Scientists are Obtuse?!?

Fact of the matter is that you cannot do without either! What’s the point of going to ISS if there is nothing to do up there but enjoy the view and fix things that keep breaking?

Tell us, how do you think the first long term missions are going to survive on the Moon, on the way to Mars or once the first astronauts touch down?

Money that was funding solid biological research projects that could solve these problems TOTALLY EVAPORATED. Grants were pulled and planned projects that we were promised years in advance disappeared. Millions of dollars of building construction, years of plans, careers spent and upcoming (including mine) that were dedicated to Space Life Sciences all went poof!

Why? To build a spacecraft and rocket that nearly everybody (except those controlling/getting the money) believes could have been done at least as well as (or better) on existing systems. Supported by people I know whom have said that astronauts lives were not worth some life science experiments.

Yeah, scientists may be obtuse, but from your comment they are FAR from alone.

It was refreshing to read the previous post on OpenNASA that released a list of specific Participatory Exploration (PE) policy recommendations for NASA. The authors of the recommendations have witnessed first hand the problems with how NASA is managed, reacts, and is perceived by internal and external constituents. The hard lessons that my friends learned through the NASA CoLab experiment more than qualifies them as competent at offering specific solutions to some discrete and genuine problems within NASA.

Unfortunately, the PE Recommendations document does lend itself to some old criticisms as it carries over weaknesses of CoLab’s prior efforts to fix NASA. The suggestions only treat symptoms of an Agency wide disease, but they do not not offer a systemic cure. There needs to be cogent, material, and real offerings on how to change the minds and behaviors of NASA’s workforce from the top down. Instead of being told how to fix some of yesterday’s problems, NASA employees should be nurtured so the ideas of Participatory Exploration and Collaboration develop organically across the Agency.

Many have repeatedly claimed that it is NASA’s ‘mindset’ that is the underlying problem. Indeed, there are many individual and institutional problems throughout NASA that make PE programs difficult to initiate or mature. That said, this mindset is based on old assumptions and good intentions by very bright people given the best data available at the time. In recent times, there have been several presentations that detail the advantages of collaborative and participatory technologies, but the validity of these messages have been completely lost in the irrelevant static of inter-generational bickering. There is no compelling argument that NASA’s problems have anything to do with the age distribution of its workforce. Fortunately the authors of these PE recommendations have smartly broadcast solutions to familiar, solvable problems, but need to continue to tune the message on improving the Agency as a whole.

I believe that NASA’s mindset problems are not as difficult to change as many may frustratingly believe. NASA as an agency is complacent because NASA’s leaders, thinkers, and doers–regardless of their generation–are mostly ignorant of the alternatives. The solution to ignorance is literally education.

In August 2008, I invited myself to work with NASA CoLab during the IPP Quarterly meetings at Ames Research Center. Representing external commercial and academic NASA partners through my company, Exploration Solutions, I came to critique Colab and suggest new ways to advance their mission that I fundamentally believed in. Those conversations framed with my prior experiences helped me identify the single most important thing that could help FIX the problems that NASA CoLab experienced: institute an agency-wide Workforce Development program for the development, management and usage of Participatory Exploration and collaboration tools.

The NASA CoLab team, coupled with the profitable and connected innovators in Silicon Valley, were (are) ideally suited to develop the appropriate curricula for what I would call a Participatory Exploration Workforce Development program. With the various pressures NASA faces, such as Shuttle cancellation and other budget related changes, the demand for employee (re)training programs are clear at each Center. External state government and non-government partners (Space Grant Consortia, Space Florida, California Space Authority, etc) have local interest and money to invest in such tax-base assurance programs. Workforce Development programs are materially understood in industry and government alike, and provide comparable metrics that can establish the success and value of the education in real dollars. Moreover, successful metrics builds legitimacy, silences detractors, and helps ensure recurrent funding.

Specifically, I proposed creating education initiative through the already established SATERN training system. It would serve two purposes:

• Provide legal and operational understanding of collaborative and participatory exploration related activities and technologies.
• Facilitate a community of trained employees that would foster & guide the development of Participatory Exploration activities and tools.

Many IPP managers were very receptive to this idea at the time. With an appropriate presentation, such a program could have landed a level of additional seed money if not from NASA HQ, then from external partners. Ames Research Center and Kennedy Space Center could have been two immediate test beds of such a program. Sadly my spoken and written suggestions were ahead of their time: NASA CoLab, having to juggle disparate and unclear priorities, was in essence paralyzed by their limited resources.

