Wow!

Great message, well written and scary at the same time. I hope this gets the exposure at the highest levels.

Jeff captures the real issue issue "At the highest levels, there seems to be a belief that you can mandate reality, followed by a refusal to accept any information that runs counter to that mandate." Anyone who disagrees is replaced.

As someone who has had the pleasure of working along side of Mr. Finckenor, I know that he will be sorely missed and was an asset to MSFC.

I met Jeff in the early part of '04. My impression of him was that he was an intelligent and concerned designer. The Ares-I program should be the pinnacle of his career at NASA, instead it drives him away.

when he speaks of "CAD/PDM problem could be fixed" what is he refering to?

So DO something about it. My father worked for NASA for a long time until MO. He was lucky. He got to retire, but was there when it started and knew what was coming. The talent is leaving or getting thrown out. For whoever's left: NASA doesn't deserve you. Quit. All of you. Then go to the newspapers. It looks like it's just a matter of time anyway. You might as well do it on your terms.

Which CAD Software and PDM product is it, and why has it gone sour? Is it the software, or the implementation plan. Have other Centers successfully implemented this?

This is so very true. Several of us have spent 3 years of our lives arguing with people who don't want to hear what we have to say. Level 2 is blind, deaf, and dumb when it comes to hearing and responding to anything that looks like a problem. System engineering at Level 2 is a joke - they can't spell it, let alone do it. They're so fascinated with minutia that they've lost sight of the big picture and the associated problems that we (NASA) have solved before. "Sorry, we have to do something new, novel, and untried. Why? Because we think it's cool and it'll be our mark on spaceflight." Results are predictable - low morale, budget being blown on wild concepts, and retrograde progress. I've heard folks say that raising pigs would be more rewarding...

It is my bet that the MSFC decision Jeff is referring to, and what the Inspector General reported on, was the decision to "evaluate" Pro-E data, over all others, for the Exploration campaign. This was one of the worst and most costly decisions the Program office could have made IMO. Why did they do it? "Because this is the software I've been using for the past 5 years and I like it". Read the IG report... there were NO risk analyses, cost analyses, etc. that lead to this decision.

How many millions are being spent to meet this requirement and how much will PTC profit because of it? We will never know because 99% of these expenses are buried in the so-called "Cost of doing business". It has been my experience as well that PTC advocates, some of which (not all!) are arrogant and extremely short sighted, threaten non-users with failure by not using their products.

Jeff, I wish you all the best in your future endeavours. NASA leadership should be ashamed of themselves (most of which, more than likely, have never sat behind a CAD/PDM seat for more than a few hours).

Good Luck.

I'm willing to bet the problems are more with the PDM side than the CAD side. Most major 3D CAD systems are pretty good. I've run into a number of companies that have installed PDM software and within a short while stopped using it. It is usually not so "usable" that people just stop using it. It sounds good in concept, but sometimes is just too cumbersome to setup and use effectively. With the size of projects NASA is doing, I'm not surprised.

Wow, leaving over PDM issues?? I can't imagine that is the reason for the low-morale that he speaks of. Everyone gets frustrated with PDM systems because they aren't designed to make employees lives easier, they are designed for data integrity. I.E., they add headache to the engineers/designers/drafters. Sounds like NASA needs to throw some more dough at IT.

Jeff said it right on the money! For those who do not know what is going on in the Constellation Program and NASA in general is that there are 10 disparate NASA centers that have not to this day developed common CAD standards, formats, delivery processes, and configuration management for CAD files between centers and contractors. What is even more frightening is that the Constellation Program's chosen vendor's ,PTC Products, Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) system-Wind Chill is a joke! Somehow NASA chose PTC without open bidding back in 2003! Here it is five years later and the Constellation Program has thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at PTC and PTC can't even have their disparate PDM's within NASA communicate with each other. Did NASA break a federal law stipulating that all bidding performed by vendors shall be open to the public and not closed door? Do I hear Senator Waxman and Dingall getting ready to begin a Senate investigation into shady NASA procurement practices? None of the current vendors on track with the Constellation Program utilize PTC PDM/PLM systems! Why?

I assume that CAD is computer assisted design, but what is PDM? (Preliminary Design Manual?)

I assume that CAD is computer assisted design, but what is PDM? (Preliminary Design Manual?)
Posted by: dave at August 25, 2008 2:33 PM

PDM is Product Data management which is a somewhat poorly defined acronym. PLM is Product Life cycle Management. These are often overlapping definitions of software used to track all sorts of things associated mostly with CAD models. It includes often Bill of Materials, Part Revisions, Engineering Change Orders, Task assignments, Document Vaulting, etc. There are all sorts of variations of these products on the market.

I would like to know why NASA chose Wind Chill when none of their major contractors use it? Wouldn't it have been easier to pick a system already used by some of them? It would have simplified the process of integrating with these companies.

>>what is PDM?

Product (or Project) Data Management

How you make sure everyone is using the latest versions of the CAD models on a project. A big benefit of CAD is that users can copy data from one project/job to another or within a project/job to save time and perform multiple "what-if"s. One of the curses of CAD is that users can copy data from one project/job to another or within a project/job to save time and perform multiple "what-if"s and then you're never sure which one is the "right" or "official" version.

PDM, when set up properly, allows people to check versions in and out of a common library, but changes can only be made by one person at a time. All others are looking at potentially obsolete data and need to verify that their parts of the program will work with all the other official parts of the program. The "owner" of the file saves it back to the main library as required so others can use the correct data in their designs. Once the owner has finished with the file, he checks it back into the library so another person can check it out, if need be, to make other changes.

If you have no common library system for a program across multiple sites, it can be really, really hard to avoid design problems when the various parts are put together. Ask the Airbus 380 team. Differences in their models and PDM software led to last year's costly program delays while they had to go back and re-route a lot of the aircraft's wiring when it didn't fit first time. Errors in fit are bad enough. If the stress & dynamics guys aren't working on the right models, things can get really bad really fast . For a program as distributed as Constellation, data integrity is a critical element of design reliability.

...but even I realize that this is just a symptom of much larger, agency wide problems.

ding ding ding a winner.

CAD/PDM is the least of the problems it would seem. Thank Goodness for SMD, this is the one and only place actual NASA work is being done with success.
ESMD should reorg... become part of ARMD,,, and bring physics and biology back to the agency under SMD. I have to agree with the ASAP report. ESMD does not know what they are doing in general, now lets apply a big bandage for safety and hope it works.

It sounds like "Chris" has drunk the PTC Kool-Aid. "User-friendly" and "data integrity" are not mutually exclusive. I am a daily Pro E and PDM user and I have never seen such a cock-up of software in my whole life. The decision by NASA and its contractors to use Pro E was clearly made for reasons other than usability, cost effectiveness, and logic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Data_Management

I think the problem that Jeff refers to goes far beyond just the CAD/PDM processes at MSFC and NASA. He's pointing to a more systemic problem related to communication and management authority, or lack thereof.

A very short trip with Google will take you to this Wikipedia entry for Project Data Management:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Data_Management .

Leaving over the choice of the CAD system seems a little over the top. It is well documented that Human Spaceflight is hard and it get's pretty hot in the kitchen. For example, according to "Tracking Apollo to the Moon" by Hamish Lindsay, divorce rates at the development centers during the Apollo development were the highest in the nation.

This has tell-tales of someone who has been under stress, and simply needed to get out of the kitchen. It is also apparent they didn't get their way. The arguments are emotional versus logical and do not provide any real data to support the basic assumption for the argument - ie that chosen system is broken and cannot be fixed. Throwing stones is a cathartic way of dealing with the decision to pull the ripcord and just bail out.

If indeed there are technical issues surrounding this tool, I am confident given the current NASA leadership and governance sructure, that they will be raised to the appropriate level and dealt with. The agency has been dealing with MUCH more controversial issues than this, and everybody has had their say without reprisal.

Just a guess; Product Data Management (PDM) systems.

Kind of surprising that this is a big issue. I remember that in the late 80s early 90s IBM (when I worked for them) were providing CADAM/CATIA systems to Boeing for the design of the 777. I would think that it included Product Data Management (PDM) systems. Seems like it is again a case of NIH (Not Invented Here) at NASA.

It isn't any different at JSC. In fact, it may be a bit worse.

I admire Keith's attitude when, in his masthead, he says. "It's YOUR space program. Take it back". But sadly, the time for taking it back has passed. A noble dream is being scarificed on the altar of corporate corruption and political ignorance.

I am reminded of Langston Hugh's poem, "A Raisin In the Sun" when he speaks about the consequences of a dream deferred. Mr. Hughs was right in one sense. The dream can explode. It exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. But it also burned up on re-entry. It did these things in the face of people who were trying to stop it. We lauded them for their tenacity, but in the end, it didn't help.

