Historical note: Throughout my entire career I've had a pattern of sending strongly-worded e-mails to people I shouldn't. This continues today. Also: man, this post brings back good and bad memories. Also: most of the e-mails I'm thinking of were a lot more caustic.
Note: as noted in a previous post, this is a lightly edited copy of an e-mail that I sent to co-workers recently. The lab I work in is meant to explore advanced human interface methods for future crewed spacecraft. As it is, a great deal of my time is spent trying desperately to wring funding and other resources (such as lab space) out of our organization so that we can actually perform some of this R&D work. This message reflects my take on the process and why it's important to continue trying.
We are extremists; what we pursue is radical. We recognize that the status quo is not acceptable going forward. When others gush about the NASA that they've seen in movies, we exchange knowing glances of derision and bemusement. As NASA looks to the future and wonders how to move forward, we ask for nothing less than the fabled paradigm shift - not in the self-destructive Kuhnian sense, nor the cliché MBA sense, but an acknowledgment that our current ways are holding us back, and we need to shed the shackles of the previous generation before we can truly extend our reach to the stars.
We are beholden to preferences of the heroes of a bygone era. The explorers of our youth - test pilots and athletes, Buzz Aldrin and Sonny Carter - these are not the heroes of the future. They are pilots and athletes, those with the "right stuff" in a physical and experiential sense that holds little relevance in a post-LEO NASA.
The explorers of the future will not be test pilots, sports heroes, or other mythical creatures. They will be engineers and scientists; practical people who have capabilities well-suited to the mundane life of research, observation, and maintenance. They may be occasionally called on to fly, maneuver, and meet daunting challenges, but they will not revel in these experiences - their heroism will be in the manipulation of data, the solving of practical problems, and the other details that make the life of an engineer or researcher so unique.
To support this new breed of hero, NASA needs to reform its notion of space travel and spacecraft. The notion of a cockpit is no longer relevant. Nor is the notion of Mission Control. Realtime monitoring and control of a spacecraft that is on or around Mars is not an option from Earth - the roundtrip time for data transmission makes fine-grained control of a crewed spacecraft impractical and dangerous. Control must be relinquished to the astronauts, which means they must be trusted as creative, informed problem solvers. Beyond LEO, the astronauts won't be flying - they will be passengers on a vehicle that is taking them to faraway places, mimicking the most vital aspects of Earth and ignoring all others. For the first few months of their journey, they will be sending messages back home, performing science experiments, and maintaining this vehicle, the first of its kind, as it carries them to their destination. Once there, it will deposit them safely in a place where no human has gone before, and these ambassadors of humanity will take our first steps onto another celestial body - a planet, asteroid, or moon - not as the romanticized heroes of our youth, but as ordinary humans who have accomplished extraordinary feats through the labors of their peers.
NASA cannot support humanity's next steps beyond Earth's gentle clutches with our current attitude toward space travel. We live in an artificial reality created by the Cold War - fighter jets; hand controllers and heads-down cockpits; pilots and commanders and civilians. "Mission Specialist" is still an official term of disdain bestowed upon those civil servants who may make it in to space but will never sit in the "captain's chair," commanding a craft as it valiantly thrusts away from the planet. In the future, the Mission Specialist must be held paramount, and "piloting" duties left to computers and automated systems.
This is the backdrop upon which our lab begins. The traditional spacecraft that we all recognize: Apollo, STS/Shuttle, Orion, or even the Starship Enterprise - these craft are based on notions that no longer apply. To breach the new frontier we require a craft whose design acknowledges that life and success depend on data, and human effort centers around understanding and manipulating this æther or Cyberspace; not limited by a predefined structure but free to navigate through it as the mission drives it to evolve and grow.
To accomplish this, we must abandon our current structure. The Unified User Interface is not just an interesting concept, but a necessity. Any compromise that secures the power, authority, or ego for any person or group at the expense of flexibility and autonomy will doom our explorers to an uncertain fate. If data rule, then data must be available in all places and at all times, in whatever form is appropriate, to whoever needs them. Making that possible is the mission of our lab. To achieve it, we must start with our own rules:
The work we are seeking is not only interesting, exciting, and fun - it is vital for the success of future NASA missions. To pursue it, we need to overcome disinterest and skepticism; being motivated and professional, and keeping these rules in mind, is a good place to start.