"After the Storm" by Raymond Cassel, 1st place 2009 NSS Art contest

The first Yuri’s Night at NASA Ames Research Center in 2007 was an amazing experience for numerous reasons. Most relevant to this discussion, is that it brought together the Mission Support organizations to do something truly new and innovative at NASA. These guys are amazing – and they can do anything! They understand the facilities, power generators, roads, traffic flow, structures, sound, electricity capacity, safety requirements, machine shops, rules to bend, and rules to not bend. That day/night, we doubled NASA Ames’ normal capacity of 2500 people. In 2008, it was quadrupled.

It takes 2.5 people to operate the International Space Station (ISS), and each person above this makes it possible to perform experiments and other additional construction tasks. A similar thing is true within NASA – it takes quite a bit of effort to run a NASA center and be productive in 70-year-old facilities, complying with all the environmental and safety procedures bestowed from 50 years of processes and regulations. But with these facilities, we can and do, do amazing things.

We may take for granted the amount of infrastructure that is around us to allow us to live and be productive. Think about the infrastructure you need when you are at a NASA Center. Some centers have their own power generators and distribution plants, but there is running water, sewage, large auditoriums for gatherings, heating and air conditioning, Internet, roads, places to eat, places to work. There is NASA security, police service, emergency response, and medical treatment. This is a place of work, but it is also a community and at times acts like a little city.

Kaylee the Mechanic onboard Serenety in television show FireFly

NASA is an aeronautics and space agency, and part of our long-term commitment is to become a multi-planetary species. Government will now invest in creating an industry to support this commitment, while continuing to push the boundaries of knowledge and research to allow colonies/settlements to emerge on other heavenly bodies and space stations. I can imagine a colony on the moon or Mars where there would be 2500 people working productively together, much like the size of NASA Ames. We’ll need the same things in place, and more. We will need electricians, plumbers, technicians, medics, and cooks, in addition to managers, technologists and scientists. In short, our Mission Support teams are probably the first people you’d want to take to space with you.

Perhaps under Dr. Whitlow’s new organization, we can begin to think of Mission Support as more integrated with space missions, and begin to see our NASA Centers through the lens of colonies. We can do some science around the notion of connected cities, put in sensors to measure energy usage, work flow, productivity and happiness. We can track how people use the facilities and feed that back into the planning cycle. All of these things will be necessary when living at a colony on another planet, and it is something that NASA can research with our own workforce and facilities. These studies can feed into current decisions made for our facilities, but also explore requirements for future habitats and colonies.

Ever since I started at NASA, my colleagues and I have lamented how little information is available via our agency-wide employee directory. The information is practical– email, phone, employer, etc.– but we often remark how great it would be if we could extend that information with more detailed, timely, and even personal content. Information about who you are, what you work on, tags and skills, or side projects, would help us connect in more meaningful ways. It would let us not just find people we already know about, but search for people based on specific properties, and learn more about colleagues we are collaborating with.

Last month, spurred into action by Sunlight Labs’ Great American Hackathon, we wanted to show that transparency isn’t just something the public consumes from government, it’s something the government provides, too. After all, “the government” is just you and me, right?

The three pillars of the Open Government Directive (as discussed here previously) are transparency, participation, and collaboration. Collaboration (or lack thereof) is something that directly affects our ability to do our jobs every day.

As a result, Nick, Robbie and I are happy to announce the availability of people.openNASA. people is a new interface for finding and learning about your colleagues and collaborators at NASA. It is an extension to the x500 system currently available at people.nasa.gov. people.openNASA automatically includes all the information provided by x500, and exposes a number of additional fields which you can fill out to tell people more about yourself and your projects (all fields are optional).

We think people is cool because it builds a superset of the existing, public, NASA contact directory. Almost anyone you can find with people.nasa.gov, you can find with this new interface. Anyone with a NASA email address can edit their own profile (after validating their identity via email). You can add a bio, details and links about your main project, social media links, previous and side projects, and of course tags and skills. You can also customize your primary name, email and phone number. No more phone calls to your old office!