Too many thoughtful, articulate, and clearly intelligent engineers are leaving NASA -- Houston (or better yet, DC), we definitely have a problem. Is anyone listening???

CAD is indeed Computer Aided Design. PDM is Product Data Manager. Jeff led the MSFC design team that created the first layouts and CAD models of the Ares I and Ares V (before Ares had a name back in 2005, during the Exploration Systems Architecture Study - ESAS). This team had been using Unigraphics CAD software, and the Teamcenter PDM for over 6 years, working out the kinks with the vendor and had the system fine-tuned for use to design and release CAD models and drawings for Ares I. The PDM had been used by the analysis groups during this time as well, who were able to work collaboratively with the design team. The team was so successful during this time, that NASA gained confidence in the design capabilities at MSFC. Consequently they awarded the Ares I Upper Stage design work to MSFC (unlike the other vehicle elements which are designed by contractors, the Upper Stage is actually designed in-house by NASA).

THEN management chose to take away the tools that had been fine tuned over the previous 6 years, and introduce a brand-new, untried PDM system and a CAD software that is designed for small assembly work. These new tools can be made to work, but they needed a similar "breaking in" time to complete customizations and training. This is time the project could not afford, and did not allow. It's only in the last few months that we've been able to release designs for production using the new system, and we are STILL struggling with large assembly management issues (ProE is inherently bad at handling large assemblies, mosly due to its philosophy of having all feature data available all the time). I cannot begin to estimate how many taxpayer dollars have been wasted due to this poor decision by NASA management.

At JSC we went through this back in the X38 days. UG was the tool of choice and Pro-E forced down the throats of designers. There were some heated debates over the wisdom of this, but did anyone quit over it? Heck no.

One thing I've realized in my years is that engineers will always make the tools they have work. Yes it may be cumbersome, but ultimately engineers figure out a way to get things done. To leave because of CAD/PDM issues is a little ridiculous.

There was no single CAD or PDM package in the design of ISS. I'd stick my neck out to say that that program, with dozens of contractor and government entities, was well designed despite an incredible number of CAD packages, independent PDM packages, and analysis methodologies.

The choice of tool is symptomatic of a bigger issue - a lack of understanding and even experience at higher levels. "All data must be in Cradle" is a mandate. "Damn the impacts to schedules and budgets, to hell with the fact that it simply cannot do some jobs now, and forget the issues that the subcontractors aren't using it. We have a mandate. We're going to do XYZ, not because we have to, but because it's neat. Don't argue, and for goodness sake, don't confuse the issues with facts and physics of why it can't work! We said so - make it work!"

Good engineering can be done without automated whiz-bang computer tools. It has been done - many times. But it's my experience that too many managers and younger (inexperienced - and often arrogant beyond sin) engineers try to substitute the latest "all things to all people" panacea software or programming tool or process for expertise and solid knowledge. In the end, you can't get around the need for good engineering.

Can NASA make this whole program work? Yes. Enough people care deeply about spaceflight. Is this the right way to go? Right now, the signs and symptoms are not encouraging. A lot of money is being spent on tools and ideas without an experiential backing, rather than on knowledge or solid engineering.

I'm going to have to start charging royalties for the use of my (First) Law.

>>For those who do not know what is going on in the Constellation Program and NASA in general is that there are 10 disparate NASA centers that have not to this day developed common CAD standards, formats, delivery processes, and configuration management for CAD files between centers and contractors"

---

Im not religious, but NASA has become the contemporary version of the Tower of Babel described in the Bible - Genesis 11:4. Lacking common goals, vision and purpose, the political groups within NASA are in conflicting and can longer communicate.

"There were some heated debates over the wisdom of this, but did anyone quit over it? Heck no."

...some people are missing the point. For the record, Jeff is one of the finest engineers I've ever met. His character, integrity, and judgement are impecable.

How I would love to go into so much detail...but can't because I fear for my job. But everyone needs to look around themselves and pay attention to what's going on. This isn't your father's space program. We've lost our way. Politics entered the market. Positions of managment were given when positions of leadership were needed.

Read between the lines...you need to look no further than what's about to happen with the upcoming test flight of the new program.

I would have given so much to have been born a few years earlier to be a part of the Apollo program...something worth fighting for.

Can someone please lead Mr. Justaguy to the British Royal Navy Astute Class Nuclear Submarine Program and Airbus Industries A380 Program so he can tell them that the combined loss of over $10 Billion U.S. Dollars that resulted in having to shut down the Astute Class Nuclear Submarine and Airbus 380 was just due to a little stress and a high divorce rate!! Mr. Justaguy did the British Royal Navy and Airbus Industries lack real data or were they just overly emotional when they decided to shut down their respective programs?

A fascinating but obscure email, at least to those who don't work for NASA. Thank you "Closely involved in all This" for your explanation. I tend to agree with "Justaguy". As a federal employee from a different department, I see problems that are similar, but not insurmountable. But as a long time space enthusiast, I am really hoping and actually confident that all the talent at NASA can get the moon job done.

Before we light the torches and reach for the pitchforks...

Jeff was the leading fan of the UG tools and when his tool did not get selected to move forward he went to the IG.
He routinely blasted out propaganda emails to all of us trying to undermine mgmts decisions.
When mgmt asked him to stop working against us, he continued.
Finally when he did not get the job he wanted he quit!

We will get it done with or without him.

So Me, tell us what's about to happen to the upcoming test flight

Same at KSC on all Exploration related work. Sad.

What's all the fuss about? At least Pro-E is a real 3D CAD program that's being used to design stuff in the world. Am I the only one that remembers the farce that was Intergraph's EMS 3D CAD system? Remember how you couldn't intersect 2 cylinders or the system would lock down? Just a little bug. Nothing to worry about. You had to have multiple screens with multiple windows showing multiple views and even then getting a new feature to show up anywhere near where you were working was a crap shoot. God forbid you should rotate anything. It was like watching the hands of a clock move (and I don't mean the second hand).

And oh gee, what a coincidence, Intergraph is located just outside the main gate to Marshall Space Flight Center. The tell every contractor in Huntsville that if you want to do business with them, you'd better forget whatever CAD system your company customarily uses and use Intergraph or else... Yeah, I'm sure that wasn't a crooked decision in any way. Just trying to help out a promising new company with a product that disappeared up it's own posterior orifice one day.

Kids these days, they have it too good. That's it. Back in my day you didn't have any of these internet outlets to expose graft and corruption. You went along with it and pretended to like it up until the weekend when you could finally drink enough to forget your day job. You had to be a man to be an engineer in those days. Even some of the women were men (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Pro-E has always been crap. They always appeal to managers who don't realize that none of that parametric garbage means anything to the designer. That's not the way parts are designed. The sad thing is watching CATIA become just as bad as Pro-E (the curse of version 5). I don't know much about Unigraphics, but I hope they're not going the same way.

To Snopes,

You clearly don't know the whole story. Jeff was a fan of UG tools because they worked and helped him do his job. He's one of the brighest and hardest working engineers I know.

PTC tools were selected without a competition or RFQ. I believe that is illegal in Federal business. He was told to stop using the UG tools right in the middle of a project. In fact, all of the Marshall engineers were told to stop using UG, and switch to PTC products in the middle of all of Marshall's projects! How much do you think that little decision cost the tax payers? Again, this decision was made without competition techincally or financially.

This is the way the whole Constellation program is going. Tools are selected without fair evaluations and RFQs. Then these tools are pushed onto NASA's suppliers. The bottom line is that inferior, unproven and expensive tools are selected to design and manage the future vehicles that will fly people! Jeff knew all of this and stood up to it.

It's a shame. NASA has lost a good man.
Best of luck, Jeff.

Snopes is right on in his assessment.

"We will get it done with or without him."

Not with those rockets you won't.

It's a sad commentary that someone so passionately in love with the program has come to such a pass. Some of the politics evident in the other commentaries also reflect the sad state of morale among a wonderful group of people. The NASA family is losing people like this every day. I would rather lose ten political hacks and five bean counters than I would lose anyone with a passion for what they do.

It's no wonder that people make bad jokes about using high-tech to kill scorpions in Arizona rather than going back to the moon. The public has no passion for space exploration. And everyone's solution for this seems to be to make people who have passion for their work disposable to politics.

So the next time you hear someone, someplace making bad jokes about what some call a national joke, maybe we should all forget our politics, remember our passions, and remember what we all love to do, and why it's so important that we do it.

