As for work
March 9, 2010 - Reading time: 2 minutes
Work at NASA continues, despite all the hoopla and hand wringing. This week we have crew members coming over to the low-fidelity Orion mockup to test out some Rotational Hand Controller (RHC) prototypes. One of the prototypes is a super-expensive mockup made at Langley that's electrically functional and has the correct translation, which is kind of cool, except that the body is a very old design and not really representative of what we're planning on doing. The next one is a stereolithed model that's volumetrically equivalent to the current baseline proposal, but I've made models of all the buttons and put them on Velcro so that we can move them around and try different places (in particular there's a lot of question about where the launch abort button is going to go). Then there's a third mockup that is like the baseline but a bit bigger to accommodate some proposed SCRAM (Safe Crew Return After Malfunction) switches that will give some manual overrides for roll control during a Bad Day. That may change too, but it's rough because Pencils Down is coming in a few weeks.
So that's exciting. Also exciting is that I'm working on a pile of proposals for us to get funding to pursue next generation HMI technology. This is sort of an independent path from Constellation, so if we do get money it stays there even if Constellation does get the axe. If it doesn't, then some of what we do might end up in the Lunar Upgrade or later revisions of Orion. Or if there's no Orion, it will more than likely end up in whatever crewed vehicle comes next.
It's really interesting stuff. The current Orion cockpit is actually kind of old school; it's not much more advanced than the Shuttle from an HMI perspective (the avionics themselves are actually really fantastic and there's lots of cutting edge stuff there). What we want to do is look past the current level of stuff and get into the really amazing stuff that will still be powerful and robust in 10-15 years. We have lots of great ideas, and a lot of it is going to involve industry and academic cooperation, which is a great bonus. Here's hoping we get to pursue them!
The sky is right there where we left it
February 3, 2010 - Reading time: ~1 minute
... and I'm actually kind of excited about the new direction that we're getting. There are two parts that bother me:
- We can't actually do anything yet. We just have to keep working on our same Constellation stuff, because Congressional fiat prevents us from doing otherwise; but nobody is really motivated to do that because everyone knows that the axe is falling. Keep working towards PDR? Yeah, right.
- There's a lack of milestones in the new direction. Sure, we're doing this great research and development, but for what? It would be good to have milestones and perhaps some specific destinations. Charlie Bolden addressed this, sort of, in his NASA Update today.
Overall I have good feelings about this. People keep asking the same questions to different people, and the answer is always "we don't know yet" ... I'm not sure when people are going to figure out that the answer won't change until congress decides to let it.
Keeping perspective
February 2, 2010 - Reading time: 8 minutes
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.
Why space is important
November 27, 2007 - Reading time: 4 minutes
It was discouraging to hear Barack Obama's recent comments on the space program. When asked about his plan to cut funding on the Constellation program in order to pay for proposed education initiatives, USA Today quoted him as saying "We're not going to have the engineers and the scientists to continue space exploration if we don't have kids who are able to read, write and compute." That attitude is discouraging because the space program can have such a positive impact on our nation, including its educational system, if given the chance.
NASA's missions after Apollo would have been useful, if relatively uninspiring, had they been integrated into a long-term goal of exploration. Programs such as Skylab, the STS, and the ISS have provided a platform to learn lessons useful in long-term space exploration, but we haven't done a good job of exploiting them, because we haven't had a long-term plan for exploration. This has been NASA's downfall, and this is why otherwise intelligent people like President Obama fail to see the value in manned exploration.
There are a lot of reasons to support the space program, in particular manned spaceflight. Detractors tend to ask "what has the HSF program done for me recently? Ever?" ... and it's a good question. The problem is that people are looking for results in the wrong places. Everyone thinks that NASA should be giving us flying cars, and amazing new materials, and perpetual motion machines - but while we've gotten some amazing things out of the space program, its biggest impact was social.
It's safe to say that Apollo program had more to do with national pride than anything else, and that has a lot to do with its quick demise after the first few moon landings. Apollo was a product of the space race, and once we had "won" the race, there was no reason to keep running - or so we thought.
The Apollo program made us proud to be Americans and other countries proud to be our friends, and it also inspired a generation of students to become engineers, and a generation of engineers to transform science fiction into everyday life. So many of the things we take for granted today - computers, telecommunications, the internet, and so on - were created by a generation of engineers inspired by our space program. But now, after a few decades of relatively boring feats, the inspiration is gone - and with it the well-deserved pride and respect that Apollo brought to us. Students who want to become engineers and work at the cutting edge could do better in India, or Russia, or China. The thought of this would be laughable (if not offensive) 30 years ago, but in this world that we've created, we're no longer the innovators - we're consumers of innovations from what was once considered a backwards corner of the world.
A focused manned space program with seemingly insurmountable challenges won't bring us flying cars. But it will bring us national pride, and the collective inspiration that will motivate Americans to help themselves - a younger generation inspired to do better, and an older generation inspired to support them by buying American products, and encouraging American businesses. This will have a bigger impact on our youngest generation than any education program our political system will allow. Manned space exploration can represent a positive, peaceful struggle for humanity, not for America - but by undertaking this struggle, America can achieve greatness and, more importantly, the respect that we've lost in the last decade.
The experts on the ground
September 8, 2007 - Reading time: ~1 minute
If anybody watches NASA TV (anybody?), particularly ISS Mission Coverage (*crickets*), there was a bit about scheduled TVIS maintenance. TVIS is something I work on at NASA/ESCG, and Friday I sat on console at the MER to help out with the maintenance tasks. So when the commentator talks about "the experts on the ground," that's me! Who knew?
Moving to Tejas
August 29, 2007 - Reading time: ~1 minute
... for real this time. I came to Texas for work as a temporary sort of thing, the idea being that I would stay for three months on this contract working for NASA (via Jacobs), then come home to Atlanta and be unemployed again.
But work is actually pretty fun. It has its ups and downs, and I've already started picking fights with some of my less reasonable superiors, but I get to play with neat hardware, see fun sights, meet interesting people, including astronauts (who aren't crazy, though some of them seem to have ego problems) and so on.
So I'm going to stay in Texas and work for NASA. There are still some logistics to work out, such as moving all of my furniture here and renting out my house, but I'm well on my way to being a registered Texan, and I try to not let that depress me. I have one co-worker who recently relocated to here from Idaho, and another from Indiana, and they seem to be adjusting reasonably well so perhaps there's hope.
And they're off
July 26, 2005 - Reading time: 2 minutes
The Shuttle Discovery lifted off this morning! There was a really cool view of the launch from the camera mounted on the external tank. The neatest things about that view were the fact that it was so stable, and also the amazing view of the planet dropping away.
I'm at work, so I had to watch the launch on the TV in the break room, which is perpetually tuned to Fox News. That was unfortunate, but they had live coverage of the launch so it worked out well. It was kind of amusing, because they're suddenly excited about space now, so they were really hyping it up and talking about what an amazing thing it was that just happened, and how we're the only country in the world that can do this (apparently Russia and China don't count) and how it's such a shame that people stopped paying attention to space. I'm just going to stop thinking about this before it gets out of hand.
But anyway, yeah ... Discovery is up.