And finally, we’re using a service called Gravatar to pull in a profile picture associated with your NASA email address. Once you set a gravatar, not only will it show up in people, it will show up anytime you use your NASA email on a Gravatar-enabled service online to comment or post. It’s great to put a face with a name. And if you’re not comfortable with that, again, all these field are optional.

Right now you can search by name, tag, or skills, and we’ll be adding new features as you request them on our feedback page. Please try searching for yourself, and customizing your profile. We’re looking for suggestions, so let us know what you think!

In June 2009, the first ever Crisis Camp barcamp was held in Washington, DC. During one of the opening sessions an industry panel including representatives from Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! agreed that some matters supersede competitive concerns. As a result Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! agreed to cooperate in order to mobilize developer communities to create interoperable solutions/code that will have real impact in the field. It took the World Bank to make this partnership happen and it quickly grew to include us, NASA.

Since its inception, NASA has demonstrated an unparalleled ability to tackle massively complex and ambitious goals to forward the human endeavor. As a result of its decades long development of technology in robotics, intelligent systems, satellites, human spaceflight and data analysis, visualization and modeling, NASA has a powerful and intelligent network of scientists and engineers.

NASA has 15 spacecraft currently orbiting the Earth monitoring the dynamic Earth environment. With approximately ~4TB of new Earth Science data available each day, NASA’s scientists and engineers are at the forefront of understanding our global system. This data, together with 40 years of archived data, is a global resource for the development and reconstruction community. NASA is supporting Random Hacks (RHoK) to create a developer community to enhance and enable development and reconstruction efforts to share information, have access to timely data, and to collaborate publicly to solve some of the toughest social and environmental challenges today.

Hacking for Humanity

This is the first of a series of Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) events. The aim is to build a global community of developers and subject matter experts to work on distater relief, and potentially grow to development and reconstruction issues.

Artist conception of SAC-C

Historically, space has created a unique environment for scientific and technical collaboration outside the realms of political ideologies to pursue aims of international peace and stability.  While there has been a strong element of national competition associated with space activities, the nature of science inherently provides room for research and tangible benefits which transcend borders.  Some notable examples are the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975 (Russia), the progression from Space Station Freedom to the International Space Station (Russia) or the retirement of the Argentina’s Condor II Medium Range Ballistic Missile (resulted in the establishment of Argentina National Commission on Space Activities – CONAE – and an agreement on the Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas – SAC – series of satellites with NASA cooperation).

“Peaceful engagement with potential adversaries frequently makes them long-term partners in pursuit of the common goal of international peace and stability.” — Charles Bolden STATEMENT BEFORE THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND SPACE June 7, 2006

NASA has been a vehicle for transitioning U.S. adversaries to partners and advanced military technology toward peaceful purposes.  NASA can continue this role, but can also provide solutions to unique 21st century challenges.  Today, international collaboration is shifting toward partnerships based on mutual respect and benefit, rather than one actor having a greater influence over the other.  From my experience at NASA, successful partnerships are fostered not forced.  The best partnerships occur when there is already an existing relationship with subject matter experts at the working level.  When the political environment is ripe for a partnership, you can bring greater resources and visibility to formalize and enhance the partnership.  Too often potential partnerships become overly complicated, and the more you minimize the actors, dependencies on external events, and avoid scope creep, the better.  Finally, successful partnerships are more likely when there is a clear goal with implementable short-term wins and an overall work package that can be achieved within the next 24 months (i.e. within the U.S. political time horizon).

