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I spent the week in Washington, D.C., getting out 4 hours before the snow started falling on Friday.  Long week with NASA/Big Aerospace/”New Space”/AAS/AIAA colleagues, talking about NASA’s “new direction”.  Except that the new direction isn’t a direction at all, it is simply a policy change.  “Direction” implies a plan - and there is no plan.   Together with the complete miscalculation as to how the workforce and Congress would react - something I had been warning about since last summer, trying again as recently as last week - and I wasn’t the only one - the entire roll out of the the “redirection” has been an exercise in how NOT to provide guidance.  It has also been unnecessarily traumatic, particularly to the several thousand of the nation’s best and brightest who fear for their jobs.

One almost wonders if the last minute decision not to prepare the way was calculated to create a backlash. 

I’m on record in more than one place with my belief that NASA would not leave Low Earth Orbit until forced out  Well, here we are, and I have mixed emotions.  All-in-all, I’m an optimist and look forward to charting a new course.  But I certainly could not have imagined that the “transition” to commercial space providers would be done without a net.  Even from Washington, I expected better.  I was wrong. 

There is no transition plan.

Not yet. 

But I’ve never been one to tolerate a vacuum for long. 

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Meanwhile, I don’t seem to be able to do big policy shifts and exercise at the same time.  (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.)  Of course, buying several “medicinal” martinis for peers over the week - and having a few myself - didn’t help.   So, yesterday I picked up the rubber bands and did the upper body workout.  This morning I was up at 3:15 CT for the Space Shuttle launch scheduled for 3:49 and am already sore.  The launch was scrubbed due to heavy cloud cover, but I can’t get back to sleep.  I twittered with a few colleagues down at the Cape and then headed to the kitchen for to make a chocolate soy latte.  Generally speaking, if I’m hitting chocolate first thing in the day, rather than last, I’m serious about getting some things done.

So here I am, sitting up with Tigger, my companion of 15 years.  I have a longer relationship with Tigger than I have with any other male in my life, save my father - and he passed almost 30 years ago.  Not sure what that says about me, other than the obvious fact that I’m hard to live with.  But I am sure what it says about Tigger.   He represents his species extraordinarily well.

I wonder if he’s got any ideas about space exploration?

Tags: Cats, Human Space Flight, NASA, Space Exploration, Tigger by coolslap
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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.

Most of all, remember that this community holds within it the resources, talents, creativity, skills, expertise, hopes and 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 have ever been privileged to work within it remain a 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 by coolslap
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