Crazy week at NASA. Space Shuttle Discovery completed her cross-country piggy-back ride from California back to Florida. We announced the discovery of water on the Moon…and more on Mars. The 2009 Astronaut Class and the STS-127 crew came to visit NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. We hosted a Tweet-up with Space Tweeps and the STS-127 crew. (Thanks all you Space Tweeps who joined us!)
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Given the uncertainty surrounding the direction of the human space exploration program these days, a group of young professionals here at JSC assembled with the guidance and support of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership and local aerospace executives to begin an advocacy campaign and get the word out on why we think human spaceflight is important.
When reading the Augustine Committee’s summary report, there was one particular line that really stood out to me.
“In fact, the Committee finds that no plan compatible with the FY 2010 budget profile permits human exploration to continue in any meaningful way.”
The NASA community – civil servants, contractors, and politicians alike – is holding its breath while we await the final report from the Augustine Commission and the decision of President Obama on what exactly he wants NASA to do. Out of the several options the Human Space Flight Plans Committee is considering, one that has garnered particular interest from the press and some industry circles is the so-called “Deep Space” option.
The basic idea is to forgo the energy-intensive, and, thus, expensive, landing operations on the Moon in favor of manned flights to near-Earth asteroids, the Lagrange Points, and, possibly, Mars’ moons. We would still be able to develop the technology for long-duration travel, but put off the expense of actually landing and returning significant numbers of people until the political will is there.
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.
There is a recent movement within NASA to be open and transparent and practice inclusion with our space program, but how do we accomplish that? There are many schools of thought, but my personal take on it is that inclusion isn’t just about giving tours of space centers and holding events (though these are much appreciated). It is also about giving people a voice and making them feel like they share a role in the mission. I’m no expert, but my thought was that if we want people to feel included, maybe we should let them tell us what they think.
This past Thursday I attended the Review of Human Spaceflight Plans Committee’s public meeting in Cocoa Beach, FL. This is the committee also known as the Augustine Committee that was chartered by the president to figure out which direction our space program should go. One of the topics – I believe it was brought up by the group’s chair, Norm Augustine- was that public outreach needed to reach beyond just those who already “drank the Kool-Aid” (meaning those who are already interested in and supportive of NASA’s mission). His point was that more people need to be reached. In thinking about it, though- maybe further engaging the sector of the public that already “drank the Kool-Aid” is the best way to reach more people. These people in turn, can become ambassadors if they are given more encouragement and resources to get others involved. This could be very powerful.
The Augustine Commission met in Houston on Tuesday to review the human space flight program, particularly Dr. Sally Ride’s subcommittee’s work, and get the public’s reaction. Here’s mine to two questions Mr. Augustine himself posed.
He asked:
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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.
There is no doubt that social media in government has become a major topic of discussion recently. As an advocate and active user of social media, I’m often asked to create and/or give presentations on the potential application of social media at NASA. Up until now, I’ve actively resisted the temptation to accept the invitation because social media is so often misunderstood, taken out of context, or over-hyped. Yet, I do believe that there is enormous potential for organizations who utilize social media. Do I think social media can transform government by itself? Of course not. Do I think social media can be an effective tool to help transform and add value to government? Absolutely.
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