Partnership Tenants
•    Mutual respect, mutual benefit
•    Existing relationship with subject matter experts
•    Correct political timing
•    KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
•    Clear goal, implementable, and short time-frame for success

International Space Station Partners

Today, the majority of NASA’s collaborations globally can roughly be placed in two categories: human and scientific.  Human space-flight collaborations offer unique constraints toward adopting the partnership tenants outlined above, but have had successful collaborations with numerous developed nations.  On the science-side of the house, this is a different story. Rarely will you find a Science Mission Directorate (SMD) mission with an all U.S. science team and often some Americans are scientific diasporas from other nations.  Additionally, many countries allow usage of ground stations for mission operations, provide in-kind support, and like NASA, offer secondary payload opportunities for additional instruments.

An investigation of NASA’s international agreements, including informal collaborations, can greatly catalyze effective partnerships wanted by the Obama Administration. I would like to underscore informal collaboration: many of NASA’s scientific and technical workforce have very good working relations with their peers in other countries and are not part of existing international agreements.  By tapping into NASA’s workforce, collaborations can turn to international partnerships and help achieve Obama goals of promoting international scientific and technical literacy, capacity building, development and trade, ultimately leading to education and innovation.  The areas of Earth science applications and small spacecraft projects are particularly attractive as these areas have a relatively low barrier to entry, aren’t on NASA’s critical path and have the capacity to be completed in a relatively short time period.  Furthermore, this would enable NASA partnerships with a greater number of developing and transitioning countries.

While the United States develops plans to implement President Obama’s goals, NASA is uniquely positioned to join the Department of State and the Executive Office of the President to take an international leadership role through scientific partnerships. Education and innovation in science and technology are going to be the new currency of international relations.

Internal
•    Interactive x500
•    Side Project App
•    Open Innovation Fund
•    Co-working / Coffee Shop Environment
•    QuickSat
•    Participatory Exploration as a Level 1 requirement
•    Reward Cost Underuns

External
•    Prizes
•    NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) Continuous Release Authority
•    NASA Application Programming Interface (API)
•    NASA Advanced Research Projects Agency (NARPA )/ ARPA-N / NIAC++
•    Red Planet Capital
•    X Class Missions + Launch initiative
•    COTS-Alphabet

Further below is a paragraph describing each idea.  I welcome and encourage your comments!

Interactive x500

NASA calls it x500, but it really is LDAP.  This is the closest thing we have to a profile directory.  NASA is working on deploying Microsoft SharePoint at a number of centers, and perhaps Agency-wide, but really, we just need some sort of an employee directory that works.  It would be nice to have query on any field (see Langley’s NASA Phone for a Mac), workable on a mobile platform, click the phone number to call it, see a picture of your colleague, and with a simple little Google Maps mash-up to find your colleague.  Is this open innovation?  No, but it is a perfect example of a technology which would enable greater openness and transparency, giving employees more substantial opportunities to connect.  Also, if we have a platform like this, we can add additional information as people use it (such as which projects they previously worked on, published papers, current projects, side projects, what they did & learned last week, what they will do next week, etc.).

Side Project App

Google calls it “20%-time.”  NASA people call it “Google-time.”  This concept allows an employee to work one day a week on whatever they are passionate about, that is also in-line with the company’s/organization’s goals.  Anecdotally, many of Google’s new products get incubated internally from this policy. In practice, many salaried employees at Google end up working more than 40 hours a week, much like the NASA workforce (so, don’t worry about misappropriation of funds). Let’s work with our Union representatives to ensure that such a platform will be optional. But we need a web platform for our “idea” people to communicate concepts, and an environment for our “doer” people to join new projects and contribute solutions.  Make it social: allow people to comment, endorse, and follow side projects.  Link this to the interactive x500 showing with projects you work on, endorse, and follow.  You want innovation?  Create the environment and listen to your workforce.

Open Innovation Fund

If you have an Interactive x500 + Side Project capability, put in a new field for what people would do for $10K, $50K, or $200K.  That is it.  If you have money that needs to be obligated at the end of the fiscal year, search through side projects of interest to your funding profile and support it.  If you have a Center Investment Account and want to see what your workforce is really working on and want to send them a message that you are watching, listening, and supporting, then fund them.  If you are at NASA HQ and want an Open Innovation Fund, then these are the people you would fund.  You take the culture of linearly reporting and hording information out of the equation that could flatten the Agency and reward people for being in action.