Roci

Snopes - I take it you were one of those fine know-it-all managers up the line. I've never met Jeff, but his story is all too familiar. Until you've witnessed first-hand the waste, inefficiency, and morale-busting effect an obtuse manager can have on a technical team, please don't go off saying he "just didn't get his way" or that he was a "whiner". I myself left NASA for very similar reasons four yeas ago. In my case my final straw was with a mid-level manager who had bee around long enough to develop his "good-old-boy" network that protected him, and he did not give a damn about the technical work we were trying to accomplish, nor did he have the engineering knowledge to even understand what his team was actually doing. Instead, he just wanted to hit his numbers, and not have anything go wrong on his watch so he could move up one more notch to the next management position. So what do the good people do when, after years of trying to change something for the better, they finally figure out it isn't going to happen? They get the heck out and go somewhere where they can make a difference. And in my case, it was a move up and into the contractor/commercial space world where you have all kinds of pressure-cooker situations you constantly have to deal with. The difference though, is that you get to actually solve problems, develop solutions, and implement them.

There is a huge problem brewing in Huntsville with NASA MSFC that has nothing to do with rockets. The Defense Department is moving the Missile Defense Agency to Huntsville, along with several thousand jobs. Word is that no more than 15% of the workforce is moving to HSV so there is a huge incentive to hire engineers there right now.

You are going to see a lot of folks leave NASA MSFC, just like this guy did, for the Army and the more stable missile work there. It pays better too.

Windchill is a giant soul-sucking mess. I have yet to hear PTC deliver a compelling presentation on why anyone - let alone NASA - should be using such an unusable mess of software.

Sure, it gets the job done...if the user happens to be a robot. For real people who are trying to store and retrieve data using real world search, it's a goddamned nightmare. How else could you search on a massive database for common terms and get nothing...not even an error message or suggestion on how to expand your terms to find what you need?

Who the hell puts search options _after_ the search string, anyway? PTC, that's who. IMNSHO, they need to hire some human factors folks - but it's already too late for NASA, which has been and will be saddled with this crap software for years.

No one in Cx information systems seems to realize that while Windchill's capacity for storing, sorting, and presenting information might be near infinite, its usability - the primary way that people interact with the multitude of data stored there - is near nil.

PTC and NASA should both be ashamed.

Gotta second Snopes' view. Remember, "there are 10 disparate NASA centers that have not to this day developed common CAD standards, formats, delivery processes, and configuration management for CAD files between centers and contractors." Looks like management tried to fix this by standardizing on a tool that unfortunately was not to Jeff's liking. Selecting UG may have made MSFC happy, but then we'd be getting this same email from another source, every bit as passionate.

From Jeff's Email:
Fact 1: CAD/PDM only an "immediate cause"
Fact 2: Management's "failure to accept reality" primary cause
Fact 3: "Retaliation is real" and "threatened w/personnel actions"
Fact 4: Badmouthed by ED (Eng.Director) Manager
Fact 5: Report to IG precluded consideration for job

Watch and listen as management carefully spins another "disgruntled employee" story. You know, don't listen to all those "naysayers," the bad culture reported in the recent NASA survey, the CAIB report, IG malfeasance, lawbreakers, Agency Ethics Official destroying incriminating tapes, poor Constellation Program performance (slipping schedules, major risks, higher costs) and a litany of technical errors and omissions safely hidden from the public's knowledge.

Jeff rarely makes a "misstatement" and never to my knowledge an intentional falsehood. This is where MSFC's HR and administrative types will have trouble "selling" their normal stories about what a great job we are doing complying with rule of law. Both cannot be right! Further, Jeff is very well respected in the community at large and a very long line will form to make statements on his behalf. Many, many employees are similarly treated, threatened and their loyalty/passion for spaceflight used to silence them. In the past, the methods were mild, but corruption has become so commonplace that management practices these precepts boldly and without any restraint. If the rest of the workforce had 1/4 of Jeff's courage, integrity and work ethic, there would be no challenge we could not overcome.

So, stay safely tucked away in your cubicle or office away from any slips, trips and falls. Don't talk too much, stay away from the "troublemakers," be nice, keep coloring, tell them what they want to hear, there's cake in the break room and remember there's a long weekend coming up, so get your timecard in early! ---- "WALL-E?"

In many large projects, there exists a "thermocline of truth", defined as "a line drawn across the organizational chart that represents a barrier to accurate information regarding the project’s progress." So it was quite interesting to see Jeff's quote of fellow NASA workers as asking, "Where does the bad news stop going up?" The syndrome is very real and all too pervasive.

Frankly, most of the rest of what Jeff describes is also typical of large failed projects (my own area of expertise), which doesn't give me a lot of hope for ARES and our return to the moon. ..bruce..

Unfortunately almost every comment I have read is true. As a KSC employee that is nearing retirement (4 years left), I have lived through the final days of Apollo and now Shuttle. I have never seen such economic waste and lack of decision making in my career. How do you ask for money and facilities when you haven’t defined the better part of the requirements yet? Level 2 is a joke. The best way to describe the CxP was summed up by Brian’s email quoting Genesis 11:4.

Senior Management will only tell Hanley or Griffin what they want to hear. JSC wants to run KSC. Marshall is afraid they will eventually be cut out of the loop. The confusion goes on and on. It is a disgrace. NASA will get back to the moon but it is going to cost and cost. The entire program needs a reorg but I am sure Sr. Management believes they are doing just fine. Maybe a new administration will help but I doubt it.

Windchill has its flaws. From day one, it always did. It is getting better.

My personal opinion is train yourself. Ask the questions that need to be asked and find the solutions to those problems. Share the wealth with others, and you might get somewhere.

I've worked on a couple of CAD systems for about 5 years now, mainly ProE & W/C. Once you understand the system, it isn't as bad as it is made out to be. I've learned to think more like a programmer and less like an end user, which has taken me far with the software. I felt it was a necessary step to ensure that I would produce the best possible product for my customer. I am a ME by trade, so this was a huge stride for me; Call it adding diversity.

"Be resourceful and learn the tools." If anything, that is one lesson my education taught me.

It is a personal choice to be proactive.

Stardust-516 Wrote
"Too many thoughtful, articulate, and clearly intelligent engineers are leaving NASA -- Houston (or better yet, DC), we definitely have a problem. Is anyone listening???"

They are also leaving industry or simply not going into the field of engineering. I myself have worked for over 14 years in aerospace/defense, directly supporting NASA and DoD, and I too intend to get out and take my experience with me. We have the same issues in the private sector. Too many inept managers making decisions based on political expedience and not on cold, hard technical facts.

I have tons of experience.

ICE is a joke. Using old hardware is a joke. Shuttle should fly until the joke is fixed.

If this is how they ran Apollo, I'm amazed it worked at all!

Do you know what first flight success criteria is? Clearing the pad!

I plan to witness that one, cause big booms are fun to watch!

P.S. Every single person I know thinks the ICE/Windchill mess really stinks!

Been there, done that. I was at KSC for almost 19 years, and the emphasis on schedule and general lack of concern for safety finally drove me out the door before anyone else was killed. Bringing issues up to management resulted in punishment and blackballing. Managers who tried to straighten things out were reassigned to non-management jobs. Managers who would take the office to their house to eat pizza and drink beer while watching mandatory training videos (yes, this really happened) were more the norm. (And you wonder why employees didn't take that mandatory training seriously!)

Walking away from a high-paying job with great benefits after 19 years is not something done lightly or in a fit of pique. The people walking away aren't just crybabies and snivelling cowards. They try every thing they can to make things better rather than leave, and are singled out for attacks and abuse. They are people in mid-career, who have made tremendous investments in the space program, and just can't live with it anymore. I'll miss my pension and health insurance, but I don't miss the high blood pressure and chest pains that came from working someplace so terribly broken. I'm sorry I had to leave; I've never been sorry that I left.

NASA's institutional problems aren't just with the Constellation Program, they also exist within ISS. We've been scrambling for years to develop Express Logistics Carriers (ELC) so we'll have a place to put large equipment spares outside ISS for use after Shuttle retires. We're currently doing payload integration in parallel with the ELC engineering development. Not easy.

And ISS management has been focussed on getting 6-crew capability inplace and completing ISS assembly, so most of the lift capability was going to those efforts. They've only recently realized that 6 crew will have a lot of time on their hands if we don't have experiments in place for them to do. But then, NASA cut out large parts of the science pipeline a few years back to save budget that was needed for Constellation.

And of course, 6-crew capability doubles the number of Soyuz capsules we've got to buy from Russia. Our problems are wide spread because management has been forced to take the short view due to political management of the strategic direction and budget funding.

If we only had to solve complex technical issues, we could do that. Instead we have yearly battles to balance declining budget as it moves between programs. We could do just as well moving big holes around in our backyards.