However, the nature and progress of the Presidential Transition team has renewed my hope that NASA can still be fixed as things move forward. I can think of no better place to post these ideas but here at OpenNASA.com, and I am hopeful to receive much feedback on your ideas specific to the value and implementation of a SATERN based workforce development/employee education program. To sweeten the deal, on Monday of next week, my company will be submitting a more detailed brief of my SATERN proposal to Change.gov. With that document I intend to reference this post and your comments. I’m looking forward to reading and passing along what you have to say.

Anonymous “Me”

Having worked at KSC & CCAFS for different jobs, and having been denied access to the Atlas V launch area by Military, not SGS personnel, having had my photo taken at the launch-pad with the letters USAF at the top of the DELTA pad, being friends with Air Force folks who worked in the base commander’s office, etc…I kinda have more than a clue of what I’m talking about.

It’s almost comical that you so provocatively, yet anonymously question my understanding of reality. The 45th out of Patrick AFB has–WITHOUT QUESTION–operational control of all activities at CCAFS. The 1st Space Wing also plays a role for Delta, while the 5th plays a role for Atlas. It’s no secret that ULA has been contracted by the Air Force to run launch operations–I made no claim otherwise! The Reality is very clear: Access & Operations are permitted solely on the discretion of the United States Air Force.

As for my claim of Gemini…of course NASA personnel were involved, so making the claim of complete control of the mission may have been an overstatement, but they were most certainly launched off military controlled pads.

Lastly, if you can anonymously, or better yet honestly point out the last time a NASA astronaut controlled spaceship was on top of an EELV (which was my point), I’ll publicly eat my hat.

I digress to my original point: bad reporting aside: whoever owns the rockets doesn’t matter. NASA is NOT going to be able to just walk on over, plop their can and astronauts on top of the rocket, and press all the buttons in launch control.

While it’s true that Atlas and Delta are not military owned vehicles, I’d argue that there are bigger points to be made.

The EELV program that spec’d out these rockets was developed by the Department of Defense in 1994 when they released the Space Launch Modernization Plan, aka the Moorman Study. Lockheed & Boeing developed the EELVs ‘independently’ (haha) to military specs, the fact is that the DoD forced these two giants to invest their own money into the rockets’ development given the potential for commercial launches. Unlike Orbital & SpaceX…these guys didn’t consider themselves ‘commercial’ space providers, and nobody I know seriously includes them as part of the ‘commercial space’ movement.

However, there is an even bigger issue here than who owns the rocket, but who puts them together and who launches them. A NASA badge may take you across the river at KSC, but you’re not going to get into Atlas IV or Delta launch control unless you have a military credentials or escorts. Remember, the Apollo moon shots and the Space Shuttle leave Earth from Launch Complex 39, which is NASA property. The Atlas and Delta sites are controlled by 45th Mission Support Group on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. I believe the last they had complete control of a space mission was during Gemini. Throwing civilian hardware and civilian astronauts on top of a ‘commercial’ rocket in Air Force controlled installation will be a significant shift in NASA operations.

But there’s a bigger point here: Obama has suggested reviving the National Aeronautics & Space Council, which suggests an even higher level of integration. A friend of mine was a higher up at NASA when the Council existed and it was clear that the military had significant influence in NASA business.

An interesting aside will be what role NASA Ames Director Pete Worden will play if Obama does bring back the National Aeronautics & Space Council. Given that he was a staff officer for the Council during the first Bush administration, and as a USAF Colonel served the Panel Leader for Business & Management Practices in the aforementioned Moorman Study, I suspect he’ll be front and center if military does step back into NASA’s business.

For the record, I am a HUGE fan of this possibility, as I have much respect for what Pete Worden has done at Ames. Additionally, switching to the EELV in my mind opens up an opportunity to preserve the launch capability of the Shuttle to maintain Hubble & ISS by keeping the VAB & LC-39 from being irrecoverably modified, among other reasons. Moreover it also allows TRUE Shuttle derived options such as Shuttle-C to be considered for different flight programs where such a capacity could be warranted.

Comment originally posted at NASAWATCH

Interesting thread of reactions here. While I am too ignorant to agree or disagree with Bernie’s finer points, there are a few calls here to explain what the alternatives will be.

Why can’t a truly Shuttle-derived concept, say, Shuttle-C be flown? You get to keep the pads and VAB without major overhauls, you get to lessen the workload of the Orbiter, which is a surefire way to reduce the risk, and you keep the workforce…

I’d love to understand what is so wrong with a Plan B such as Dennis Wingo wrote some time ago:

What To Do When VSE and ESAS Flop:
Plan B For Outer Space

Bernie is dead on, and it’s incredibly sad and frustrating that nobody sees this

I wrote a similar comment elsewhere, but it’s worth repeating: I have trouble believing the published odds of Space Shuttle failure are what they say they are. As Bernie points out, I believe they are based on incorrect assumptions.