Co-working / Coffee Shop Environment

Don’t discount the face-to-face encounters.  I don’t know how many collaborations were started by a simple, informal meet-up in the cafeteria.  Let’s create a physical space at our respective centers that has space for people to plug in and work.  Simple, and it works.  It also keeps your employees on-base and caffeinated.

QuickSat Mission

This is for the spacecraft geek in me.  When you look at an iPhone, I see a spacecraft.  Sure it is only one degree of freedom (with it vibrate mode) and doesn’t have solar panels, but it is a spacecraft with a radio, CPU, payload (camera), power control system, accelerometer, etc.  Okay, not quite, but you get the picture.  Research & Development (R&D) has changed over the last half century in the U.S., and many technologies that NASA has enabled (i.e., the transistor) have turned into a high-tech industry.  So, let’s use this technology that has been developed for other purposes for the space program.

Give 9 people, 9 months and $900K in scrum management style and let them go.  Allow them to make mistakes and learn from it.  Allow our (young) engineers to build something from start to finish, allow our (young) scientists to play the role of being a Principal Investigator (PI), allow your (young) business manager/mission support personnel to be part of this team to get things through procurement and legal. Allow them to build their own spacecraft (which fits in the ESPA envelope) from start to finish in 9 months.  After their 9-month rotation, the spacecraft gets put on the shelf, the team goes back to their previous job and the next crew comes in and starts over with their own design.  The myth is real that the barrier to entry to space is access, but it is a myth.  Build some spacecraft wisely and a flight opportunity will come.  But regardless, if the purpose of such an initiative is to train people, then the product is icing.

Participatory Exploration as a Level 1 requirement

Each good program has ~ 6 top level requirements (Level 1 Requirements) which derives all other requirements.  In a program there is traceability from each activity and parameter to its host requirement all the way up the line to a Level 1 requirement.  This waterfall approach works, and makes sense for enormous engineering efforts.  Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) is typically a percentage of the program’s budget and isn’t part of the requirement process. The Agency is making great strides within the E/PO and ‘special project’ community to have participatory exploration, but if we are able to get it into programs, then we should start it early. The earlier in a program that you allow the American Public, one of NASA’s key stakeholders, to become part of the mission, the easier and more rewarding (for both the participant and NASA) this collaboration becomes. One little tweak in a requirement early in a program could open up a new realm of public participation.

Reward Cost Underuns

It sounds crazy, I know, but seriously.  Let’s allow all programs to keep half of what they don’t spend (assuming they’re successful), and allow the program to invest in discretionary projects at the team’s discretion (also within the funding profile).

Prizes

I misspoke in my e-mail a couple weeks ago where I said that Participatory Exploration was the main thing NASA is doing on open innovation.  We have Centennial Challenges.  We cannot talk about open innovation at NASA without mentioning Centennial Challenges.  So, let’s fund Centennial Challenges for real.  Recall that the DARPA grand challenge was $1M and took more than ~$6M to produce.  For Centennial Challenges, NASA puts up the purse and our Allied Organizations run the competition with NASA endorsement (ie, without NASA money).  It is absolutely mind boggling how effective Centennial Challenges have been with their funding level.  So, again, let’s fund it for real.  Oh, and then open up ideas from the public to submit potential challenges, then write the project openly for others to contribute in this extremely time consuming task.  This is a lot harder than it sounds (ask the X-Prize), but it is a problem that can be solved.  Oh, and let’s also expand it to Software prizes to (how about a NASA Hack Day, similar to Yahoo!’s Hack Day?)

NOSA Continuous Release Authority

The NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) is an excellent process to have software written for NASA to be released open source.   The true value of open source software isn’t in only allowing others to see your source code, but to create an environment for interested developers to assist in the enhancement of the software.  Also, an active community begets an active community, so you cannot just throw software over the fence; you need a community manager and funded NASA people to be developing the software.  Again, this means that it isn’t released when it is finished; it is developed under a continuous release authority in the open.