To say NASA has become too political is really turning a blind eye to the history of NASA. NASA was founded, in part, to get the Germans out of the Army because they weren't trusted by a vast number of people. We wouldn't have gone to the moon if Kennedy, the President, hadn't mandated it. NASA is a political organization by it's very structure. The Director is appointed by the president. Politics aren't necessarily bad, they got us to the moon the first time. We just need better leadership to provide the right blend "Can do" with realistic planning and budgeting. NASA truly has some of the brightest people in the world working for them. It would be nice if we could manage to get the same quality all the way up sometimes...

This is Jeff. I've been rather amazed at the response to this and felt that I had to weigh in.

First, why I wrote this letter.

I've been at NASA for 19 years and have known many people. There had been rumors going around that I would be leaving, and I wanted to have all of these excellent people hear from ME that I was leaving and why. It didn't feel right leaving it to the grapevine. Admittedly it was also rather cathartic putting the period at the end of this part of my life, and I was relieved to write it. The outpouring of good wishes, congratulations and condolences in response has been extremely touching, and I am further humbled by these wonderful people.

It was not specifically intended as an open letter - all 127 people (not quite the "hundreds" on what was posted) are people that I've worked with directly and that I will miss. I left off a few people to whom I should have sent it, and I'm sorry about that. It was also not sent to anyone in my line management - they already knew I was leaving as I'd given my verbal notice the Friday before. Since they'd arranged the final situation, they didn't really need to be told why I was leaving. It might have been nice to be offered a carrot rather then just sticks, but I'm convinced this is all personally for the best.

I was not asked and did not give my permission for the letter to be posted, though I'm not surprised and don't mind that it was. On the whole I probably would have preferred my name being left off, but anyone who knows me would recognize it immediately, so it doesn't really matter. One person on my distribution called and said he'd removed all the names before sending it in - so I know Keith got it at least twice. I know emails have long legs and I stand by everything I said. I sent it knowing that it would be public to at least some extent.

Now I feel compelled to answer a few things I've seen posted.

"There's a lack of data...arm waving". Tough, it wasn't intended to give you data to chew on. All my data has been documented and submitted to appropriate places - which these forums are not. If you want to see the data, become a federal investigator and access the records.

I can do without all the junior psychoanalysis, thank you very much.

"An arm-waving loon". I supposed if a loon told me he was sane I wouldn't believe him. Unfortunately I think I have to operate on the assumption that I am not a loon, at least for now.

"Burn-out. Check". Have I been stressed? Yes. Do I enjoy my job anymore? No. Sounds like a good reason to find a new job, which is exactly what I've done, and I'm looking forward to it.

"Not worried about NASA because this guy is leaving...better for the agency that he's leaving...problem with him or with the agency?" You shouldn't be worried because of me. I'm one guy with my opinion, and the space program doesn't succeed because of one person (although you could probably argue that in Von Braun's case). Could I have contributed? Yes, along with thousands of others. Are there other reasons to be worried about NASA? I think so. I have lost confidence that NASA management can do the job. Because of that I can no longer put my heart into it. Since I can't believe in what we're doing, yes, it is better for the agency that I leave. Other people have not lost confidence. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not willing to spend any more of my life waiting to find out. And I repeat, the technical ability here is staggering. I am offended for my friends when I see comments on NASASpaceFlight about "They should have known this from the beginning!" Well, guess what? We did.

Now a little more technical:

"leaving over CAD is ridiculous",

You're right, leaving over CAD is ridiculous. I wish you had read the letter a little more carefully before posting. "Paycheck" (whoever he is) on NASAWatch read it and extracted the facts pretty well. The systemic problem is, in my opinion:
Management: "X is great, do X."

Technical community: "X is a bad choice and here's why." (massive amounts of data)

Management: "That's just an engineering issue which we'll work through. It's been decided that X is great, do X."

I challenge the NASASpaceflighters to start a thread about topics that meet this pattern. I can think of a half dozen without trying and only 1 of them is CAD. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard "It's been decided". No one ever told me I was wrong. All I was ever told was that right and wrong didn't matter, because... "it's been decided." I am not a child to be told, "do this because we said so." I need technical reasons and logic.

The CAD/PDM stuff is the immediate cause, but I'm not leaving because I've lost my favorite toy. In fact in my new job, I expect to do very little CAD, and that in a completely unrelated package.

"He's a whiner who didn't get his way and went to the IG"

Not a terribly polite way to put things, but I suppose it is somewhat accurate. Of course "my way" which I was always advocating was a call to do a technical evaluation to determine what we really needed to do. You know, things like writing requirements, then making selections based on those requirements. Some people would call that good engineering. Some would call it federal law. It never happened. Had it happened then I wouldn't have had any arguments to make and would have been shut down a long time ago. Had it happened and there were real reasons for MSFC and Constellation making the decisions they did, then I could have supported them even if I was less then thrilled. You go to the IG to report waste, fraud and abuse. I was duty bound to report what I saw as both a taxpayer and a government employee. If there wasn't any meat to what I was saying, then the IG would have sent me away. They didn't. Those who want to do the search may also want to look up a letter from Senator Grassley to NASA. It was a very powerful letter and appears to have been soundly ignored. It takes a lot of chutzpah to blow off the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, but NASA got away with it.

Those who argue with me will trot out an "evaluation" that was done in 2002, except that that evaluation was based on a CM tool ONLY (not CAD management), and it was fatally flawed in how it was performed. And yes, all you're getting here is an opinion, and again my information has been documented and given to the appropriate authorities.

Was I asked to "stop working against management"? I guess that's one way to put it, if I was willing to ignore reality, give up on the vision of what NASA needs to succeed, and toe the party line.

It was wrenching deciding 3 years ago that my job wasn't worth the mess that I was seeing. I had basically decided that a NASA that could make a decision so badly (which is not quite the same thing as a bad decision, though in this case I believe it is the same), and not be able to correct itself was not a good place to work. So I committed to supporting good engineering practice and federal law, knowing that I might be forced out. 3 years later, I have given up, which was again wrenching for me. The politics are too overwhelming, and it is indeed not a good place for me to work.

"PDMs only add headaches"

MSFC failed 3 PDM implementations in the 90's. A big cause were that they were major headaches to use and so they got ignored. Usability was a major reason for selecting the one that we were using up through the ESAS study. It is very nearly invisible to the CAD user and it was well accepted by the community. A functional and well implemented PDM makes your job easier, not harder.

"10 disparate centers"

This is a real issue, but also one of the roadblocks to progress. There are 10 centers, and they all do things differently, but the fact of working with contractors is continually ignored. On Ares alone there is tool chaos. MSFC is CAD A/PDM A for Upper Stage, Boeing is CAD B/PDM B for Upper Stage production, and ATK is CAD C/PDM C for First Stage. I've been arguing since 2002 that we needed to figure out how to handle these kinds of communications, but it's always fallen on deaf ears. Why? Because "it's been decided". NASA is not big enough to move the whole aerospace industry, not to say we didn't try.

"catastrophic level risks":

I'll leave the judgment of that term to those with access to the system.
as of 8/1

2491 (ARM 4889) 5x4, worsening
2592 (4x4), worsening
2865 (4x4), unchanged
3299 (4x5), new
2522 (4x3), worsening
1117 (3x4), unchanged
- at least one more being developed

"royalty"

Porter, I believe you've gotten your royalty payment :)

Jeff

Politics didn't get us to the Moon. Engineers, technicians, and a host of skilled craftsmen did that. Funny how the politicians try to spin things after the fact. All any engineer has ever asked for on the space program is to be allowed to do their job. There's nothing that will get you fired as fast as that, exept perhaps telling the truth. Instead all we get is interference by people who specialize in dragging everything out 10 times longer than they should take in the name of helping. Thank God I don't work on anything space related now. Between the screwed up CAD system that was forced down our throat and they yearly program "rephasing" we had to endure on space station, the futility of it all is readily apparent. Why anyone would continue to beat their head against that wall is beyond me. I had enough years ago and will never do it again.

Good for you!

Software is our connection with the data. I can see frustrations and the lack of control when it comes to third party software. There are fortune 500 companies that have Oracle database servers just sitting idle because the marketing people said they *have* to have them.

The suits are ruining the product.

Or maybe it's because the adminstration knows that the aliens are pissed at our exploration (probably not hahaha).

Well, here is more proof that Mike Griffin and his political minions are actively burning our ships in the harbor of history.

When will you all stand shoulder-to-shoulder, stop NASA in its tracks, and demand that changes be made to prevent the loss of another crew, and the end of our country's position as the premier space-faring nation on Earth???

