Historical note: this post marks the beginning of the era of posts that I specifically wanted to save when bringing up a new blogging platform. I don't agree with everything here - at this point in my life I view the Constellation program as a boondoggle that merely served to demonstrate that NASA will never again accomplish anything worthwhile. I also spoke more eloquently on several of these topics in later posts. But starting at this point, I started becoming the person who I, as a 40-something adult, recognize as being myself. For whatever that's worth.
There's a lot of emotion (and some hard feelings) about the president's FY2011 budget proposal for NASA. A lot of smart, dedicated people have worked for a long time to bring the Constellation program as far as it has come, and many of those people are understandably upset that the president has called for the program to be canceled outright.
The bad feelings aren't about people losing their jobs. I'm sure that's a concern for many, but there's something else, something much deeper. Engineering isn't just the practice of cobbling something together from a collection of pieces and ideas - it's a creative endeavor, an art, and just like other artists and artisans, engineers put a lot of time, effort, and energy into their creations. Yes, creations - an engineer designing a spacecraft (or other complex engine) puts blood, sweat, tears, and a little bit of their soul into their project; their child; their creation.
Robert Crippen gave a fine example of this bond during the Columbia Memorial Service held at Kennedy Space Center in 2003. Columbia "struggled mightily in those last moments to bring her crew home once again. She wasn't successful. [...] Columbia was hardly a thing of beauty except to those of us who loved and cared for her ... She, along with the Crew, had her life snuffed out while in her prime." Columbia wasn't a piece of equipment used by astronauts to do their jobs; she was another one of the crew, struggling against an injury that she would eventually succumb to.
The Space Shuttles are not mere machines; they are beloved members of a team of thousands, who dedicate their lives to the awesome feat of lifting humanity from the surface the planet and bringing them safely back. And like the human team members, each spaceship has its own strengths, weaknesses, quirks, failings, and triumphs - each has her own personality that is endearing to her friends, if baffling to outsiders. Sounds a bit like you and me.
And so it is with the Constellation program. The Ares rockets and Orion capsule are still in their infancy - not yet whole; not yet capable of achieving the high expectations that their heritage suggests and their creators are striving to help them achieve. And now, along with the Shuttle fleet (NASA's best and brightest children, all grown up) they are in danger of being snatched from us, relegated to history books and dusty museums by an uncaring public that can never understand the mistakes that they're making; the grief that they have caused us.
Why should we allow this to happen? What person would turn away as their pride and joy is taken away?
This is the heartbreak of engineering, one of those things they don't tell you about in college: the destinies of our creations are not always under our control. For the Constellation program, Destiny is page 18 of "Terminations, Reductions, and Savings" in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget, just after Coal Tax Preferences and Commodity Storage Payments; just in front of an Economic Action Program and some Election Reform Grants.
And insult is added to injury: "By early 2009, [...] the program was behind schedule, could not achieve its goals without multi-billion dollar budget increases, and was not clearly aimed at meeting today's national priorities." So now we're at fault: we're late, over budget, and not making what the nation needs; we're such bad parents that our child is being taken away! The pain turns to anger. Whose national priorities created the program in the first place? Why was the program never properly funded? Why were engineering decisions made by incompetent senators and administration officials, instead of the qualified engineers at NASA? And what makes the current crop of incompetent senators and administration officials more likely to make good decisions? Why can't they just leave us alone to do our work? And just what do they mean by "bold new approach" - by "lacking in innovation" - how was Constellation the "least attractive approach to space exploration?" That's my baby - my work - that you're bad mouthing!
This is the moment where we all need to step back. Take a few deep breaths, and clear our heads a bit.
Another fundamental aspect of engineering is that when faced with a problem as complex as safely leaving the planet, going to another one, and coming back, there is never a perfect solution. Engineering is, among other things, the art of compromise: the ideals of unlimited capabilities and perfect safety are limited by the realities of mass, volume, power, heat, radiation, physics (pesky physics!), time, budgets, politics, and many others. To get more here, we must give up something there; nothing is free. Everything is compromise, and there are many different routes that the journey can take.
Was the Constellation architecture a good compromise? Would the DIRECT approach be better, or a Shuttle-derived sidemount option, or a derivative of existing heavy launchers? Obviously, there are a lot of opinions on the subject, and many are not well displayed. Bloggers and anonymous posters abound, all with their own petty grievances and strongly felt opinions. On the internet, we may not know that you're a dog, but we do know that you're rude, arrogant, and self-righteous, and nobody wants their hard work denigrated by some anonymous clown. I too am those things from time to time, and I certainly have my own opinions on the Constellation architecture, but today I'll keep those to myself.
And it's just as well, because my opinion (and most likely yours) doesn't really matter. Fools control our destinies in many ways, and one of those ways (as we're seeing now) is by controlling the mission of NASA. The future of scientific and technological achievement at NASA isn't decided by the scientists and engineers that work here, but by politicians who don't know (or care) what we do, as long as it brings jobs and money to their districts.
So the president has created a budget proposal. The next step is for it to be dragged through the congressional gauntlet until it has been beaten and kicked into some unrecognizable kludge of pet projects and local protectionism that should never see the light of day, and that's what we'll end up with. Will that be good for us, or for the nation? I don't care to speculate what the end result will be, but I'm sure it won't be exactly what the president has proposed, nor will it be what many people want. Such is life in a republic.
One thing that does seem likely is that even if the Constellation program is scrapped, NASA's budget will grow, and other programs will be created to take Constellation's place: research and development to support future heavy-lift rocket systems; a vigorous new technology development and test program; a steady stream of precursor robotic exploration missions. It may not be Constellation, but that does sound like the kind of work I envisioned doing when I applied for a job at NASA. And for those of us who worked on Constellation, we can (and must!) honor whatever legacy it has earned by taking what we've learned and applying it to these new projects.
The phrase "I work for NASA" is one that will earn you instant respect almost anywhere in the world, and for good reason: we're smart, we're creative, we work very hard, and we produce outstanding results that other nations aspire to. As NASA's mission changes, we can rise to the new challenges that come with the new mission, and prove that we're worthy of that respect.