Do These Words Still Work?

Well, with the new Vision, they apply a lot better than they did under the old plan!

First time we've heard a US President endorse indefinitely long stays of humans in Deep Space. To extend life to there indeed! Both the Vision and the Mission fit well (and it is good to keep them apart - an issue I often see misunderstood at other space agencies).

Notice it says nothing about needing to build LEO launch systems, or, indeed, any systems. It allows NASA to relate to industry and academia, as performers, as USGS relates to industry and academia.

No, these words do not ring true. President Obama's program is an R&D program which may, someday, support a decision concerning the next destination in space. This decision will not be made by President Obama and NASA will spend the next 5 years spinning its wheels on an R&D without a program to support or a goal.

Really, the only thing we're doing with planetary science, astronomy, and cosmology at NASA is looking for life? How lame and limiting.

Well, let's see, yesterday it was Change the Logo, then today it's change the message. Why don't we just change the the name too!!! I know!!! Let's call it NAHSO The National Ambiguous Hardly a Space Organization. Come on man, is this really happening?I think it is the Audacity of Destruction!

Still all sauce but no steak. Words are important, but they only matter as much as what you're willing to put behind them. You can mess with this kind of stuff forever and a day, and tell yourself that it means something, bu so does the difference between what you say and what you do.

ROFL!)

it does seem too surreal!)

maybe they should just ask Goldman Sachs and if they'd create a special derivative and bet long or short on it

Okay, I have 3 questions with this vision.

Extend Life to where? (Past 65 or before medicare runs out?...)

Life beyond what? (The D.C. Beltway perhaps?)

Improve life here? (Kenya, South America, China perhaps?)

At least with the old slogan we knew it was about exploration, the universe or even our home planet... Earth... LOL! Wow... where do these folks get this stuff comedy central?...

As a cosmologist, I certainly agree on not being limited to searching for life! However, that's in the Vision, not the Mission. The Exploration part of the Mission includes exploring the universe, and just adds a mention of finding life. That is why it is important to get Vision and Mission divided. The Vision should generally be something for a nation, and the Mission the implementation core that that defines the Logic Model for the activities of a space agency.

I thought that the EPA was tasked with protecting the home planet.

Oh dopey me.

Since NASA is the space agency, I don't really agree that we should have that big a role in understand and protecting our "home planet", other than being good stewards. Earth sciences, other than that done from space, should be left to other agencies.

If one says that improved aeronautics makes life better here by having better airplanes, that's within the original charter. But not things like global warming, etc.

But I'm probably in the minority.

"... and NASA will spend the next 5 years spinning its wheels on an R&D without a program to support or a goal."

Sometimes, to start moving really fast you do spin the wheels. (I say this as someone who has spent a lot of time modeling spinning tires.)

I listened to a presentation by a NASA manager today who was clearly ready willing and able to step out quickly into making real technical progress in space exploration on the new smaller-than-usual-but-much-faster-and-infinitely-more-sustainable demo scale. And fully confident that his workforce would charge out over the top after him. With thoughtful plans in place to bring about transformative change in those support units whose job seems sometimes to be more about obstruction than assistance.

We can take that hill. And the one after that, and the one after that. If small progress within a shortened attention span is what is required to make progress in space in this country, we're ready to move out.

(Sorry for the military analogies... for some reason I am minded of George S. Patton Jr. today.)

What frustrates me is the realization that the best we may be able to do is spinning our tires to little purpose until sometime next spring before Congress will deign to make a decision. A whole year.

I prefer star trek!!!

"Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Her ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

"To understand and protect our home planet
To explore the Universe and search for life
To inspire the next generation of explorers
. . . as only NASA can"

Just from the mission statement you can see that NASA is too big and unfocused.

It needs to be broken up three Aviation, Spaceflight, and Earth/Universe Sciences.

Not bad at all, as long as the vision and mission statements are simply enumerations and not ordered by priority. But as Roci points out, there's a difference between what is said and what is done. Let's hope that this administration pays more than lip service to the exploration of space.

Those eloquent words worked in 2002; they certainly work today. Will NASA leadership look beyond the political and adopt them again?

During the past 40 years NASA has grown into just another inefficient government bureaucracy whose strategy and budget are controlled by the political whims of each new Congress and Executive Administration. It is led by bureaucrats who live to fight for and protect their budget and their piece of the pie. The best Engineers and Scientists have long ago abandoned NASA for places where their expertise and talent are better used.

Thank God that our country's Military Space, and the Space activity of other non-NASA government agencies, are separate from NASA.

These words in your article will not work because, sadly, NASA does not work.

I hate to be snide but NASA's been targeting kids with "inspiring the next generation of explorers" since I was in First Grade (way back in 1989). How's that working out for the agency?

Well job fairs at my soon-to-be-graduated-from university (Carnegie Mellon) were long dominated by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lockheed Martin, nvidia, Google, Intel and Microsoft. NASA? Occasionally, and they never had the lines wrapping around the corner for interview time.

Hell I wonder how many people Carnegie Mellon is sending to Facebook this year compare to NASA or a major NASA contractor.

Let's be blunt. NASA targeted kids since I was a kid. But I'm an adult now, and I'm not stupid enough to waste my life working for an agency that's been through four or five "master plans" since I saw a rendering of X-33 in the science section of the Boston Globe for the first time in 7th grade.