JUST SAY NO.

STOP WORKING, EN MASSE.

GET THE ATTENTION OF CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT, AND THE NATIONAL PRESS.

THEY CANNOT FIRE ALL OF YOU.

THE TIME FOR ACTION IS NOW.

DO THE RIGHT THING BY YOURSELVES, YOUR FAMILES, AND THE NATION:

BE PATRIOTS.

Jeff wrote:

> Porter, I believe you've gotten your royalty payment :)

Indeed. Now to deal with the IRS.

I too had a dream as a child to work for NASA and I am sad to see someone give up the fight.  I see this often, even in our new program.  People talk a lot but do nothing.  This is not a popularity contest, listen to the people who are trying to help the future of manned space flight and stop listening to your buddy you go golfing with.

I would like to take the time to quote something dear to my heart from the CAIB report. It highlights the issues with MSFC mgmt specifically and they haven't changed one bit. 

"The Shuttle Program consists of government and contract personnel who cover an array of scientific and technical disciplines and are affiliated with various dispersed space, research, and test centers. NASA derives its organizational complexity from its origins as much as its widely varied missions. NASA Centers naturally evolved with different points of focus, a “divergence” that the Rogers Commission found evident in the propensity of Marshall Personnel to resolve problems without including program managers outside their Center – especially managers at Johnson, to whom they officially reported (see Chapter 5)."

[pg 187 CAIB report Vol 1]

This attitude permeates even the lower levels of the workforce.

As for this BS about which tool to use, every tool has its pros and cons, NOT ONE is the BEST.  What you need to do is sit back and say... do I want to do what everyone else is doing to help the standard along... or do I want to do what I am comfortable with and let the other people figure out how to integrate stuff. 

In the corporate world, you are not given 4 different tools that do the same job (e.g. Office). Take a hint and conform to one at least.  You can still have a healthy debate on another tool, but if a decision is made you stick with it ; that way if the decision changes down the road... EVERYONE does it together.

It also doesn't help that you have 10 copies of the same tool that don't talk to each other. Which manager at each center allowed that?  That's who should be on the stand.  Why are the centers maintaining their own instances still trying to control their kingdom?  Maybe if you all put your efforts into ONE central system, it would be as "great" as each of you claim your own to be.

The Agency CIO should take your entire center IT budgets from irresponsible IT decision makers and make you apply for every dollar you want to spend. 

VIVA ONE NASA!

"I have the answer, yet no one listens" - Anonymous

Wow, what a firestorm! Of course,a good, well-written letter that touches a lot of nerves and spreads unpleasant truths usually gets similar results. Good for Jeff for taking a stand and doing what he believes in, in both moving on with his personal career and in explaining very articulately why.

P.S. To Dfens - yes, I remember Intergraph's I/EMS. When we first used it at Boeing on the SSF Work Package 1 designs, we were using dedicated *nix boxes with a whopping 16 megabytes of RAM. It required an entire room of workstations running as a distributed-computing task up to 48 - 72 hours to run a "vis edges" model of a single ECLSS rack. And being in northern Alabama in temporary quarters (the "Space Station Building" over at the Boeing complex wasn't done yet), we had no solid UPS systems. Every time a bad storm would blow through we'd lose power. Our UPS could keep the room of machines up for about 10 - 20 minutes as I recall, but if a "vis edges" process was running, you prayed hard to your favorite deity that power would come back up. But when we moved to the new building over between the runways we got upgraded Intergraph machines with 48 megs - it was like a little bit of heaven to have a faster machine. Of course, the software still sucked.

So yeah, I remember. :-)

Jeff, may you find smoother sailing and better days ahead.



Now will someone please tell me - why are we going to the moon again?



Is someone pretending they are JFK, or is Halliburton going to be selling Lunar Green Cheese (TM) to the Iraquis?



What about our weather satellites, our deep space network, our "rogue asteroid warning system", our geomagnetic, solar and intergalactic event warning systems, the robotic probes in the solar system, our observatories in space, and our technology transfer programs. Oh and don't forget Aeronautics!



NASA was once an Agency that worked for the people of America and the world. Now it is just a fat and decaying lump of pork just waiting for the next half-a-dozen irreplaceable humans to be vaporized due to some mismanaged decision or short-sighted idea.



...and the ISS glides pointlessly above our heads.



What, is it 2010 already?



MRK

Well, Jeff certainly burned that bridge down. NASA has been receiving bitter, angry resignation letters since 1958. Jeff is not the first to quit in such a manner and he certainly won't be the last. There is nothing extraordinary here.

There are thousands of other workers still sticking with the program. Perhaps Jeff believes that he is smarter than the others. I hope that Jeff has not wrecked his reputation in light of future job searches.

The DIRECT 2.0 cranks are jumping on this letter but I do not see a single sentence in this letter that refers to any technical issues with ARES I.

Even more fundamental, Jeff is not technically qualified to pass judgment on Ares I, is he? Good luck working on helicopters.

Whether you agree with his reasons or not, this was a professional act. He played with the team for as long as he could stand it, and when he lost confidence in the project he walked away. Wouldn't aerospace engineering be more fun and the projects be better run if we could all do that once in a while? Instead we keep our heads down and do what the boss says. No wonder engineering is considered a quasi-profession at best.

The only thing that worries me is whether he'll think the environment in his new organization is better or worse.

As sad as I am to see Jeff leave, I do appreciate the fact that - even though unintended - we have brought to light a plethora of discontent, digust and worry among the NASA employees. However, if you ask any manager, I'd bet they'd tell you that NASA isn't bothered by these opinions or troubles.

Note: For any company that may be contracted in the future to determine the 'mood' of the Agency, please do not bother to send us a survey that includes multiple-choice answers, for I'm betting that the predetermined answers that you would have us choose from would not contain anything like what we have seen in this thread.

If people want to discover the mood of the Agency's employees, they need to do nothing more than simply ask the employees for their opinions. But give us the opportunity to state what's on our minds, not choose from an irrelevant, pre-packaged set of answers.

Well good for you Jeff. Finally someone decides to really do something about a situation they are not satisfied with. I think it takes much courage and strength to express yourself and your view point even when it is not popular to do so. And just like a post I read about Nasa's very own Mars Phoenix Lander, we can go in search of distant lands.

Peter

Please do not paint all politicians and bean counters with a broad stroke of negativity. Let's not forget that that without politicians and bean counters, there would not be any money to pay the engineers, scientists, or technicians to do the work that gets us there. Engineers alone do not get you to the moon. Politicians and bean counters do not get you to the moon either. It is the collaborative effort of all involved that gets you there. This superiority complex that each discipline has over the other needs to stop! It's bad on both sides. Learn to work together!

You think you have it rough switching CAD software? NASA just called us up last week saying that they're switching our oxygen supply to bromine, and that we would just have to adapt.

Sergei and Oleg chewed them out on the radio for like three hours (their accents give them a natural advantage at this), but seriously if this switch goes through I'm outta here.

"but if a decision is made you STICK with it"

Actually, I believe that is the problem we are discussing here, not the solution.

hey justaguy, i know you'll never read this so i feel courageous enough to respond:

i think the e-mail was sent to people who are familiar with his situation, and it appears as though he's stating that he has plead with 'management' and various obscure acronyms to have something done. my guess is that he's skimping on the 'logical' details because he's spent more than a decade slowly forming his opinions and expressing them over time.

somehow i don't think this was meant to be a blog entry for your edification.

It takes courage to speak up. I hope that NASA doesn't just dismiss the concerns listed here. NASA needs to bring in an outside independant company to do carefull surveys of NASA's employees and their concerns.

Good on you, Jeff. There are better days ahead.

I've read extensively about the problems with the two Space Shuttles, and now this. Why is NASA management so unbelievably incompetent, over and over?

Actually, one supposes that the question should probably be broader....why is *management* always so unbelievably incompetent?

People have no power unless it is given to them. Jeff and other brilliant people have allowed incompetent management the illusion of power. If the engineers at all 10 sites, who have the real know how and expertise to standardize the system and thus REALLY have the power, would do the grass roots revolution thing, management wouldn't even technically know how to stop it.

Jeff, I can't believe you held out his long. Congratulations and best of luck in your new job (you won't need it). Having left the same branch and the same managers (along with a dozen others) a decade ago, I can testify that the professional world outside your cubicle is a bright one, full of challenges and rewards to one that has such professional capability and personal drive.

Go get 'em, Tiger. : )

Joel

Wow, having read all the comments and re-reading Jeff's original post, I am almost in shock.

Having worked for a commercial enterprise stared by people who called NASA "the other space agency", I'd have expected it to a lot better.

