Heavenly Answers for Earthly Problems
I’m SO excited to share details about NASA’s newest, coolest, never-been-done-before sustainability initiative, LAUNCH:Water.
Archive for 'innovation'
Counterpoints to the FUD
There is a lot of FUD – fear, uncertainty, and doubt – being thrown up in the nascent debate over NASA’s new direction. Some people are saying that commercial providers aren’t ready to be trusted with America’s astronauts and won’t be for some time. Others suggest that it calls for the wholesale commercialization of NASA. Still other sources insinuate that we are facing the elimination of the astronaut corps. From where I sit, none of it is accurate.
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden has repeatedly reiterated that he believes there will continue to be a role for a professional NASA astronaut corps. Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said at last week’s Commercial Space Transportation Conference that the “wonderful people working Constellation did not fail,” but that they were not given the resources they needed and that it did not make sense to continue developing a system that would not even be ready to arrive at the ISS until after its planned de-orbit. There will still be a need for specially-trained scientists and engineers for on-orbit operations, probably even more so as the number of “spaceflight participants” increases.
Looking forward
I wish more people could be here at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation conference in Crystal City. The commercial space community is so vibrant and eager to step up to the challenges ahead.
DoD is looking to them to help usher in an era of operationally responsive space access.
Ideas on How to Open NASA? Spill!
Are you someone who knows exactly what it takes to make NASA the best agency possible? Do you doodle ideas on cocktail napkins and mail them to a NASA Center? Do you wake up early in the morning to watch Space Shuttle launches (like this morning’s 4:14 a.m. EST STS-130 launch) or stay up all night for mission coverage of Space Station? Do you wish you could wear a NASA badge and sit in a cubicle somewhere in the bureaucratic maze at a NASA installation?
Have we got a job for you!
The challenge and the opportunity
The new NASA budget is a fundamental challenge to the way we operate in the human spaceflight community. It asks us to stop expecting Washington or another JFK to tell us what to do and demands that we determine what we can offer the nation and set out to break as many boundaries as we can, while respecting the fiscal realities this country faces.
We can either fight this “paradigm shift,” as some have called it, or we can embrace it and make it our own. Human space exploration is not going to die because of the cancellation of the Constellation program. The American human space program itself will only die if we fail to rise to this challenge. The NASA community has core assets and capabilities, such as the premier ability of JSC’s Mission Operations Directorate to conduct launch, ascent, and reentry of human crews, that must be conserved and shared if we are to succeed.
The new NASA
The reports on the “death” of America’s manned space program are greatly exaggerated. Contrary to the opinions of some, I think the new budget proposal for NASA is a much-needed course correction that brings the agency back to a focus on its core strengths – research, development, and exploration.
Yes, the Constellation Program will be canceled. The Ares I and V booster rockets and the Orion crew exploration vehicle are going away. The Space Shuttle will be retired as scheduled. In their place will be a robust commercial Low Earth Orbit capability built on the premise of multiple providers competing to provide NASA the best offer for services. NASA will also fund a significant heavy-lift R&D program, likely based out of Marshall Space Flight Center, to develop “game changing” and affordable new rocket technologies.
When Failure is our Best Option
You’ve heard it many times before, “Failure is not an option.” When Gene Kranz uttered this line in reference to Apollo 13, he was absolutely right. At that moment it was imperative that the team succeed in bringing the crew home safely. If you’ve ever seen the movie Apollo 13, you will certainly remember this inspirational scene. In fact, it has become a maxim for NASA. Gift shops at the agency’s centers even carry a variety of products bearing this motto. But, could it be that line of thinking is now holding us back?
Recently I attended a training class where we learned of the practice of throwing Failure Parties. These parties are held by companies to celebrate their failures. There is no pointing of fingers or placing of blame on anyone, just food, drinks, cake, and a healthy discussion about what went right and what went wrong that allows the company to move forward. In some cases, this type of analysis can even turn a failure into a success, such as with products like Post-It notes, which resulted from a failed attempt at an improved adhesive tape. Even when a flop can’t be salvaged, moving forward is key.
Hackerspaces and NASA
It was March 29, 2009 that Wired.com released an article that instantly made many technology enthusiasts, engineers, scientists and artist aware about a novel concept called “Hackerspaces”. For those who do not know, a hackerspace can be viewed as an open community lab, workbench, machine shop, workshop and/or studio where people of diverse backgrounds can come together to collaborate, share resources and knowledge necessary to build/make things that would not be possible on their own. Hackerspaces is a grass-roots movement that I believe will one day do to hardware development what open-source is doing to software development; it will provide the infrastructure necessary to crowdsource the development of technology.
The Hackerspace provides people a third space (work-space, home-space, the hackerspace) where they can invent/develop new technologies, develop new skills, master old skills, collaborate with other like minded individuals to create something that is better than what they can do on their own, and much more. The Hackerspace is Thomas Edison on steroids and I believe it will change the way technology is developed in the future. It is still a dream but imagine having access to a nanotechnology lab or a biosynthesis lab. Having the infrastructure that would give individuals access to experiment in high-tech work such as nanotechnology, biosynthesis is still somewhat far from occurring, but not a far fetched goal. Why is it not a far fetched goal? Simple, because more solutions can be generated when more people work on a problem. Sure, many of these solutions will not produce fruit, but the mere increase in solutions will make the advancement of new industries exponentially faster. Advancement of new industries is profitable; therefore, I believe that sponsorship of Hackerspaces will be looked at as a profitable investment for leading companies and institutions.
What does gossip and open innovation have in common?
I am like most people, I think, when it comes to taking in information. I hear new bits of information–via newspapers, journals, blogs, AP iPhone app, tweet, etc…–which generates a “ping” (that is the sound of the information banging around in my head and then being filed). Then I hear another bit of information and tie a virtual string to the new and old information. This sounds like a “pong.” Sometimes I am cognitively aware as to why my mind connected the bits together and other times I am not.
Over the past several months, my mind has tied the words “gossip” and “open innovation.” I recently deciphered why my mind made the ties. The ties could be as weak a spider’s web or as strong as a sailor’s knotted ladder. As a reader, you make your own call. First, I will take you down my mind path then I will reveal what I discovered as the common thread.
How would you utilize the ISS?
We’ve got a pretty interesting collection of folks here, so I thought I’d throw this question out to ya’ll.
What do you think we could or should be doing with the International Space Station that we’re not already doing or isn’t planned? Say that Congress comes up with an extension for the ISS past 2020. What would you do with it?
