Could the “Deep Space” option be a gateway?

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.

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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.

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The Space Tweep Society

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.

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A response to Mr. Augustine’s questions

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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Doing my part

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.

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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.

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Social > Media *

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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Gerstenmaier On Multi-Tasking

NASA has some strong leadership, and among the top of those ranks, is Bill Gerstenmaier. Gerstenmaier is the Associate Administrator for Space Operations and is the point man who directs NASA’s human exploration of space. Today at the Project Management Challenge, he gave a really great talk entitled “Thinking on the Job: Distractions, Multitasking, and the Erosion of Attention.”  I posted my notes on the #PMC2009 blog, but thought I’d do the same here.  Multi-tasking, or continuous partial attention, has been a subject that has came up quite a bit lately.  Psychologists have experimented on the nature and limits of human multitasking and shown that multitasking is not as workable as concentrated times.  Still, our increasingly complex, and information overloaded world, almost seems to demand it (or at least that’s the perception).  It’s a problem we all share to some extent or another.  I think Gerstenmaier offers some really invaluable insight into the subject so I wanted to share my notes with everyone.  Oh, and Gerst, if you are reading this, I loved your slides! 

Disclaimer: I multi-tasked and wrote this on my blackberry during his presentation.  

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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.
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ACDC Rock

So for quite some time now I have seen the Lunar Lander as the project of choice that I see myself working on in my career in the mid-term.  I have been getting familiar with the Constellation architecture since ESAS was released, and I am hitting the workforce at the Altair sweet spot. Plus, working at Boeing, Orion is out. Ares rockets don’t really get my blood going as much as the lander either.

Sometime during fall of last year, I was perusing the AIAA library and I came upon a paper that some Boeing guys had published in conjunction with the NASA Altair Broad Area Announcement (BAA) regarding the trade space for the physical configuration of the Altair vehicle. There were half a dozen Boeing authors, and one of them happened to be in Houston.

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