Blunt Talk in Houston

Summary: "Houston, YOU have a problem."

""If we flounder and lose out on this opportunity, it is unlikely that our nation will have a similar opportunity in our lifetime," Bolden said."

Yep. Well I hope General Bolden that people at NASA will come to their senses. I also predict that NASA will try and be all over the "commercials" for crew access. Please note that this may be a recipe for disaster as well. Come up with solid, legitimate and achievable requirements. Make sure they are followed and then do not interfere further unless requested. Make sure NASA is on top of its game. NASA MUST check the work, ensure commercials deliver "safe" vehicles. But DO NOT change requirements with the goal du jour. Do not ask the vehicles to do every thing and any thing. ISS/LEO is not the Moon and even less Mars. Dedicate NASA workforce to help make sure the commercials do it right. Use NASA's unsurpassed expertise where it belongs. A few of these principles will go a long way towards your overall plan.

Otherwise... Oh well...

There's nothing wrong with giving more than a billion dollars a year to private industry in order to help them to develop their own manned spaceflight capability.

But the real problem with the budget is what the President is-- not doing-- with the other $19 billion a year.

Its time for us to begin exploiting the natural resources of the solar system in order to help reduce the cost of space travel, grow the economy, and expand human civilization beyond the Earth.

And that's why one of the first things we need to do is to set up a permanently manned base on the Moon to see how well humans can adjust to a hypogravity environment, to find out how much mass shielding is really required to protect humans from galactic radiation, and to begin to extract oxygen from lunar regolith for air, rocket fuel oxidizer, and as the predominant element of water.

A Moon base is the next logical step in our manned space effort. And the sooner we build that facility, the sooner we'll reach the time when we can exploit the Moon's natural environment and resources for the economic benefit of humanity--- and the quicker we'll probably get to Mars and beyond!

Marcel F. Williams

Is it me, or is this starting to sound like Pres. Jimmy Carter telling folks to turn down the heat and put on a sweater to deal with the energy crisis?

Bolden has a problem in that the workforce is not aligned behind him. He's got his hands full with this one.

The message I heard was, stop complaining and just get on board....start drinking the kool aid.

As someone working on CxP/Orion, I'm open to something new, but you cannot expect me to be happy about the cancellation, which might cost me my job, without giving me substantial details about the new plan! It's asking me to abandon what I'm working on, what I happily come to work everyday to be part of, for the promise of doing cool things.....cool things that may or may not keep me employed.

It sounds like Bolden sees a problem with an unhappy workforce. But his solution ...

Let me create an analogy. There were unhappy people in the US military during the Vietnam War. I can imagine a Marine Corp general arguing with disaffected troops that their lack of enthusiasm risked losing the war for the US.

But the truth was, the US didn't lose that war because the troops turned against it; it lost because the US government wasn't willing to pay the financial and political and casualty bills for invading the North, which was the only certain way of winning the conflict. And since the US public grew tired of bloody stalemate, the inevitable result was a (thinly-disguised) capitulation.

So. Bolden's in a spot. Victory is in doubt and without other alternatives, he's reduced to blaming the troops. But lack of enthusiasm on the part of the "troops" didn't put the manned space program in danger, and trying to stir the troops to greater effort isn't going to have much effect. The basic problem is NASA is short funded for the things it's supposed to be doing; the bigger problem is that the people who determine budgets in the Federal government don't especially want a large manned space program, and the really huge problem is the vast majority of Americans -- in or out of government -- have lost any significant interest in manned space programs.

I seriously doubt that Obama's slowly paced, look-but-don't-touch manned space policy is going to improve that low regard. So Bolden has a problem he can't fix. Maybe they should give NASA and contractor personnel Purple Hearts while they're handing out the the pink slips.

Bolden to JSC:
"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

Has a transcript of his speech been published anywhere? I'd appreciate a link. Thanks.

I'm a little troubled by Bolden coming in to tel us things have got to change, but offering no changes in terms of the organization or how it operates.

Bolden and the others at the top of HSF would do well to take a look at the organizational structure of HSF with an eye towards figuring out what went wrong with Constellation and the other current programs that made them so expensive and so long and drawn out.

Do they have personnel problems ? Organizational problems ? Bolden telling the audience that things need to change is not going to do it. He needs to make some changes.

Unfortunately we have some really weak people in place for such change. Gerstenmaier is a brilliant technical engineer, but avoids personnel and organizational aspects of his job. He just delegates to his nearest subordinate. Coats hasn't seemed to have a role in changing anything. Most of the changes over the last decade have been for the worst, with poor choices of the people who were placed in charge.

Bolden is right, serious change is required. We are all waiting anxiously to see you take the reins and do something.

Well well well

Just call it Human Factors in research. I happen to remember Dr Griffin stating a very same type of message. If NASA does not have work for you, LEAVE the AGENCY or we will RIF your position type to get the workforce down at the centers who are not fully funded to conduct exploration.
I noted and asked why in the name of R&D for the future are we building a rocket and capsule like the 1960s.

The answer was "It is complex"
5 years later!

Now what goes around comes around. The last I heard from General Bolden, Our people should not be afraid to die trying, WE expect that everything NASA does from now ON will make you nervous!

Have great NASA day exploring the universe!

Has members of the Augustine Committee, Beside Norm and Crawley, made any statements about Obama's budget? I'm most interested in hearing what Bohdan Bejmuk has to say about it.

Bolden is doing NASA employees a favor by telling them this change is real and they would be well advised to figure out how they can contribute to it. Sure, they can wait to be told, as many commenters here seem disposed to do. But in times of change, it's in people's best interest to be proactive.

