The times they are a changing…

I, like many others here at NASA, have spent the past few days reading and thinking about the new plan the president has proposed for NASA and what it really means. I work in science research, so part of this new plan makes me happy. But other parts of this plan were harder to digest. Since its inception, NASA has always had a vision to achieve the impossible and push the boundaries. I feel that hasn’t changed with the new proposal. But I can see why people think it has.
 
Two years ago, I was fortunate enough to be a part of the group that came up with the 20 year vision for JSC. It was for “JSC to be a collaborative, innovative, and integrated space center, boldly expanding the frontiers of human space exploration.” I can’t help thinking that this new plan the president has laid out is the first step to get us exactly there.
 
I then started thinking about how we got to that vision. It was hard. Lots of long nights, frustration, arguments and running around in circles until one day it finally clicked. What are wonderful mentors were trying to get us to do was open our minds, erase the boundaries and think outside the box. Why was this seemingly easy concept so difficult? We are all trained in a system of rules, boundaries, goals, processes, etc. These aren’t bad things, they are needed to succeed. But they can come at a price. Some of these can hinder innovation, slow creativity and have so strong a focus that the big picture is lost. And yet we are so tied to them that the thought of going beyond them or even questioning why they exist is not something that crosses our minds often. After several months, our group had opened our minds and started to think about the big picture, started questioning and started really thinking. In the end we came up with something that was new and exciting. Many of my colleagues have continued to innovate and inspire and I see no signs of them stopping! I call upon them now to help make others see that NASA has now been given the same chance the 30 of us got 2 years ago.
 
Although at first glance the lack of a “mission” may feel like we have lost something, really look at the opportunity we have been given. It’s not going to be easy, harder for some then for others, but here at NASA we have people who really do achieve the impossible every day. With the knowledge and passion that every person in this agency has for the dream of exploration, we might even surprise ourselves in how far we can go when we are allowed to open our minds and let the creative process happen.

Looking back…

A few days ago, I woke up, half-dreading the 6-mile run I needed to complete in preparation for the half-marathon I’m signed up to run in just under two months. Whenever runs get torturous, or I’m having a terrible day and just don’t want to get out there, I tell myself that this is all in preparation for one day achieving my ultimate goal of becoming an astronaut. Somehow, that provides some internal inkling of motivation that gets me going every time. For many months, perhaps a year now, I’ve had a secret desire to run the internal perimeter of JSC – from gate to gate to gate…to gate (I think)…if not to just prove to myself that I could do it. That day, I decided, was the day, and I set about mapping my route and subsequently out the door.

It was, in some fashion, much like a glimpse through the evolution of the space center. From its inception as the Manned Spacecraft Center, the buildings, the employees, the land that Johnson Space Center rests upon have trudged through the beaten course through programs and changes galore.

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Moon and Mars Not Out

Most people think that the end of the Constellation program, will impede NASA’s ability to go to the Moon and beyond. I believe that we can use the change in direction to get to the Moon or Mars faster than if we stuck to the Constellation program (at the very least we can get to Mars faster). The Constellation program, was projected to get us to the Moon by 2020. However, the program has been over-budget, and behind schedule. Given the lack of proper funding, I predict that if we choose to go through with the Constellation program we would not get to the moon until after 2020, maybe 2022 or 2025 if at all.

Eventhough, I agree that lack of proper funding is a major source of problems with the Constellation program, I still think that the Constellation program is a bad strategy for NASA. The reason that I think it is a bad strategy is because there are too many unknowns, too many things that need to be developed that can’t be developed until later in the program (or at the very least verified), and too rigid a box to get it done (it doesn’t help that we also don’t have the proper budget to get this done, but when you add physical constraints it makes life very difficult). Further the long development time, requires us to develop and work on technology that will be severely outdated by the time we get to use it.

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Who Moved Our Cheese?

If you haven’t read “Who Moved My Cheese?” this might be a good time to go pick up a copy or steal one from your neighborhood “change and transition” specialist. It’s the story of two mice (named “Sniff” and “Scurry”) and two ‘Littlepeople’ (named “Hem” and “Haw”) who are beings who are as small as mice but who “looked and acted a lot like people today.”

The four are in search of cheese in a maze. Don’t ask why these “Littlepeople” don’t have access to alternative means of sustenance like water, tacos, or Snickers bars. Or why they’re the size of mice. They’re stuck in a maze and they just want cheese. (You wouldn’t crave a block of meuster if you were 5 inches tall and confined to a labyrinth of hallways with only mice as company?).

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NASA’s 2011 Budget

On Obama’s change in NASA’s direction:

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the context is decisive

While thinking about the news on the NASA budget today, I thought of the following story.

One time back in the 1960s, a NASA employee was roaming the halls of Kennedy Space Center.  He came across a group of three janitors cleaning a restroom.  Given his friendly nature, he stopped and approached the first one who seemed particularly dour.

“How’s it going?” he asked.  In response, the first janitor growled “How do you think it is going?  I’m stuck here cleaning toilets.”

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I Thrive With A Little Help From My Friends

At sushi happy hour on Tuesday my friend Andrew Horn asked us, “What are you not doing now that you wish you were?” (he is really into the importance of asking good questions). I said that I wanted to be working on a book and that I have long been meaning to create a Facebook group for all the students who have been to my Launching Your Career in Space workshops. Our dinner mate said he wanted to be working on a new model for sustainability in economics. Andrew leaned forward and said, “What can you do to shift those things from something you are going to work on to something you are working on right now?”

I realized that even if you are taking the smallest next action on something, it goes from being a someday, maybe in-the-future project, to something you have started! As the famous saying goes, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!” (I remember reading that on the wall in my mom’s office at the St. Rose rectory in high school).

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Looking ahead…

I should start this post by fully disclaiming that I don’t think I have any significant or impressive credentials to be making the following assertions. They are merely my opinions and thoughts, accumulated in a storage space in my mind over the last few months, as speculations of the current administration’s plans for NASA have reached a fever pitch, with rumors and supposedly confirmed facts rampant in the media.

From a young age, I buried my nose in astronomy books in my spare time. I, in fact, love to tell the story of my first direct contact with NASA – a fateful visit to Space Center Houston at the tender age of eight. I walked away, declaring I’d one day work in Mission Control and be an astronaut. I half realized that dream just under a month ago, when I sat in the Space Station Flight Control Room for the first time and spoke to the crew on the International Space Station, whom I helped train. I left the building that night, with my footsteps echoing across the empty parking lot, knowing that I had the amazing opportunity to contribute to a legacy left by the pioneers of yesteryear, ever single day.

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More Than Getting Things Done

Since New Years I have been implementing a new life/task/action organizational system recommended to me by my dear friend and colleague Chris Lewicki. It is based on the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. So far things have gone swimmingly. I have started to take out of my brain every last don’t-forget-this, you-promised-this, and this-still-needs-to-happen and put in into a system for organizing them and tracking them. I feel a new future of being organized awaits me and there is still another 150 pages of the book to read and implement.

Lewicki in his infinite wisdom though, also recently sent me this quote— just to keep my new found gains in perspective:
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The Internet is now (officially) in space

Here on Earth, we’ve grown used to having the Internet available almost anytime we want it.  As of December 2009, 74% of American adults use the internet.  60% of American adults use broadband connections at home.  55% of American adults connect wirelessly through laptops or handheld devices like smartphones.

So, what about Astronauts in space?  Do they have internet?

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