NASA API

We have data and tones of it.  We have policies to archive our data and the ability for people to retrieve it and use it.  The Data Archive Centers (or DACs) are in a variety of databases throughout the country and accessible via different processes and websites, which make it extremely difficult to (a) know that it is there (b) now where ‘there’ is and (c) know how to get it.  Okay, but then once they get it, the data is in a variety of formats and in some cases, in its raw form.  This makes it difficult for non-specialists to use the information, let alone non-scientists.  A NASA Application Programming Interface (API) will allow NASA to host the data, but allow third parties to use the data for other purposes.  This is no small undertaking, and the reward is uncertain, but I believe is one of the best ways of getting space into the public (with unforeseen mash-ups), allowing innovative data analysis tools to be developed, and fostering citizen science to grow.

NARPA / ARPA-N / NIAC++

Broadly speaking, for the last three decades NASA has changed its R&D strategy every 18 months.  That isn’t long-term, nor innovative!  What ends up happening, is that old ideas get repackaged, re-pitched, and partially funded.  We recycle mission concepts and technology development.  On the heels of President Obama’s National Academy of Science speech on Monday and the Stimulus package, let’s get a sizable chunk of discretionary money to work on high-risk, high-return technologies.  We currently have Research Opportunities and Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES), Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP), and IPP Seed Fund, but this is far from an Agency-wide investment into future enabling technologies.  We did have NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIACS), but that was cancelled in the last couple of years.  These strategies  are more short-term, program enabling technologies.  But follow the ARPA-E model and make it a small, separate organization to avoid the recycling of projects and personal relationships.

Red Planet Capital

NASA was very close to implementing our version of In-Q-Tel called Red Planet Capital. This is a venture capital firm seeded by NASA dollars to invest in companies (presumably in technology companies) which has a benefit to NASA.  Now, not to talk out of both sides of my mouth, but it is time to dust that project off again!

X Class Missions + Launch Initiative

A new class of missions is being developed in the Science Mission Directorate (or SMD, which as over 90% of NASA spacecraft).  Venture Class Missions are for the Earth Science Directorate, but it warrants a relook at how we institute missions.  We have PI-led missions and strategic missions.  Personally, I am extremely impressed with the PI-led mission process, however the process should be commensurate with the particular mission type.  For instance, missions shouldn’t have to spend the same amount of time getting through Phase A (Concept Study) as it does to go from Phase B through Phase D (Detailed Design, Fabrication, Testing, Launch, and Check-out).  The longer the entire mission life-time is, the more likely you will have different people working on different elements of the project requiring much more documentation and review.  The longer the program and more documentation and review required, the more people you have on the program.  Long + More People = Expensive.  Since it is expensive and we have a more or less constant top line budget, then you want to make sure you are choosing the correct mission, and take a long time to get through Phase A.  Expensive + More Time = Expensive ++.  Because it is very expensive, you don’t want it to be successful and will buy down risk.  Low Risk + Expensive ++  = Few Missions.

So, let’s do a PI-led mission that has a cost cap of $50M, spend two-months (one month working, one month review) in Phase A and 20 months to on-board check out.  Phase new missions to be started each month and bulk-buy small launch vehicles to stimulate a production line within industry.  Each mission happens quickly (within a congressional election cycle and attention span of the public) and assuming it would cost NASA $50M for the mission + $5M for NASA management, reviews and support (i.e. The Program Office + independent assessment) + $20M for a launch vehicle, this is a $900M venture each year.  But then again, two years = 24 missions.  Will you get ground-breaking science?  Maybe.  Will you stimulate an industry, workforce, and ingenuity?  Yes.

