summit. My perspective has just changed gradually over the past year or so, and a lot of that I owe to my interactions on Twitter. I used to look at space exploration very narrowly. Like this is the way we go to space, and this is the right way and the only way. And this is how it has to be (I’m exaggerating, but just go with it). I looked at the changes to the program more in terms of how they affected me and my community.

Now, after quite some time on Twitter, I have much greater knowledge of commercial space operations, robotic missions, and international perspectives. Because of this I am able to take myself out of the equation and look at the plan more optimistically. It has made me start to challenge the traditional thinking that is ingrained in us about NASA’s role and see more of a big picture view.

Seeing Discovery land today reminded me how impressive the shuttle is as a launch vehicle, and how sad I’ll be to see the program end. That being said, if we waited another five years, ten years, or even more to retire it, would it be any easier? For me, the answer is no. The shuttle is an icon, a symbol of pride, and a treasure. It is going to be hard to see it go no matter when it happens. And there is no denying that as time goes on it would become more difficult to maintain due to issues like aging hardware and availability of spares. So, while I might not be ready for shuttle to end, I probably won’t ever be, in the same way I would never be ready for a loved one to die. It will be a time to grieve and then move on.

I have heard the argument that it would be easier to lay shuttle to rest if we had something better coming along. Ares-1 might have filled that role, but there were funding issues. So now we’re trying something different, with a greater emphasis on commercial spaceflight roles. Our destinations are different, and we aren’t quite sure what kind of vehicle we will be using to get to them. But we’re going SOMEWHERE. We have a commitment to develop a heavy-lift vehicle. These are steps in the right direction, yet they don’t seem to have been met with much optimism. Of course, people have every right to feel the way they do and to question the decisions. Personally, I’m choosing not to. I just don’t see the point.

Regardless of what I think is the the right path to take, I’m not the one who gets to make that decision. Rather than expend energy fighting it or fretting over it, I’m going to accept the new plan for what it is and be hopeful. I’m going to look around for new opportunities arising from it where I can make a difference and seize them, or create my own. I’m going to savor everything about the last few shuttle missions, and remember the program fondly.

Overall I see that there is potentially a bright future out there for NASA and space exploration, it just looks different than what most of us expected. A lot different. If we can approach the new plan with open minds, accept that there are other valid ways of doing things and embrace them, we can make the most of the situation. If, instead, we consider it a tremendous loss and spend our time wallowing in it, then it will most likely manifest as one. For me, it was a simple choice.

Have you ever had the feeling of grieving even before a loss?  You see it coming and know there’s nothing you can do. Your senses are heightened to every little intricacy and you want to preserve all the details before it is too late. That is the way I feel about the Space Shuttle Program. I’ve worked at the Kennedy Space Center in various areas for roughly the past eight years. That makes me practically a newbie to most of my co-workers, but it feels like a long time to me. Long enough for KSC to feel like home. It is strange and sad to think that it will all be over in a matter of months.

Many people have never experienced anything like working at KSC. The center is sprawling; it has its own gas stations, banking, barber shops, and even a US Post Office on site. People out there speak a different language. When you first start working there, it takes several months before you have any idea what everyone is talking about. They speak in acronyms and in some cases the acronyms have become the words, because hardly anyone remembers what the letters stand for. KSC is similar to a small town, where gossip travels at speeds that far exceed a launching shuttle.

With the Space Shuttle Program, there is much more to it than the end of a contract. It is the end of an era. Most of us have become accustomed to spending the better part of our waking lives there and it is coming to a close. Everything we have come to know as so familiar will be gone, never to be seen again. This will be different than leaving a typical job. When we’re gone, we can never return to the site, never visit to see how things have changed, never set foot on the property again. It is not only a loss of the program for us, but a personal loss. We will no longer see the buildings we spent so much of our lives in, working at all odd hours of the day or night, often on weekends and holidays. The orbiters & ground support equipment we shed blood, sweat, and tears over will become distant memories only to be viewed in museums behind ropes and glass. We will seldom cross paths with many of the people who have become almost like family to us; the co-workers who will be forced to leave the area to find jobs. For us, it is a tremendous loss.

Even though I feel that I am ready to move on and pursue a career in space education and outreach, I can’t help feeling a bit melancholy about the end of the program. There are so many memories, good and bad. There is so much knowledge, expertise, and familiarity. Most of it would sound silly to anyone else, but the things I will miss include long days in the test cells working on welding jobs while listening to my co-workers tell stories from the early days of the program. I’ll miss riding in convoys to deliver Orbital Maneuvering System pods after our work is complete. I will even miss driving past the Gator Lake at the end of the road where we once saw forty-eight of the giant lizards laying up on the banks- as though it was an alligator parking lot.

