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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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?

Read more

Launch Scrubbed, but Go to Post

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.

Read more

Open Innovation in Government

President Obama on his second day in office issued a Presidential Memorandum on openness in government.  This is a bold vision of creating a more effective, open government.  The approach outlined in the memo is guided by the core values of transparency, participation and collaboration.

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.

Read more

The Benac Orbit, Kepler’s Follow On

Once Kepler finds the other Earths, it time to listen to their radio stations!

So here is the next big thing: Craters as huge satellite dishes for antenna feeds orbiting above them.

Read more

NASAsphere Pilot Findings Released

A while ago (May 2008), I posted NASA Employees Test the Social Water that I was leading a social networking pilot for NASA. Well, after several more months, the report is cleared by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and ready to be discussed in an open forum.

Many NASAsphere participants also participate on OpenNASA, so I figured this is a great place to post the release notice. The success of the pilot was a group effort and a great experience for me. I am grateful to those people who support open communication and communication technologies in NASA. While I can no longer say that I am a contractor for NASA, I can say I am still a friend of NASA and desire to help in anyway possible. One way for me to contribute to the success of NASA, is to share the findings and experiences from the NASAsphere pilot with you. In my opinion, they are meaningful to the organization and to the supporting cast of employees and contractors.

Read more

Work-Life Fit at JSC

A few weeks ago, the Joint Leadership Team (JLT) at Johnson Space Center (JSC) was treated to a day-long retreat of presentations from each of the Innovation and Inclusion (I&I) Council’s Engagement Teams. I know it seems like classic “NASA acronym soup”, but there was nothing classic about how far the audience was reaching outside of their comfort zone that day.

Perhaps the furthest-reaching team was called Barrier Analysis. You might be familiar with that team’s video, since as of now it’s received over 92,000 hits on You Tube. That’s right, it’s the one from Wayne Hale’s blog post and the NPR story. There’s even a good summary of its background here on OpenNASA. It has been great to see the conversation that has started among NASA employees and the general public alike. The other teams also had some very interesting (if not quite as controversial) contributions relating to the inner-workings of the JSC Community. They looked internally at challenges such as Recruiting, Mentoring, IT Infrastructure, or Work-Life Fit. Personally, I had the privilege of working with 12 others to study the latter, and in the spirit of being open, I’d like to share with the OpenNASA readers the results of our work.
Read more