NASA has gotten used to the luxury of producing nothing of tangible value to the rest of the country. What has NASA HSF done in the last 30 years? The Shuttle Program launched some satellites that could have gone up on expendables for less money. The Shuttle Program also repaired and rescued some satellites, which was a unique contribution. And the Shuttle Program assembled the ISS, which has no value unless it supports R&D or other useful activity.

The ISS Program couldn't support much of an R&D program until it recently got it's full crew of six, but by then it's R&D budget had been slashed to pay for Constellation. Don't tell me the ISS hasn't produced much R&D - it hasn't had time and NASA hasn't really tried.

So in the last 30 years NASA HSF has produced a Shuttle that repaired or rescued some satellites and built a space station that has only just begun to do its R&D work after having that work be underfunded. And then proposed to deorbit the ISS after only 5 years to pay for a program that wouldn't produce anything for at least another 25 years! And none of the outraged voices we hear today had a negative thing to say about it.

Do you see the pattern? NASA HSF is perfectly content to go through the motions of space flight (they call it being "operational") without ever doing anything of value to anyone outside the clan.

Well, the cat's out of the bag now. The Administration is offering NASA HSF the chance to do something useful and they had bloody well better take it!

I'm too busy working here at JSC to go and listen to the myriad "Everything is going to be fine" or "Tow the line and keep performing" speeches that have been going on recently. The more of these we have the more everyone starts to freak out anyway.

I had a great Innovation day yesterday, got to show off some of my work and made some contacts with interested people. The amount of awesomely inspiring work that goes on here was really nice to see, from 3D training simulations, to full scale spacecraft mockups, to ways of improving or rethinking common processes, to even biologically/nature inspired technology.

Finally got to see the speech. The thing that jumps out at me is the fact that he needs to do this at all. If this was such a great plan then why hasn't he workforce been convinced and of their own volition, jumped in to support it? Good leaders create a vision for their organization and bring their teams along not by threating and cajoling but by inspiring them. I think Mr. Bolden's problem is twofold. NASA's workforce is tired of being stuck in LEO and was part of a program that for the first time in along time was actually being executed. Hardware was being built, the low level troops were engaged. For more had been accomplished then the paper studies of the past. Mr. Bolden has taken that away. His second problem was that when he took that away he didn't offer anything of substance in it's place. You can offer all the excuses in the world why that happened but as the leader he should have known better and had details about how NASA was goign to transition from it's current vision to this new one. Two months later and I and my fellow workers still don't know what is going to happen. Plus why should I have any faith this plan is going to be executed either. In 2012 or 2016 some one new will be presidient and this will all change again.

Mr. Bolden is in real trouble. The best thing he can do is to stop blaming the past, stop blaming the workers and start providing some details and getting some program offices started instead of leaving everyone in limbo.

It seems like the administration in general, and Bolden in particular, aren't very good at communicating the message - if they were, it might be better received.

Having said that: the people here (NASA in general; JSC in particular) need to remember that we're dealing with complex problems here, and there's no one solution that's perfect. Moon first or Mars? There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Commercial crew or NASA to get to LEO? Again, each has points for and against it. Robotic or manned exploration? Both? Neither? How about continuing on with Constellation as-is? We know plenty of people are against that too. Continue using the Shuttle? Same thing.

What *we* need to do (and what I think Bolden was trying to get across) is recognize that these are, in fact, hard decisions, and just because we don't agree with all of the details, doesn't mean the whole plan is bad. There's no plan that's going to make everybody happy.

I'll say it again: There's no plan that's going to make everybody happy. We're not talking about the best way to get to the grocery store. These are big steps, and complex problems, and there's nothing that everyone is going to agree on.

The way get past that problem isn't to cripple the program with petty infighting, self-preservation, and turf wars. If we all get behind the parts that we agree with and do our best, NASA (and with it, our country and the world) benefit. If you just can't find anything you agree with - maybe it's time to go somewhere else, rather than just obstruct the rest of us; there are plenty of people who would jump at the opportunity to be a part of the next big thing.

I think I know what the plan is:

(1) leave launching astronauts up to commercial interests or foreign carriers. Provide the US commercial interests with assistance if asked.
(2) continue to operate ISS as best we can; plan for Russian launches of crew and stand by to see if there is any cargo capacity, particularly on return;
(3) build a LEO emergency return capsule;
(4) start planning for an asteroid mission, to take place in about 15 years; over the course of the next 5 years, we'll figure out what it looks like, how we'll launch it, what sort of propulsion will guide it, which is when we decide whether or not, and what kind of an HLV to start on;
(5) start planning for a Mars orbital mission, to take place in about 25 years; we'll figure out how we will do that in about 5 years, too;
Somewhere, people are working on the big issues that require resolution over the next 5 years:
a) mission trajectory and duration;
b) zero-G vs artificial G;
c) high energy earth entry vs reusable, ISS portage;
d) vehicle configuration and design heritage;
e) key systems and design heritage;
f) mission and vehicle prototype testing requirements.

So, in short, we have a semi-hiatus for about 5 years during which we'll continue to fly ISS, and we'll build and deploy an ISS return capsule, and we'll be working on the problems associated with the human deep space missions.

Since that takes us to year 7 of the Obama reign, assuming he wins a second term, we should really figure on the next Administration deciding whether or not to go forward with the human deep space missions and any of the big hardware that might be needed, like HLV.

Of course if Obama loses in 2 years, then we'll see what the next guy wants to do, but no harm, no foul, since we've not committed to anything at this point.

In the meantime if commercial comes through at much lower cost, then we have a whole new set of considerations and options.

Bravo, eep. I couldn't agree more.