As Jeff Foust pointed out in his January 30, 2010 Space Politics acronis backup and recovery 10 uninstall script post – “It’s silly season”. His well-placed comment was aimed at the “rhetorical flourishes” of certain individuals, notably members of Congress, as they weighed in with uninformed opinions a-plenty regarding the cheap autocad 2012 mac NASA budget that no one had seen.
As is cheap autocad 2012 mac typical for many in Congress and most in the media, not having any facts upon which to cheap autocad 2012 mac base public discourse sure doesn’t seem to stop some people.
Administrator Bolden will talk about NASA’s shift in direction on Monday afternoon, February 1 at 3:00 pm ET. There will be cheap autocad 2012 mac a lot more blogging, punditry, bitching, sky-is-falling gnashing of teeth – and sadly, real fear, real pain, and real despair.
No doubt about it. Change is hard.
Fear, pain and despair shouldn’t be ignored. If they are, they have a way of festering. Unfortunately, society is not comfortable speaking about them. And if society isn’t comfortable, imagine how such discussions play within an cheap autocad 2012 mac aerospace community composed of engineers and scientists and aviators and cheap autocad 2012 mac steely-eyed missile men and women.
But it is HUMAN space flight (HSF) we are discussing, after all. And we can’t do human space flight without taking the cheap autocad 2012 mac state of the humans involved into account, any more than we would fail to cheap autocad 2012 mac take into account the health of hardware or the robustness of engineering and cheap autocad 2012 mac operations processes.
From an email I sent to a colleague this week:
“A path must be cheap autocad 2012 mac forged and communicated that makes sense, that promises a future for cheap autocad 2012 mac HSF (although not necessarily for jobs) – and cheap autocad 2012 mac most of all, that places the contributions made by all these people across these many years into a cheap autocad 2012 mac meaningful context. The worst thing about these kinds of shifts is cheap autocad 2012 mac that they leave people questioning their own value, or believing that cheap autocad 2012 mac others do not see their value or the value of their life’s work. In addition to cheap autocad 2012 mac all the practical fears about jobs in a lousy economy, this cheap autocad 2012 mac can create terrific resentment and even grief, and depression. We know that it is this pain that lingers for years – more than the economic pain.”
So - pain is real, fear is real, despair is real. But giving into it would be a senseless tragedy.
Almost hidden amongst the cheap autocad 2012 mac rapid currents of change, there are small groups of people hard at work shaping new paradigms for cheap autocad 2012 mac human space flight. They’ve been at it for a while now. Many, although not all, are within NASA. The majority are seasoned professionals, who have weathered change before. Several of them are part of what I fondly call “the rebel alliance”- fanning out into all kinds of areas, pitching temporary camp here and cheap autocad 2012 mac there, and cultivating whatever they need to support HSF. Often this cheap autocad 2012 mac is done without regard for institutional boundaries or political correctness or cheap autocad 2012 mac for climbing the career ladder. Off and on, I have been among their ranks.
These people, and others like them, are often a pain in the ass. They can be cantankerous. They are, to a person, stubborn as hell.
Every organization that cheap autocad 2012 mac succeeds over time makes room for these folks, sooner or cheap autocad 2012 mac later. They thrive when assumptions are demolished. They are cheap autocad 2012 mac able to accept the current realities and uncertainties and go forward anyway. They know that cheap autocad 2012 mac changes in institutions and assumptions open up new frontiers. Impatient, restless, hard-headed and eager, they are plotting the course. And since at present within NASA there are cheap autocad 2012 mac several such groups who are only beginning to be known to cheap autocad 2012 mac each other, there are several such courses bubbling up from beneath the cheap autocad 2012 mac surface.
We are cheap autocad 2012 mac at a moment in time that is open to ideas - although ideas alone are cheap autocad 2012 mac not enough. Navigating rapid change requires more discipline, not less. It requires determination and faith and hard, hard, HARD work. But the possibilities….oh, the possibilities…!
It is cheap autocad 2012 mac true that we do not control all things - or even most things - but we do influence the cheap autocad 2012 mac future through our action, or inaction. Painful as it can be, brilliance and creativity sometimes require the destruction of previous frameworks. That’s what we mean by “out of the box thinking”. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to cheap autocad 2012 mac live through a time when the box itself disappears. This is one of those times.
It IS silly season - and there will be plenty of doom and gloom. Remind yourself that you haven’t the energy to suffer fools - and then, don’t. Remember that cheap autocad 2012 mac you are focused on safeguarding the legacy of human space flight and cheap autocad 2012 mac are responsible for passing it on, that you are protecting and cheap autocad 2012 mac nurturing a national/global asset, that cheap autocad 2012 mac you are preparing crews and equipment to fly safely and successfully, and cheap autocad 2012 mac that in every day of your life you are summoning the cheap autocad 2012 mac future, whether you realize it or not.
The future will be what we make it.
Most of all, remember that cheap autocad 2012 mac this community holds within it the resources, talents, creativity, skills, expertise, hopes and cheap autocad 2012 mac dreams of some of the most dedicated and passionate people on Earth. It’s a big community. It’s much bigger than NASA. Those of us who cheap autocad 2012 mac have ever been privileged to work within it remain a cheap autocad 2012 mac part of it. It is, in fact, NASA’s greatest legacy.
And I, for one, cannot wait to see what happens next.
- Mary Lynne Dittmar
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Tags: Congress, Human Space Flight, NASA, The Future // 1 Comment »