COTS-Alphabet

The Commercial Orbital Transportation Service (COTS) mechanism to have NASA buy services is excellent and should be propagated.  Let’s buy more services: Astronaut transport, lunar cargo transport, lunar communications, etc.  The COTS selection process is hard to beat, so I would use that as a point of departure.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Global Development Commons convened a panel on Tuesday in Washington DC about Open Innovation in Government.  Fortunately, the Global Development Commons streamed it live via www.ustream.com and you can see it archived here.

Doug Comstock, the Chief of the Innovative Partnership Program at NASA, was on the panel, along with a representative from the Department of State, USAID and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).  Dr. Beth Noveck, now at OSTP, clearly articulated that things are changing in government.  As she put it, we are at the beginning of a new era applying available technologies to make public policy in better and more effective ways.  From her previous projects you can see she has been experimenting with different approaches and technologies to bring about openness and collaboration.

The panelists from government agencies spoke of projects that people are doing within their organization to innovate and become more transparent, participatory and collaborative. NASA was shown to be extremely innovative within our government statutes, and in some cases working with legislators to get permission.  We should be quite proud of the infrastructure we have in place to bring technology into NASA and shift technology out of NASA.  We have the COTS program, Centennial Challenges (prizes), SeedFund, SBIR, STTR, Innovation Ambassadors, and have representatives at each of NASA’s 10 field Centers across the country.

NASA has done an excellent job of innovating, however in my opinion, we have not yet embraced ‘open innovation.’ The closest we have to this is the ‘participatory exploration’ meme propagated and embraced by NASA’s Education and Public Outreach activities, but we have yet to penetrate our internal governance and daily activities.  The 2007 Participatory Exploration Summit sponsored by Doug’s IPP Office, the Space Operations Mission Directorate, and the National Space Society is full of considerations for NASA, some of which are occurring today.  However, there are elements of our work environment and cultural anchors from our past successes and failures, which pose a challenge toward progression.

Doug alluded to a direction forward.  He stated that we can innovate on the margins without placing the innovative ventures on critical path, but instead use these novel approaches to mitigate main-line activities (the COTS program, for example).  Additionally, Doug spoke of participatory exploration (see Nick’s Presentation and an informal Transition Paper) and examples that have occurred at the project level (such as Stardust@Home, Clickworkers, DashLink) that embodies transparency, participation, and collaboration.

Open Innovation is a shift in world-view that embraces a posture of learning.  This is creating a culture of listening and learning, overcoming the “culture of clearance”, as stated by Dr. Jeremy Curtin from the Department of State, and “bring the fearlessness of failure into government” as articulated by Beth Noveck. I believe this means to create the environment for teams to innovate, as true innovation is met with many challenges.  If you stop at one challenge, you fail, but if you create the environment for “failure” you never actually fail.  You learn from your experiences and build the trusting, resilient team to mitigate challenges, create opportunities, and become successful.

Bring the fearlessness of failure into government.
–Dr. Beth Noveck, OSTP

Adopting a learning-by-doing mentality rather than and a top-down, requirements driven, waterfall approach to innovation is quite a change in how we work at NASA.  Shifting to a culture of action, collaboration, and transparency will be a challenge, as any ‘shift’ or ‘change’ is an alternation of business-as-usual and is resisted by some, especially if the shift is a short-term or perceived weakening of their position.

True open innovation is more about adopting new processes and practices rather than technology.  This starts with a trust and belief in the experience and expertise of others outside your trusted circle.  This means people in the other building, or in the other code, center or government agency.  This even means the “public.” To authentically listen means that you are embracing the fact that we don’t have all the answers (remember the NASA slogan, “… as only NASA can”).  Additionally, when people take the time to engage and talk, this should be met with collaboration and as necessary, an alteration of the path forward.

Transparency is the first step in creating participation and collaboration.  The days of making policy behind closed doors with a small group of experts are gone.  As Beth Noveck boldly stated, this is “bringing democracy into the 21st century.”