My lesson after 3 years of work of blood, sweat, and tears: Clark's Law is effect outside of NASA too!

Data management... the new "rocket science". I like Windchill.

I am a soldier who happens to be reading these conversations. First, Jeff, having worked for the government for years, I can empathize with your plight. I do occasionally pray that our enemies are more gooned-up than we are. I have also dealt with the NASA-AMES Administration on numerous occasions...a Sissyphean Event on many a day; however, while reading the collective responses commensurating with your plight, it occured to me that were I a foreign "operator" monitoring these collective missives, I would surely had already learned a lot about key susceptibilities and vulnerabilities associated with the program. I am a combat veteran still serving overseas. I have seen the symbiotic effect of what occurs when too much information is shared in an open-forum like this. When you arrive at your next assignment with the Army's helicopter program, you will probably encounter some guys and gals who might appear to be like automatons and frustrate you, as well. However, should you post your misgivings and concerns about the program(s) you are working on there in a public foum, there are people there who have no sense of humour in that department. I feel your current frustration. Wishing you well in your next assignment. Ciao! Stu

Yes, I can't believe that they would continue using Pro/E.
Isn't that the tool they used to design the Shuttle?

Last I checked Pro/E was going out of business...

I agree with the PTC debacle...
PTC is second worst software ever invented.
It is so bad, that when Herbert Hoover, set up the implementation plan to use Pro/E and WIndchill do construct the Hoover Dam, the computers melted down.

They found that the computers of the day would experience imtermittent and often time unexpected software terminations (often reffered to as ProBURST)

They had to spend money and hire Bill Gates parents to conceive a child who would then build an operating system that would actually run the tools.

A secondary "black" project was also in place to create what was then called a "microchip"

This too helped in the development of the damn, which was completed in the spring of 2003.

Lastly, when the movie set (that was used to deceive millions of Americans that we went to the moon) was torn down, they found ancient hieroglyphs etched in some older versions of Pro/E discs.

These symbols led the team to a treasure that would solve all of NASA's budget issues.

Then again, many problems tend to occur in the interface between a keyboard and a chair.

This sure has touched a nerve.

I was around back in the old days when Admiral Steidle was working for the Office of Exploration Systems. The windchill choice goes back to those days when decision-making was more, shall we say, top-down. I see that decision is still haunting them.

Since those days, I've moved on and now I study organizational trust issues. Here are some quotes from a book called Building Trust, by Robert Solomon and Fernando Flores, that I think your NASAwatch readers may appreciate:

1. The essential virtue of trust is its openness, its celebration of possibilities.
2. In a power culture, people tend to see themselves as satisfying other people's demands and are far more concerned with doing so and avoiding punishment for not doing so than they are about moving the organization forward.
3. In a power culture, even to raise the possibility of failure--for example, by trying to explain the difficulties of a task to one's boss--is itself an indication of failure, and to be avoided.

I'll let readers draw their own conclusions about relevance of these points to NASA. Hey, wasn't there a culture survey not too long ago where trust was found to be an issue? ;-)

@Joel

Absolutely and second that - my career became a whole lot better after leaving NASA, Dryden FRC. Actually doubled my compensation as I went into contracting.

Once thought that space based industries, such as solar power satellites and orbital processing of materials mined from the moon and asteroid belt would help solve the worlds problems such as energy and pollution, alleviating adverse pressures on the earths fragile and finite biosphere. Although the entry cost for space based industry is high, the infrastructure is self sustaining once it reaches maturity. ( 12 seconds )

But, Alas, that was a Dream from long time ago that never made it into reality and now the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth predictions are coming true.

One Bright Spot is JPL. I had the very very good fortune to have had worked on Mars Pathfinder. The Mars Pathfinder team was one of the most results oriented and professional that I have ever had the pleasure to work with.

I work for a major sub-contractor to NASA. IMHO, there is a fundamental problem with the directive by NASA that all sub-contractors to supply native Pro/E CAD files. This decision assumes that there are major benefits to having total CAD associativity at the vehicle level. The thought process is something like "if a supplier of a major sub-system makes a change, it will show up at the top assembly level so we can avoid interferences". Or it might be "now we can press a button and get accurate weight and cg reports". This is so over-simplified, I don't know where to begin. OK, I'll begin here: Delivering full-up native (Pro/E) CAD models for large assemblies can have these issues:

1) Computer resource capability (CPU and graphics) will slow to a crawl with extremely large models using today's technology. And although technology will improve some, the computer recourse problem is in my estimation orders of magnitude in size - so Moore's Law won't do it.

2) Configuration Management will be overwhelming! Supplying ALL native CAD files implies that if ANY of those files change (10's or 100's of thousands in many sub-systems), then those files need to be updated at NASA (synchronized) with the native files at the sub-contractor. This is not really practical unless ALL the files reside in the same PDM system, which was one of the plans at one point in time.

3) Establishing ONE set of CAD and PDM standards becomes essential when using all native files, however ONE set of CAD standards across hundreds? of companies can take years of effort and adversely affect existing standards that were established prior to the directive.

4) Synchronizing CAD and PDM software revisions, and build codes for that matter, can be difficult since software updates are driven by different factors for each company.

Fundamentally, delivering MORE data is not always a better solution. Often, delivering the RIGHT data at the RIGHT time is the smarter decision. Ironically, the paper drawing process had the right 'minimalistic' thinking when the "Installation Drawing" (or "Interface Control Document") was established. Although it may take thousands of drawings to manufacture a single component from a supplier, it was recognized long ago that it was only necessary (and vital) to establish one drawing defining form, fit, and function of that item.

The good news is that this approach can be directly applied to 3-dimensional CAD. A single native CAD model can be created for each and every supplier component. This single model is not a new concept. It is many times referred to as a Digital Mock-up, or DMU. Although there is some extra work to create a DMU, the benefits are that it eliminates or mitigates all of the four issues outlined above that arise when delivering full-up CAD models. Obviously, computer resources and configuration management both become practical when focusing on a single CAD model vs. thousands.
The issue of establishing CAD standards and synchronizing software is also greatly simplified since those standards need only apply to this 'special' DMU CAD model. In fact, companies would be allowed to use completely different CAD tools for their manufacturing models and drawings and only need one seat of the native CAD software (or no seats and a translator).

Bottom line: I don't think forcing sub-contractors to use the same CAD tool and deliver native files is the right objective. The better objective is to establish a process of communicating 3D data between suppliers and customers in a way that both manageable and improves the design process.

Sorry for the long-winded post. Maybe I'm all washed up.

Mike

I appreciate the work and departing letter you have written with much thought. I know how Management can not listen to the workers. This is why unions were first started. I know that for the past 25+ they have been a useless. Wishing you the best in the future.

In regards to Jeff’s resignation from the Government … Jeff is a very hardworking and noble individual and should be applauded for his Government service and his new employer should be thankful for our loss and their gain. Contrary to popular opinions, their are many Government employees who work night and day to keep our country at the forefront of exploration. Jeff’s story is true and only scratches the surface …as the move line goes “you can’t handle the truth”. But as you all know, our Government is a bureaucracy made up of politicians with many of those trying to get the next job and making promises that are not necessarily true and often misleading. Jeff’s story is just one of many and it is easy to loose all hope as Jeff did, but even when hope has faded, we must never loose our faith. My direct NASA experience is that you can try and cover up the truth but it is always seeking the light of day, as is evident with NASA’s failures, cost overruns and schedule delays. But for all our failures, there are far more successes, and our goal is to make all projects successful for the cost and schedule promised.

For those who have lost hope, don’t loose the faith … God made laws such as Newton’s Laws and there are grass roots at NASA that still believe in this. All of those that Jeff alluded to are bound by these physics and no matter how our middle and upper managers like to ignore it and even try to create energy from nothing you can’t mess with these true laws. But as Jeff pointed out, most of our middle and upper managers have created a new religion where they worship tools as their gods, and there are way too many gods to count. They want to sit at their respective desk and ask the tool god how we are doing. Apparently some of them think they are getting answers and paying great deals of money for them.

As far as I am concerned …

Give me great people, who we have.
Give me dedicated people, who we have.
Give me smart people, who we have.

And we will overcome this false religion of tools and return to our roots, which put us on the moon the first time!

If the GAO can't force NASA cancel the PTC contract, and issue a competitive MCAD bid solicitation; what made Jeff think that he could single-handedly accomplish that task? Jeff hung around far too long and made it far too personal, IMHO...

