What the future holds

We have a budget proposal from the President that expands ISS utilization, invests in building a commercial LEO services-based launch capability, promotes a push to do R&D on exploration-enabling technologies, and, yes, cancels the Constellation program.

We have a Congress that, amongst the members who seem to care, largely doesn’t like this proposal, but is split amongst the various local concerns about what the best response to the budget is.  I have to admit that I share Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s sense of irony at a Democratic White House arguing for increased privatization against Congressional Republicans advocating the continuation of a monolithic government program.

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Launch Water Day 2

Quick Recap of Launch Water Day 2:

Innovator Stephen Kennedy Smith: Verticrop. “Large-Scale Vertical Hydroponic Ag System”

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LAUNCH Water Day 1 Recap

After working on the LAUNCH:Water concept for the past year, we finally kicked it off yesterday — along with our cool new Nike-designed website.

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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.

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Exploring Strange New Worlds

Just when you thought you were safely nestled in a nice plateau of learning something like this has to come along and bump you off…

Actually it’s more of a welcome interruption, I could tell the engines weren’t running as smoothly as they could be. Lots of power interruptions, wasted cycles, and general confusion. But the brain is good at making anything seem normal after a while, so wasn’t everything just normal?

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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.

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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.

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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!

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The challenge and the opportunity

“Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac

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.

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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.

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