An Open Letter to the U.S. Human Spaceflight Community
As Jeff Foust pointed out in his January 30, 2010 Space Politics 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 NASA budget that no one had seen.
As is typical for many in Congress and most in the media, not having any facts upon which to 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 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 aerospace community composed of engineers and scientists and aviators and 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 state of the humans involved into account, any more than we would fail to take into account the health of hardware or the robustness of engineering and operations processes.
From an email I sent to a colleague this week:
“A path must be forged and communicated that makes sense, that promises a future for HSF (although not necessarily for jobs) – and most of all, that places the contributions made by all these people across these many years into a meaningful context. The worst thing about these kinds of shifts is that they leave people questioning their own value, or believing that others do not see their value or the value of their life’s work. In addition to all the practical fears about jobs in a lousy economy, this 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 rapid currents of change, there are small groups of people hard at work shaping new paradigms for 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 there, and cultivating whatever they need to support HSF. Often this is done without regard for institutional boundaries or political correctness or 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 succeeds over time makes room for these folks, sooner or later. They thrive when assumptions are demolished. They are able to accept the current realities and uncertainties and go forward anyway. They know that 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 several such groups who are only beginning to be known to each other, there are several such courses bubbling up from beneath the surface.
We are at a moment in time that is open to ideas - although ideas alone are 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 true that we do not control all things - or even most things - but we do influence the 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 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 you are focused on safeguarding the legacy of human space flight and are responsible for passing it on, that you are protecting and nurturing a national/global asset, that you are preparing crews and equipment to fly safely and successfully, and that in every day of your life you are summoning the future, whether you realize it or not.
The future will be what we make it.
And I, for one, cannot wait to see what happens next.
- Mary Lynne Dittmar