MSFC was a UG based design center during the late 90's through 2003. Many engineers were highly trained and very proficient in UG. So guess what? Management thought that it would be a great idea to take all that experience, discard it, and break in some PTC products for the Constellation program. Oh yea, we will be building hardware to go to the moon while we iron out issues with ProE and Windchill/DDMS, no problem... There is no telling how much money has been (and will be) spent trying to train those experienced UG engineers to be as well versed in ProE as they were on UG. Would UG/Teamcenter have solved all these problems? Probably not, but we would not have been at such a disadvantage as we where when we kicked off this effort.

Implementation of Model Based Definition 3 years into the project, now that's an interesting subject...

Being on the outside, after reading all of this I get a feeling strangely akin to being a spectator at the Coluseum in its heyday...

Keith Vauquelin says "they cannot fire all of you".
Ask a former air traffic controller, OK? They CAN fire all of you...

I read Jeff's comments, and as an amateur psychoanalyst (I'm much better with machines, but you don't have to pay for my psych opinions) I see that (a) he believes that a better tool for this particular job could have been chosen, and (b) he's grown weary of trying to get anyone responsible to see his belief.
Set against a backdrop of the company (NASA) having returned to the exact same culture deemed a major player in the loss of STS-107, he's faced with no longer being able to look at the man in the mirror, and has decided to move on.

And some folks think that there's something wrong with that.

Jeff, all I can say is "been there, done that."

Nine years ago, I was sitting in a hotel room in Lakeland, FL, on an experimental turbine project. I called it "the project with no end", and grew weary of the threats and general disrespect of my manager. I needed to be home to take care of my mother, as my father had passed two years earlier, but my pleas fell upon deaf and ignorant ears.

One evening, as I sat alone, staring at my hands, I realized that I no longer loved what I did. At that point in time, I'd been doing it for 20 years and couldn't envision doing anything else.

I came to realize that by staying I was part of the problem.

Like you, I made my solution and internal peace by leaving.
Six months later, my former manager was "released" by the company, as all of my clients followed me to my new place of employment.

I was home to take care of my mother until she passed in 2005. I've been home to be a father to my youngest son, who is an honors student, unlike my oldest son, who grew up while I was globetrotting, and still struggles to overcome bad influences.

So Jeff, carry on, and be at peace with yourself. You never know where the road will take you. In my case, it took me from power plants to walking around beneath Endeavour with my family...something that for you who work there is no big thing, but a real big thing for a former steelworker.

I don't understand the general sense of animosity toward "Management" and the consensus that "Management" are not qualified to make "Engineering" decisions.

Most NASA managers I know, are also very good engineers. The reason they are in Management positions, is that they are engineers who are capable of making decisions. These decisions are often very difficult and have technical & programmatic rationale tugging in many different directions.

Far too many engineers get caught up in the minutiea of technical problems with no concern for cost and schedule. Managers are there to solve problems based on all three criteria and reign in the pet science projects that run amok.

Jeff, we don't know each other but I can understand your frustration. I worked for NASA for 35 years before retiring. I later worked at MSFC as a consultant to the Aries program office. I walked out exactly a year ago today after a senior manager I had known for a long time lied to me one time too many. It is truly sad that so many at NASA
still ignore the lessons of the past.

http://origin.foxnews.com/wires/2007Apr05/0,4670,NASAContractGrassley,00.html

April 5, 2007

"NASA failed to follow through on its promise to rebid a $5.2 million software contract after inconsistencies were found in the procurement process...

NASA's Office of General Counsel in November 2005 responded to a protest filed with Government Accountability Office, Congress' auditing arm, by saying that NASA planned to conduct a new acquisition competition within three to six months.

Based upon that finding, the GAO dismissed the procurement protest since NASA intended to 'issue a new solicitation after a thorough review of the agency's requirements,' according to a letter Grassley sent Thursday to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

But Grassley says the space agency did not promptly begin the review, and instead created a work-around in February 2006 to maintain the contract without notifying the GAO."

I too left my position at NASA (JSC) because of how poorly the PDM/CAD program was managed. There was a total lack of both software on behalf of the. It was criminal how we (NASA) basically paid for PTC to develop Windchill from a god awful piece of software to a ....god awful piece of software. I brought up serious security flaws with management and was sidelined, ignored and eventually they tried to get rid of me. The most very basic rules of software design were ignored and the result was a project (DDMS) that has achieved little, cost a lot and continues to exist despite its complete failure to deliver on most of its promises.

As an engineer and former designer, I had a slight preference for ProE over UG but one should remain open minded and not overly loyal to one platform or product - they're just tools.

I was so relieved when i left any involvement with IT at NASA behind me. I became even more relieved when I left the agency itself for better and more challenging work.

Got a bit excited before I pressed send:)

"There was a total lack of both software and design engineering technical experience on behalf of the project management."

Jeff,
Thanks, for being the only one in the room who spoke out, though I can see, by some of the people commenting here that many are still in the room with their mouths shut and their temprorary paychecks on their minds.

Anonymous stated;
"I don't understand the general sense of animosity toward "Management" and the consensus that "Management" are not qualified to make "Engineering" decisions.

Most NASA managers I know, are also very good engineers."

Anonymous must not work at NASA. A huge number of NASA managers are technical idiots, they are "yes" men and women. That's how they rose to their level of incompetence. Even someone as technically astute as Griffin is crippled by the pressure to do as he is told, so he's leading the sheep to slaughter.

There are some good technical managers, but they are few and are getting placed in positions where they can't do any "harm". This place sucks. I have 26 years with NASA and can't wait until I can retire. You can't fix this Agency, it's over. No force on Earth can repair the damage. Incompetence and political butt-kissing is an inoperable cancer at NASA and it will die, it is just a matter of time.

The observations that have been made concerning the state of our nation's space program are tragically true. The example given here is just one symptom of a much broader characteristic. Many do have a great love of NASA and the hope that its mission brings. We are all in hopes that our country can find a way to learn from these mistakes, correct our errors, and not repeat them.

In order to make progress, global issues like these need to seek root causes. If these were isolated to one project, program or area they could be addressed in that way. But, the wide spread commonality experienced by so many is evidence of a more entrenched flaw.

I believe the root cause issue that our space program faces is in the fundamental definition of roles and responsibilities that have been allocated to NASA scientists, engineers, and managers. Today at NASA, control / technical authority lies in the hands of 'administrative professionals' and has been removed from the hands of practicing scientists and engineers. This fundamental shift of control of NASA projects and programs results in critical decisions being made by personnel without sufficient capability to make those decisions. NASA technical experts are used only to advise and consult with managers so that they may gather the information they believe is necessary prior to making mission critical decisions. This insistance of putting technical authority into the hands of management bureaucracy characterizes the condition of our agency at this time.

It is believed, and stated, that a good manager can manage any project. Which means that a person does not have to have skills and abilities in a certain field to be in charge of it. Many in-flight failures have been the result of this philosophy. NASA has confused management with leadership. These are two different functions and combining them results in a dysfunctional organization.

The bureaucracy within NASA is very powerful and there are currently no effective ways to combat it. All the appeal routes that are in place are false and ineffective. NASA scientists and engineers are removed from their positions when they challenge unknowing managers who make mission critical errant decisions on the systems NASA technical experts know best.

Given the current set of circumstances, I believe that Congressional legislation is necessary to re-define appropriate roles and responsibilities within NASA. The current broken philosophy of business that controls the agency is so powerful that those that create it and maintain it will not give up control willingly. NASA is not an agency that can afford to put people in charge of things they do not understand. NASA scientists and engineers must have technical authority over their work in order to insure its success.

Ask yourself this question, do you really want a space program that is limited by the skill level and lack of vision of middle management bureaucracy? If not, change is needed.

Unlike the commercial world, where many managers are MBAs plucked from business schools, NASA managers are engineers who have worked their way into Management. I agree, not all NASA managers are techincally competent and some are just big suck-ups, but many are good engineers with good leadership and decision making skills.

That said, I do work at NASA, and I have seen many instances of folks put into leadership positions who have ZERO technical qualifications in the discipline to which they are assigned. I'd like to think that these are anomalous occurences. Perhaps I am naive, but I just don't think it is right to paint Management with the broadbrush label of inherent incompetence.

I just don't buy into the "us" versus "them" attitude of the chronic malcontents. There are just as many bad engineers, per capita, as there are bad managers. While this exists in any organization, I do find the disparity at NASA far greater than in the commerical world.

"...Unlike the commercial world, where many managers are MBAs plucked from business schools..."

I've always wondered how you can become a "master" at something you've never done.

Unlike a master plumber, or electrician, or a nurse, who must demonstrate a certain level of proficiency, a "Master" of Business Administration often has never managed a successful business enterprise, which makes the degree an oxymoron.

Real-world examples of MBAs would include T.Boone Pickens, Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Ted Turner, and Lee Iacocca.

