Apr 23
I posted this today on a new internal blog at Goddard and thought that you all might be interested…
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Apr 17
This blog is not meant to be exclusively about Generation Y. If you read the “About” section, it doesn’t mention Generation Y. Yet, probably mostly because of all the interest in the Gen Y presentation, it seems that most of the discussions on here have tracked back to Gen Y in some way.
I point this out because I don’t write for this blog because I’m part of Gen Y (which I am) or because I only want to discuss Gen Y topics (which I don’t). Yet some of the discussions have surprised me, and it seemed to be an appropriate time for me to share what I’m up to at NASA.
Apr 08
I woke up at 3:00 am this morning and couldn’t sleep. So I caught up on a couple of online videos I’d been meaning to watch instead.
The first was Sunday’s 60 Minutes segment entitled “The Next Giant Leap for Mankind.” I heard several months ago that they were at Goddard filming because they were doing a segment on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Naturally, I was pretty excited, as I thought it would be cool to see “my” mission on display for the world.
Mar 30
On April 12th, 1961, some Russian dude named Yuri became the first man in the history of the world to go into space.
47 years later, haven’t we moved on? Isn’t this old news? Why are we still celebrating? Does this explain 120 parties in 40 countries on 7 continents around the world?
Mar 22
I have a friend who was recently identified as a NASA Future Leader in some publication that is supposed to be arriving in my mailbox soon. I’m horrified… the agency should be ashamed that it is trying to make such an allegation!
Why am I so upset?
Mar 22
I was in the Space Technology-5 (ST5) Mission Operations Center (MOC) at Goddard Space Flight Center. I’d been preparing for that day for two years, ever since we found out that someone was crazy enough to actually pay to launch this mission after all. Although I had other roles, my primary responsibility had been to develop the software tools that we would use to maneuver the three spacecraft into particular formations over the 90 day mission.
Of course, what you don’t know is that ST5 had always been the mission where if something could go wrong, it would. Launch day was no different in that regard. The state vector that we received indicated that our initial formation was all screwed up: the spacecraft were in the wrong order, were separating more quickly than expected, and the rocket body was in the middle of it all! The sun sensors were telling us that ST5 had managed to discover a second sun! Oh, and all the tracking data were either in an unexpected format or completely unusable, and radar passes couldn’t distinguish one spacecraft from another!
Mar 13
My name is Rivers Lamb. Yes, that’s an unusual name. No, my parents weren’t hippies, or at least they won’t admit to it. You can imagine that almost every time I meet someone, I’m asked about it. (answer: I’m named after my grandfather)
One time many years ago, I had a co-worker tell me that s/he thought the only reason I was hired was because someone must’ve seen my resume and my name and assumed that I was Native American. At the time, we had a good laugh over how white I really am.
Mar 10
So I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can improve and promote communication at NASA, both internally and externally. Well, ok, I’m not necessarily putting hours of thought into it, but I’m at least letting the thoughts meander around a little bit.
I thought that maybe I’d do a little research - you know, find some other huge government organization that stretches across the country, one that works on horribly complex technical projects while having an amazing reputation for fostering collaboration and teamwork… oh wait, does such a thing exist?
Feb 29
all I needed to know I learned in high school
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Something happened today that I just really want to share, and I don’t know of a better place to share it…
We have a high school intern doing some analysis. I haven’t been working with him directly until yesterday, when I came across some new testing that I didn’t have time to do myself. I’m rushing through trying to teach him how to do something because I need to leave for a meeting, trying to make sure that I’m dumping whatever knowledge I have that he’ll need to do the work while I’m in the meeting.
Feb 23
It happened in the San Jose Airport.
I had arrived a few hours early, a victim of my desire to carpool and to save a few bucks on transportation. Somewhere between the Burger King hash browns and Starbucks hot chocolate, everything made sense.
I was beginning my trip back to the East Coast after spending the week at the Next Generation Exploration Conference at Ames Research Center. I was on the verge of finishing “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini. I was in pain, and - not to give anything away here - my heart was breaking over the story of a world gone wrong but where yet somehow, love and courage persisted amongst the ruin and the lives destroyed in terrible, excruciating ways. It was all I could do to hide my tears from my fellow airport patrons.
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