While I cannot calculate the odds, the reality is that for each flight, there is a gain of knowledge and an improvement in safety. Moreover, I do not believe it’s fair to include prior performance in the calculation of future risk. Current risk assessments must be made upon the factors that impact safety now.

For instance, what are the odds that another piece of foam are going to strike the wings? What are the odds that another O-ring will have a burn through? Certainly not the same as they were before….so therefore the risk per flight cannot be the same.

I’d like to see a real risk assessment instead of one influenced–no, controlled–by people who are emotionally scarred by not getting their way so many years ago.

If only Spock’s logic were really being used here.

For the record, I used to work for ZERO-G for a number of years, but was no longer employed with them when Matt’s flight took place.
I had known for a while that hard drive cameras and DVD cameras failed in microgravity. For the hard drive cameras, I suspected it was the HD accelerometers as we had prior experience with Apple iPhone screens not flipping in microgravity. For DVD cameras, we figured there was some rebound effect with the vibration dampening system that caused write errors. Normally it was up to me to approve specific hardware that would fly on the plane, but since I did not work there anymore….

As it turned out, weeks after his flight, we were pleasantly surprised that some other flyers–people who actually read their camera manual–had learned that these HD cameras have a setting that allows the accelerometers to get shut off for rollercoasters and high-action shots.
A friend at ZERO-G ended up telling Matt this fact, and knowing that I would have at least steered him the in right direction for his first flight had I been around, we lobbied the sales team that he get a discount on a 2nd flight, which he did get.
Matt used a Sony HDR-SR1 on the first flight, and I don’t know what he used on the 2nd, but my understanding is that it was a solid-state device.

Here are the photos from his first flight:
http://www.gozerog.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=77
and his second:
http://www.gozerog.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=109

It’s kinda sad…these words do serve as a good lesson, but it’s unfortunate that his actions over the years did not serve to be as inspirational.

Without question, the next generation needs to be well educated in a way that parallels Mike Griffin’s dedication of focus and fighting the distraction of pop-culture. However, Dr Griffin’s performance over the years also exemplifies a problem frequently found among many nerds who are in charge: mediocre communication and leadership skills.

Communication and Leadership training should be part and parcel to any qualified Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education program. You may be the worlds best expert; but if you cannot convince those who need to DO but also FUND your ideas, than you’re going to suffer the kinds of consequences as we’ve seen over these past few years. It is ironic, however, that NASA actually has a STEM education and leadership program. The NASA Academy that was designed to develop NASA’s next leaders, but true to NASA fashion, it has consistently been under the threat of the budgetary axe.

That said we must keep in mind that Dr. Griffin has also been crippled by the so called ‘leaders’ he must follow. Folks like Paul Shawcross, Clay Johnson and others with unhelpful or negative attitudes at the OMB and OSTB that Dr. Griffin has clearly had to deal with. These folks share a lot of the blame for the troubles that NASA has and do need to be held publicly accountable. Hopefully with Obama’s choices in Peter Orszag & Rob Nabors will continue to illicit change in these departments.

It’s sad that Mike is going to get a legacy that he may not fully deserve, but it is in times like these that a real leader would realize it’s time to go.

Seems like the people who are bashing Dr. Schmitt about his Global Warming statement didn’t really read what he wrote. Let’s dissect it, shall we?

As a geologist, I love Earth observations. But, it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a “consensus” that humans are causing global warming in when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise.

On each point is correct. A) He’s a geologist and a trained scientist. He’s no dummy, and has seen the same data that’s out there. B) He’s right there are most certainly data out there that CAN ARGUE against global warming. There is no UNANIMOUS agreement that all the data PROVES Global warming.

“Consensus”, as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science.

Unarguably true.

You know as well as I, the “global warming scare” is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making.

Is he wrong? Are people not ’scared’ of global warming? Are not laws and policies being written that are being used to increase government control, say regulate carbon emissions? Regardless of your belief in climate change, he is once again unarguably correct that people are scared and that government is going to be stepping up it’s control.

It has no place in the Society’s activities.

It’s the Planetary Society, not Audubon Society. Is saying that we leave the earth stuff to the earth professionals and the space stuff to the space professionals such a bad thing?

It is interesting to note the number of people that insist flying the shuttle is going to guarantee disaster.

The CAIB gave another option: recertification. I’d really like to see how much it will cost to recertify Endeavor, taking advantage of the fact that with all the old suppliers gone, the parts upgrades would now finally be made as they should have been in the first place.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the cost of recertification proves cheaper or not much different than Ares development?

With that, however, I am not optimistic that Griffin and NASA staff will suddenly see the light. More likely they are just collecting evidence to bolster their preconcieved notions.