Wow, am I glad to work for Mission Operations Directorate. I don't know an incompentent manager (technically or otherwise). Every time I raise a technical issue, they are with me or ahead of me. No, we don't always agree, but we always work together. Yes, mistakes have been made. I have worked in several more politically motivated organizations at NASA and in industry.

"NASA managers are engineers who have worked their way into Management. I agree, not all NASA managers are techincally competent and some are just big suck-ups, but many are good engineers with good leadership and decision making skills."

I would have to say after working at multiple NASA centers, having spent over 20 years with NASA, developed flight systems for multiple programs, and known many NASA managers, this statement is inconsistent with my experiences. Its not that we are "malcontents", it is that we have a dedication to success in space, and a love for an agency that we want to see succeed, but cannot in its current condition.

The point is that we are operating under a philosophy of business that inappropriately mandates the allocation of technical authority to 'administrative professionals' removing it from 'technical professionals' who have the most time and background in the various areas we work. Our policies are such that our best technical workers are inhibited from success by being required to take direction from those without the capability to give that direction. Management is not equal to leadership. NASA does need leadership, but has mistakenly given leadership roles to management. All large organizations need management, and so does NASA in order to handle the day to day task of running a large organization. But, requiring that these administrative positions then assume technical authority over NASA projects and programs leads to failure.

Technical authority on NASA projects needs to be returned to the true technical leadership of those projects and be removed from the administrative professionals that currently hold this authority. It is not very difficult to determine who the real technical leader is of most projects. NASA policy documents (like NPG 7120.5B) were changed to remove control of NASA projects from project leaders and put it into the hands of line managers. This can be reversed in order to address the issues we now face.

NASA managers in general, from my experience, are not skilled engineers and scientist that rise to management. Instead, they are personnel who either: a) do not desire to do technical work, b) cannot do technical work, c) desire to climb the organizational ladder, d) want to incread their pay, or e) have the desire to have control over others. None of these are qualifications to make mission critical decisions about systems that are outside their area of expertise. In contrast, most practicing scientists and engineers have no interests what-so-ever in going into management. But, they are the most qualified technical experts on the products they develop. Our current methods of allowing personnel to assume inappropriate technical authority in management positions is jeopardizing the success of our mission and the safety of our crew. See the CAIB report, and Rogers Commission Report for further evidence.

I find it ironic timing that I got a reminder this week about taking the annual mandatory "No Fear Act" training.

It seems to me that the ones most feared are the rank and file employees.

To 1 of 3%'s list of reasons for promotion, I would add "(f) someone who's been around long enough that it's deemed 'their turn'".

The change in NASA management styles over the years is mainly visibility. Von Braun and others like him went to the machine shops, the clean rooms, the wind tunnels, the test stands to see with their own eyes how the project was doing. This also gave the worker bees a chance to say what problems they were having. By contrast, I see my branch chief once a month when he does the safety walk-through. As for the managers above him, I might see them once a year, perhaps on awards day. In five years, I doubt Dave King has ever set foot in my building, much less spoken to someone that's not SES. Dan Dumbacher has been Engineering Director for over a year, does he ever leave bldg. 4200 to talk to the peons? Jim Kennedy and Rex Geveden at least came down to the labs to see what we were doing.

As one who left the MSFC because of the very same issues stated in Jeff's email I continue to be confused by why the type of management styles at MSFC that don't put people first, don't listen to issues and are more interested with upward politics than running a Center are allowed to continue. Is this management style a flow down from a NASA culture or just an incompetent one at Marshall.

I came to NASA like many who have provided comments here, for the right reasons. The space program was important to me, I dreamed of being part of it and wanted to be a part of histroy.

Over the last 10-15 years of my career, much like Jeff, I saw a management that didn't really care for the input of subordinates, and didn't cherish technical experience but only that individuals were put into postions that did cause issues.

This mentality is much what is stated as the cause of both the Challenger and Columbia accidents, which Marshall certainly shares a role in. My question is how long will NASA allow this management mentality to continue before NASA is forever damaged as an organization. These managers will move on, just as I have, but what will they leave for those who believed in the Space program.

I have seen more experienced good people leave Marshall in the last year than any time in my histroy at NASA. This was vertually unheard of years ago, individuals thought they would be a NASA until retirement. You will have to evaluate why this is occuring.

I believe that the executve branch needs to understand that NASA will not be successful in its current endevour if the current management style at the top levels of Marshall (and within NASA) are allowed to continue.

Dave - one reason why MOD functions with reasonably competent managers is because within MOD people must be certified through training and testing before they can move up the ladder. Within the ISS program there is no such certification and in fact most 'managers' have no relevant experience or education in the areas they manage. The current program manager is a big believer in putting people 'he knows' into positions of management, qualifications are irrelevant. Unfortunately ISS is a really fine example of an organization in which there are few competent managers and even fewer leaders. But fortunately most of the real work in developing ISS was done long ago. Now most of the bloated ISS organization oversees work being done by MOD. In the areas where ISS attempts to do the work itself, the organization is ridiculously overloaded with people - in one area I worked prior to coming to ISS, we had a dozen people supporting a half dozen Shuttle missions a year. ISS (take a look at the inefficiencies of OC) now has over a hundred people performing the same functions but at a much slower flight rate. There is no shortage of funding - there is a lot of waste - too many unqualified and inexperienced managers trying to surround themselves with too many people to do the job effectively. This is operation by consensus management. You rely on consensus when you don't have the ability to make a decision. The m ore people you have th more you think that the consensus must be the right answer. No wonder there are so many boards and panels all trying to integrate one another. Unfortunately some of the poor ISS managers with nonexistent leadership or decision making ability have migrated to Constellation where they've reinvented the board and panel structure for us that has worked so poorly in ISS. We'll never get there at the rate we are going - you may have noted that the Ares launch date has slipped 5 years in the last 4. At one time we were going to try and have a vehicle in orbit before the last Shuttle flight.

All hail Jeff Finckenor! He has started a NASA dialog that was long overdue! Is anyone in management listening?

You know, I just posted a comment, asking if anyone in management was listening. But then I realized that we've killed 14 astronauts and lost 2 Orbiters and yet nothing has changed. I think I just answered my own question.

Unfortunately, I don't think Jeff's departure is going to make a bit of difference to NASA. It won't even register on the radar. Too bad...

You Know: Leaving over the choice of the CAD system seems a little over the top since there were many other Engineers that had to change tools at that time and he had been working with that tool when others had changed and his data would not go back and forth to others. We all had to change before 2005 but Jeff did not and the managers want us all to use one tool so the files go back and forth keeping their properties. They would not do that with all the different tools. I do not know about the contracts but I do know we all work for someone and when told to learn & use a new tool most of us will do it or leave. It means a great deal to me to work at NASA and I take pride in my work both individual and as part of the team. It looks like Jeff did not want to fight for his dram but more like not learning a new tool. We change tools all the time and Pro-E was what we were to have done all the Ares work in and that was picked before we had prime contractors. It is sad he is leaving NASA and not learn a new tool since he is a talented CAD modeler but since he would not change from UG he will like it better with the Army that uses UG right now. We all get to the point where we do not understand change and with the number of new Army jobs that pay more then the NASA jobs in many areas MSFC will get hurt by loosing some very talented people.

Huntsville/Madison is growing so fast and there are so many high paying Engineering jobs coming in it will be hard to keep a stable work team over the next few years. This looks from the Engineering level that it will hurt if NASA does not start do retention bonuses to keep the talent but this a dream as well.

Human Spaceflight is hard and it get's pretty tough at home with the stress and the amount of hours we work. Most of us work hours for free just to get the job done and we loose many hours at the end of the year. I agree with the example, according to "Tracking Apollo to the Moon" by Hamish Lindsay, divorce rates at the development centers during the Apollo development were the highest in the nation. Since this is about the job and we become part of it. I had one old timer tell me it was being infected with Space Flight and I see what he meant since many will sacrifice much for the goal. What is funny our managers say we are running a marathon not a sprint but then they push us like we are running a sprint the distance of a marathon and we all keep going.

This is tell-tale symptoms that we are all under stress, and simply some needed to get out as Jeff did. He did not get his way to make us all go to UG as he tried to push for in the meetings. All systems have problems and as an Engineer we will work to fix them since that is what we do. As stated earlier: Throwing stones is a cathartic way of dealing with the decision to pull the ripcord and just bail out. Especially on your way out and not trying to help fix the problems Jeff had with Pro-E other that his resistance to change. Change is very scary for us all but some leave instead of changing, which is very sad.

Now we all need to get back to work since there are many of us that want to be part of NASA a