Participatory Exploration Policy Recommendations for National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Participatory exploration was first introduced in 2007 at the NASA Participatory Exploration Summit at Ames Research Center and was prioritized into the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 (H.R. 6063), highlighting its necessity to NASA’s continued public relevance in the 21st century. We have written a paper for NASA senior management that discusses the role of “participatory exploration” as a way of “aggregating and leveraging people’s contributions in ways that are useful to other people” which can be applied to NASA programs and projects to engage the American public in the exploration experience and to identify opportunities for the direct involvement of the public, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and international partners.  The paper includes specific recommendations which we have summarized below.  We’ve posted the paper on openNASA for your consideration and encourage you to share your thoughts on Participatory Exploration as well. Please share your thoughts via the comments below or on if you have specific ideas or recommendations, via the ideas forum.

Link to Executive Summary

Link to Full Paper

Eliminate the obstacles to working with the public

–      Encourage open-source adoption

–      Leverage the re-competition of NASA’s website

I recall seeing historic television clips of Apollo astronauts in parades rolling through the streets in convertibles. These were heroes accomplishing extraordinary tasks. While I was not involved in this program, it seems to have been a celebration of feats performed and needed no script. The voice of the Apollo program was not the NASA spokesperson, it was Walter Cronkite. NASA focused on achieving its mandate and let everyone else do the talking.

If recent history is an indication of the future, NASA’s budget will not change drastically. NASA must operate to fulfill its executive goals within its congressional mandate; however, it is up to NASA employees how to do so. From conversations I have had with other NASA employees, there used to be more trust and many more opportunities for employees to innovate, work on hardware, and conduct experiments. I look around the agency today, and many of us are working on proposals and managing contractors rather than bending metal, conducting experiments and learning.

We have $17 Billion budget; let’s use it wisely! Let us encourage our employees to be in action with their innovative ideas and projects. Let’s be an engineering agency, and internally attract the workforce which will create the vehicles, experiments, and technologies that will propel humanity to become a space faring civilization. Let’s focus on market failures within the space sector and have the government invest in areas which enable development.

Let’s speak strategically with our actions, and focus on output.

To contribute, please join the brainstorming.

“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.”

These examples articulate the power of context within one’s external environment and the sliding scale of socially acceptable behavior. But it isn’t just social behavior, it is behavior in general. Systems thinking states:

“The behavior of a system is a function of its structure.”

There are many ways forward to try to create a desirable behavior and/or external environment. A systems thinker can take a highly complex system and analyze the relationships between its constituent variables to gain increased understanding on which variable to alter. But I also attest that you can take the power of context to slowly shift the scale of socially acceptable behavior.

Science, Sustainability, and Settlement

If NASA is evolving into an agency serious about bringing humanity sustainably into the cosmos, there are some very serious challenges to create this future over the coming decades. While NASA leadership should determine an approach from the high-level, civil society should bring this meme into the public consciousness, and internal NASA should begin to change its external environment so this may become a reality.

From Space to Safety to Settlement?

Let’s start with the notebook. It is a little thing in the external environment which can be used as a barometer for when the NASA employee earned their chops and rose up through the ranks. If you witness an employee with the Government Green notebook from the 60s, then it is either a scientist who went to grad school during Apollo, someone dreaming of the Apollo times and wishing they were there, or someone that was part of the Apollo program. But the message is the same: Apollo Redux.

Another favorite of mine are the middle managers who went through Franklin Planner mandatory training in the 80s and 90s. They sure are organized taking notes in pencil and highlighting actions.

But what about me? I have my laptop out in all meetings. But sometimes do have a notepad for lists, actions, drawings, sketches, etc.

So, in the 21st Century, what type of notebook should we use? Can it embody the image of Sustainable Settlement? Should it have watermarks on each page for a twitter or a blog post? Should there be quotes at the bottom of each page from prominent historians which embody the image? What type of structure should we put down on the notebook to encourage the behavior we are looking for?

It is the little things that matter; the little things can create the slight possibility for a desired future. Plus, if it is cool enough, then it can get into the geek culture then become trendy.