Cross-posted at Cosmo.Sphere
One of the advantages of working in the ISS National Laboratory Office is that I get to support projects that actually fly in space. This morning, I got to sit with my Department of Defense counterparts on-console while astronaut Mike Barratt operated the SPHERES experiment.
So an hour ago, I showed up at the ISS Mission Evaluation Room to watch the shuttle launch. Last night, a friend of mine was asking me if I was going to get up at 6 AM to watch the launch. I wasn’t that enthusiastic about doing it, but realized that I had to option to go into my console in the MER and not only watch it on a nice big flat screen but I could also hear the other voice loops beyond PAO and CAPCOM if I watched it in the MER and used my headset.
So for quite some time now I have seen the Lunar Lander as the project of choice that I see myself working on in my career in the mid-term. I have been getting familiar with the Constellation architecture since ESAS was released, and I am hitting the workforce at the Altair sweet spot. Plus, working at Boeing, Orion is out. Ares rockets don’t really get my blood going as much as the lander either.
Sometime during fall of last year, I was perusing the AIAA library and I came upon a paper that some Boeing guys had published in conjunction with the NASA Altair Broad Area Announcement (BAA) regarding the trade space for the physical configuration of the Altair vehicle. There were half a dozen Boeing authors, and one of them happened to be in Houston.
Over the past few weeks here at OpenNASA (and a few at NASAWatch), there have been a few debates about “Gen Y/Net Gen/Next Gen/Gen Next” wanting to be included more in how individual NASA centers (and NASA as a whole) are run. At the very least, they (really “we” since I’m included in Gen Y, if only by age) would like a seat at the table, as it were, and a voice to speak with. Whether or not mid - high level NASA managers actually listen to said voice is something else to be discussed at another time, but for the time being it looks like they are at least paying attention.
I bring this issue up for a few reasons:
Read more
In the comment section of the “Participatory Exploration” post, a few comments referred to employment opportunities at NASA. I started to respond to the comments, but then it turned into something much longer than comment worthy, so I’ll just post my comment here as a blog post. Here are few thoughts in response to career opportunities at NASA.
This is the first page you reach when you visit the nasa.gov website and look for information about working at NASA. If you go to nasa.gov and click “About NASA”, and then click “Careers@NASA” it will take you to what I’m talking about. The text here talks about how NASA is more than astronauts - and gives a list of folks who work within NASA including: scientists, engineers, computer programmers, personnel specialists, accountants, writers, maintenance workers. This is absolutely true and the actual list is much longer. There are people from all walks of life and backgrounds at NASA. So to address your question Brian, we absolutey need folks like you to give us a new and fresh persepective. Your background at NOAA and education as a geoscientist is invaluable. This is evidenced by none other than Justin, who was a former intel officer, and is now very active in the NASA community making huge contributions to what we do.
These are the slides from my talk at SEDS SpaceVision this weekend in College Station. I don’t have talking points yet, but when/if I do, I’ll post them here as well - I just wanted to get the slides up as soon as possible. SEDS SpaceVision is the annual event for chapters of SEDS (Students for Exploration and Development of Space) in the US to come together to meet, talk, listen to speakers from the space industry, and network. I’ve never had the chance to attend spacevision before, but since it was essentially in our back yard here in Texas, it was the perfect opportunity. Thanks to Texas A&M for hosting! This was about “participatory exploration” in context of both working at NASA and working with NASA. The audience was the interested college students attending the conference (I have another version of the “participatory exploration” I give to NASA program/project managers about how we actually go about opening our programs/projects and making them “participatory”). The goal of my talk was to let the students know a) how exciting working for NASA can be, b) how exciting the Constellation Program is, and c) that even if they didn’t literally work for NASA or for one of its subcontractors, there are still many ways to participate. Each day, we are creating more and more avenues for people to participate in the NASA mission. I’d love for readers of opennasa.com to share any other “participatory” efforts you know about. I’m also interested in hearing about what you do for NASA, if you work in the industry. If you have an awesome job, take a moment to tell us what you do! It was really good to see a number of good friends at the event, including Will Pomerantz (twitter.com/pomerantz) of the X PRIZE and Ken Davidian (twitter.com/kdavidian) of the FAA. Other notable speakers included Peter Diamandis, Bob Richards, and Loretta Hidalgo! Check out Will’s blog post(s) about the conference at The Launch Pad and check out Ken’s commercial space wiki. Note: This presentation was the ‘Feature Slideshow of the Day’ on slideshare.net on Sunday Nov 16: http://www.slideshare.net/ssod. Special thanks to Karen Lau (http://twitter.com/k_lau) for the awesome CoLab logo.