There are other memories as well. Memories of working on Columbia and getting to sit in the commander’s seat the summer before she was lost. Standing in the shadow of the massive Vehicle Assembly Building to view the launch. Waiting outside with binoculars ready for her to return and the horror of the silence that should have been filled with two telltale sonic booms. Attending a surreal memorial service on the Shuttle Landing Facility runway on a grey day, in a light drizzle with the missing man formation roaring overhead. Examining the wreckage, in awe of the forces that acted upon it. These are moments I’ll always remember.

Now, as we near the end, I find myself looking around a little more, noticing and trying to take everything in. I’ll miss it all: the people, the hardware, the facilities, and the wildlife. It probably seems trite, but I don’t want to forget any of it, not even the little things. Not the chip in the floor at the bottom of the stairs in the test cell that I’ve always thought looks like a dragonfly, or the sound of thrusters when I test “fire” them on the bench, or the pain of AC motor valves jabbing me in the back as I squeeze into places never designed for human occupation. Okay, maybe I could forget that last one. Heh.

Whether you are a fan of the shuttle or not, you must admit that it is iconic. It is instantly recognizable, a beautiful machine and a work of art. It is tough to come to the realization that after this year, we’ll never again see a shuttle stack rolling out to the launch pad or leaving it in a hurry atop a billowing plume. For those of us who have lived and breathed it for years, please forgive us if it makes us a little sad to see the end. To us the shuttle is so much more than the sum of its parts and we’ll truly feel the sting of losing it and the community we’ve become a part of. It is going to be very hard to say goodbye.

Recently I attended a training class where we learned of the practice of throwing Failure Parties. These parties are held by companies to celebrate their failures. There is no pointing of fingers or placing of blame on anyone, just food, drinks, cake, and a healthy discussion about what went right and what went wrong that allows the company to move forward. In some cases, this type of analysis can even turn a failure into a success, such as with products like Post-It notes, which resulted from a failed attempt at an improved adhesive tape. Even when a flop can’t be salvaged, moving forward is key.

If you’re still wondering why a company would want to celebrate its failures, consider this: the vast majority of ventures attempted end up in failure. For every ten products introduced to the market, maybe one or two will be successful, if they’re lucky. So, if a company takes the opposite approach and “beats up” employees for these failures, you can imagine that the ideas quickly begin to dry up. Not just the failing ideas, but the successful ones too. Smart companies have found that by celebrating their failures they encourage the kinds of ideas that lead to success. While blaming employees for failures is bad and hinders creativity, there is another option that is even worse.

When the culture dictates that failure is not an option, does it mean that we fail any less? No, of course not. It encourages refusal to admit or accept failure, even when it is staring us in the face. Then, instead of being able to move forward, we are stuck living with the failure, doggedly suffering through rather than owning up to our shortcomings. This could apply to something as mundane as a new program for submitting travel expense reports or something as critical as the design of a new spacecraft. The examples are hypothetical, but the phenomenon is real. I’m often surprised at how quickly these failures are taken up as the new way of doing business and workarounds or modifications mushroom into existence. When faced with an obvious flop, so often the reaction is to jump to mitigate it, rather than to backtrack and do it right. While there is a cost to admitting failure and going back to the starting point, I think that often this cost is less than what it takes to modify a failed design or work around a failed process.

So, what am I getting at? Failure will always be a part of everything we do that is new or innovative. It has to be; it is an integral part of the creative process. If we could just learn to accept failures and even expect them, we could begin to recognize them earlier and make fewer and less costly mistakes. As Roger Von Oech said, “Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.” If we don’t shed the “failure is not an option” culture, we’re truly missing out on these opportunities.

“In fact, the Committee finds that no plan compatible with the FY 2010 budget profile permits human exploration to continue in any meaningful way.”

Wow. That is a lot to take in. It isn’t a big surprise, but to see it there in black and white somehow makes it seem that much more real.

Many people who read that report saw it as a death sentence for manned spaceflight. That is not necessarily the case. Given this information, it would seem to be imperative that NASA receive more funding. If that is not possible, are there any other options? If you can’t get more money, what is the logical thing to do?

Spend less money.

When faced with cutting costs in human spaceflight, the first instinct is to think that safety will be compromised, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it is possible to improve safety while drastically cutting costs.

It is all about tracing the “whys”.

