A lot of thought and discussion has occurred lately concerning how to improve our internal communications in NASA. Here at JSC, this discussion has culminated with the release of the 20 Year Vision proposal. I am both honored and fortunate to have met with some of the people who made it happen and look forward to working with them on the implementation of those ideas.

With that in mind, I think that some of my professional experiences elsewhere can be brought to bear on this topic. In between undergrad and grad school, I worked in the intelligence community (IC) for a few years as a missile analyst. If you think the NASA community is results-oriented, the IC takes it to a whole new level.

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Yesterday, I had a very interesting and thought-provoking discussion about the future of JSC and how we’re going to get there.  (I’m trying to be careful about name-dropping, so as to keep the focus here on the ideas more so than personalities.)  One of the subjects we broached was how JSC is famous for its mission operations work, but that a lot of the good engineering work we’re doing here is going unnoticed by the public-at-large.  I’ll actually be meeting with someone tomorrow who is heading up the Engineering Directorate’s efforts to share their innovations both internally and externally.  However, that effort is inexorably tied to the larger question of what our focus should be as an organization.  That central question that has preoccupied my thoughts lately.

Successful organizations tend to be those that focus on a particular area and do that extremely well, as I was reminded yesterday.  In our case here at JSC, that would clearly be mission operations and support.  If that is going to be our focus, then we might need to be prepared to offload projects in the same vein as the now-defunct X-38 to other NASA centers and stay centered on our area of excellence.  When asked where I see JSC being in 20 years, I said that I would like to see JSC essentially serving as the staging area for lunar outpost and Mars sortie missions and support.  That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for “the other stuff,” especially in an era where we must be prepared to expect static budgets.  However, I also believe that we must remember that operations are not an end unto themselves.  As the Global Exploration Architecture clearly shows, we must have achievable, relevant scientific goals to be working towards.  Our operations must be the means to accomplishing specific ends in science and exploration.

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The Houston Chronicle’s science writer - Eric Berger, a supporter of the Gen Y outreach efforts - recently posted to his blog the answers Dr. Griffin gave him to questions about the “Gen-Y problem.”

http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2008/03/nasa_chief_addr_1.html

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