The young professionals’ panel at the 2008 International Civil Service Commission conference was a truly remarkable event. Nick, Garret, and I met with our UN counterparts at United Nations Plaza 2, one of their main office buildings, to go over final preparations and introduce everyone face-to-face for the first time.
We then crossed the street to enter the UN Headquarters grounds. It’s hard for me to put in words even now the sense of honor and amazement I felt at being an invited guest there. After we passed through security and were given our access passes, the group made its way to the Secretariat building for the conference session.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately about what it means for managing organizations now that Generation Y makes up a significant part of the workforce. I’ve also been reading some articles that discuss the difficulty and frustration managers today have with the younger workforce. Hopefully this post will help managers as they try to navigate leading their leaders as well as Gen Y’ers who are entering the workforce and are looking for opportunities to do their part in changing the world.
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.
Keith mentioned in a previous comment that HQ reads these posts. If it is true I think that is great, that they care so much as to try to listen to us. But I do ask that they stop reading our postings like anthropologists and start reading it like empathetic leaders. Like any good leader they should not be moved at every whim of those they lead, but they should also not ignore those that follow.
I think that those of us in Gen Y (at least I am) are upset because NASA is supposed to represent high-tech, but the industry that is supposed to be ahead of everyone else is sadly about 8-10 years behind industry. Sure there are projects that are amazing in and of themselves, but the resources going into them don’t compare with the results obtained.
July 3 |
||
|---|---|---|
|
7:08pm | Did you see the first moon pictures sent back by LRO and released yesterday? Check them out at http://tr.im/qPkc |
July 2 |
||
|
|
4:09pm | The Soyuz move is complete. The station crew will spend the wknd prepping for the shuttle's arrival and enjoying some off-duty time. |
|
|
3:45pm | @benstanfield The Soyuz move opens the Zvezda docking port for the arrival of a new Russian Progress cargo vehicle later this month. |
|
|
3:20pm | Three space station crew members will move their Soyuz form one docking port to another. Undocking @ 5:26pET. Watch it on www.nasa.gov/ntv |
|
|
2:59pm | @Twit_nut Landers and rovers will be visible. Depending on lighting conditions, we could see a very high level of detail. |
|
|
2:58pm | @illumicdigital No firm date yet, but in the very near future. |
|
|
2:56pm | RT @ NASAGoddard Zoom and move on the first images from the LRO Camera. Is that sweet or what? http://bit.ly/yXPCB |
|
|
1:52pm | Arctic forest fires have an impact on climate change? Yeah, and NASA airborne scientists are in the thick of it. http://tr.im/qFpB |
|
|
12:12pm | Great response for the STS-125 Tweetup, registration is closed. Confirmation e-mails will go out mid-next week; more details to come. |
|
|
11:55am | Check out the Apollo Anniversary Mission Control Peeps! http://tinyurl.com/mm5zbw |
|
|
11:49am | NASA's LRO Spacecraft Sends First Lunar Images to Earth: NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has transm.. http://tinyurl.com/nx4z2v |
|
11:13am | Anniversary Apollo Peeps |
|
|
9:05am | You've got that right! RT ilzamacario @NASA that is so awesome!! Our planet is beautiful!! |
|
|
8:36am | Whoa! Look at all this Saharan dust blowing off of Africa yesterday, as seen by NASA's Terra spacecraft. http://tr.im/qCKQ |
|
|
8:22am | There's a new astronaut to the Twitter-verse. He's @Astro_Jose and he'll fly on STS-128. Bio infor at http://bit.ly/AstroJose. |
|
|
8:21am | Image of the Day: Refuge: Situated as it is near the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, t.. http://tinyurl.com/m6cxx6 |
|
|
7:52am | There's still time to sign up to attend the STS-125 crew Tweetup at NASA Headquarters July 21: http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup |
|
|
7:10am | Earthquakes! - Live NASA chat & videocast with NASA scientists using space-based technologies. July 6, 8pm EDT. http://tr.im/qC0j |
|
|
6:37am | Three space station crew members move their Soyuz from the Zvezda module to the Pirs Docking Compartment - watch live on NASA TV at 5 pm EDT |
|
|
6:15am | @panicpack121 Atlantic hurricane season began June 1. For updates & info on NASA hurricane research ... http://tr.im/qBDa |
|
|
6:07am | One month down in Atlantic hurricane season - see how hot the Gulf & Caribbean are, from NASA satellites. http://tr.im/qByj |
July 1 |
||
|
10:00pm | Saluting Our Nation's Independence |
June 29 |
||
|
10:00pm | Space Station Appearing Nationwide Over July 4 Weekend |