Many of us grew up constantly asking why? why? why? about everything. I know I did. I probably drove my parents nuts with all the questions. Unfortunately, most of us seem to grow out of that curiosity. We settle into walking around with blinders on. In most government agencies, it is believed that things must be done a certain way. Often this is not the fastest, cheapest, most efficient, least wasteful, or even safest way to do them. Over the years as new processes are implemented, we often take nearly ridiculous measures to make the new processes work with the legacy ones.

For example: Recently, a co-worker was having trouble with a scanner. He was trying to scan in a scheduling document so it could be uploaded to a certain folder on the intranet and thus be visible to all interested parties. I asked him where he got the schedule in the first place. He told me that one of the schedulers prints it out for him every day. I was floored. “You mean it is an electronic document in the first place? She prints it out for you to scan back in? That’s crazy!” He said that he had to add his notes to it before scanning it in. I wasn’t impressed. He said that that was how they were all taught; that’s just the way they have to do it.

In this pervasive culture of just doing things the way we are taught- we don’t ask why. These are not just a few things, but rather thousands of them; some with small impacts and some that are large. The sum of these unasked “whys” are critical to the future of NASA. We must make an agency-wide effort to really ask ourselves why we do some of the things we do.

It isn’t enough to just ask why. We have to trace each “why” all the way to it’s origin.

Traced to their sources, I believe most of the answers we will arrive at could be categorized as such:

• We do it that way for valid reasons such as safety, feasibility, and cost
• We do it that way because it was a workaround for some other issue
• We do it that way because someone wanted it done that way
• We do it that way because it is the only way we know how
• We do it that way for a reason that is no longer applicable
• No one remembers why we do it that way

Of those that are necessary for a reason such as safety, cost, or feasibility; we might then ask if the reason is still valid.

• Have regulations or equipment been changed, or can they be?
• Is there new technology available that could improve safety, efficiency, and cost?

In many cases, the answers will be yes, and the door is open for improvement. Those that fall into the other categories hold the real potential. Many are things we are doing for no good reason at all, and can be cut out altogether. Some will need to be changed. Some changes or cuts will be easy, others will not. It will be downright difficult to make many of these changes because they are so deeply entrenched in our culture. This kind of effort will require commitment from all levels of the agency, beginning at the top. All centers will need to be in cooperation, and policies must be consolidated and streamlined across them all in order to be successful. We will need to be creative and innovative in our solutions- perhaps flexing some muscles we haven’t used in a while.

We can rise to the challenge.

I’m not saying that NASA or other government agencies are out there wasting taxpayers’ money. That’s not it at all. When a large organization has been around as long as NASA has, there is a natural tendency to experience a buildup of inefficiencies over the years. Every so often something drastic must be done to clear these non-value added requirements or processes out and forge ahead. Will it really make that much of a difference to the bottom line? Will it enable us to continue with human spaceflight in a meaningful way without an increase in budget?

Don’t we owe it to ourselves and our country to give it a shot?

There is a recent movement within NASA to be open and transparent and practice inclusion with our space program, but how do we accomplish that? There are many schools of thought, but my personal take on it is that inclusion isn’t just about giving tours of space centers and holding events (though these are much appreciated). It is also about giving people a voice and making them feel like they share a role in the mission. I’m no expert, but my thought was that if we want people to feel included, maybe we should let them tell us what they think.

This past Thursday I attended the Review of Human Spaceflight Plans Committee’s public meeting in Cocoa Beach, FL. This is the committee also known as the Augustine Committee that was chartered by the president to figure out which direction our space program should go. One of the topics – I believe it was brought up by the group’s chair, Norm Augustine- was that public outreach needed to reach beyond just those who already “drank the Kool-Aid” (meaning those who are already interested in and supportive of NASA’s mission). His point was that more people need to be reached. In thinking about it, though- maybe further engaging the sector of the public that already “drank the Kool-Aid” is the best way to reach more people. These people in turn, can become ambassadors if they are given more encouragement and resources to get others involved. This could be very powerful.

Along these lines, the Space Tweep Society is a group that was created as a way to unite Twittering space enthusiasts of every background, both inside and outside of the space industry. The society is only a small step in public outreach, but it was instantly well received, which would seem to indicate that there was a need for it. The group’s multi-author blog is a place where members can publish their thoughts about space exploration, astronomy, or any other aspect of space that they’d like to discuss- and start a dialog with the other members. The blog is only about six weeks old, and the posts have been excellent. In the last week we moved it to a new platform in order to allow us to add more authors and features such as chat, forums, and Twitter integration. The new site is located at http://spacetweepsociety.org. I hope you’ll stop by and check it out. You might find yourself wanting to hang around for a while…