Honestly, by now it's just words. Judging by the completely uncaring public reaction to the Constellation program cancellation, and the fact that the country's best and brightest aren't exactly lining up to put man on Mars, can we just call the past 20 years of public outreach a complete and abject failure?

And more words, more of the same at that, is supposed to help "inspire" the next generation to support NASA?

I have a different idea. How about instead of seeking to inspire to the under-10 years of age crowd, NASA does something... anything... to make a NASA career for the CURRENT generation of this country's leading scientists and engineers absolutely enticing.

I can only speak for myself, but just a few years ago, I would have given anything to work on some aspect of the manned space-flight program, either at NASA or a contractor. But now, after the complete sideshow that was DIRECT (give it up already, you lost), the Augustine Commission, underfunding Constellation, and now Obama's obscene compromise... honestly, not even NASA's lofty words will encourage me to pursue this career field.

So I say to NASA, as a young Computer Scientist, enough with inspiring children; show me and people like me a reason to bother going to work for you.

If not, well.. Goldman Sachs will certainly pay better. Sad, but true.

The words never worked. They sounded like a very badly written Dr. Seuss parody, and were the subject of many jokes. Returning to these words would be a very silly thing to do.

The unmitigated blither of an agency incapable of accomplishing anything but pretending to be "inspirational." I thought it was stupid then and time has not improved upon it.

I agree with the vision, that should be projected in the future, and it seems to me that these are indeed their scope. Instead the mission, that is what NASA does now, is a little bit more doubtful. "protect", does Nasa have to protect the Earth? Are we thinking to asteroids threats. Is it something that they are doing to accomplish the vision?
Moreover it is interesting that there is not mention at all to any tecnology or research or creation or building, that consiguently are tools and means providable from outside.

Keith:

Do these words still work?

Words have never worked without the deeds to back them up. And isn't it ironic that the very person who threw the big Obama fundraiser, for which the NASA pep talk acted as political cover, once sang the song with the words "Words Get In The Way".

I never thought I'd miss Sean O'Keefe.

Matthew Travis

How about

To improve life here,
To extend life to there,
To find life beyond,
I do not like space on a plane,
I do not like space on a train,
I do not like space on a rocket,
I do not like space in my pocket,
I do not find space worth a damn,
I do not like space, Sam I am.

That is about the dumbest, most uninspiring slogan anyone has every thought of...

The "As Only NASA Can" part had the degrading patina of the cheapest, low grade television commercial.

It helped fuel the argument that NASA is irrelevant to society.

The value of words like these doesn't lie in whether they reflect current realities, so much as whether they represent worthwhile goals and aspirations.

Do they reflect where NASA would be in 20 years, given unlimited money and perfect leadership? Do they set a mark that's worth aiming for, regardless of how far the actual effort may fall short? Those are the questions.

For the purpose of playing devil's advocate, what's wrong with just using what's in the National Aeronautics and Space Act?

"To provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the earth's atmosphere, and for other purposes."

What are the other purposes? There are 8 of them in the original unamended act. Take a look. NASA doesn't need sound bite mission and vision statements or some kind of product branding. What it needs is to do is get back to it's essential goal of "research into problems of flight within and outside the earth's atmosphere." It may not be inspiring to some people, but that's what NASA was created to do.

(About NASA recruiting in universities)
"NASA? Occasionally, and they never had the lines wrapping around the corner for interview time."

The company I work for is a NASA support contractor at JSC. We only have about 100 people, yet we will be hosting approximately 20 interns this summer onsite at the center. Out of the dozen engineers I work closely with at the moment, at least 2 are former interns. The top local manager is a former intern. I'm sure there are others around me I'm not aware of.

If you want to work with or for NASA, just like any other employer, you need to understand how they find, nurture and hire talent.

How about

To not Build a Rocket and Capsule and cancel every program and project in sight doing so.
To build a heavy lift rocket and planetary spacecraft to take humans to our near planets and astroids beyond to the earths moon for the best tour of our solar system
To create a Low earth Orbit activity that can make its voyage from any place in the United States of America to anyplace in the world Earth.

and Most of All, stop crying it is President Obama that is gutting NASA human spaceflight, rather making it a better place on earth to work.

Starjock wrote:

During the past 40 years NASA has grown into just another inefficient government bureaucracy...

Thank God that our country's Military Space, and the Space activity of other non-NASA government agencies, are separate from NASA.

Are you actually suggesting that the Department of Defense is an efficient government bureaucracy? The waste in the defense budget each year is larger than NASA's entire annual budget.

The purpose of a vision statement is to get people thinking longer term, beyond the flavor of the month, to core purposes and values. A little inspiration won't hurt, either. Sometimes we all get caught up in the here and now...

"Are you actually suggesting that the Department of Defense is an efficient government bureaucracy?"

Having worked in both I can attest that the Department of Defense is far more efficient and competent then NASA or any other government agency. So as far as a governemnt bureaucracy goes they are the best. However if you try to compare it to any private buisness it still is woefully inefficient but that's an unfair comparison given the restrictions placed on them by politicians.

"...I can attest that the Department of Defense is far more efficient and competent then NASA or any other government agency."

Wow - I must respectfully but vigorously disagree. (And for the record, I have been employed as a contractor for both DOD and NASA.)

You're telling me that the DOD -- despite an annual budget of very nearly $700 billion dollars -- is magically more efficient and competent than every other US government agency, all of which have vastly smaller budgets. (NASA's will be just short of $19 billion this year, which by the way is less than 3% of the DOD budget.)

I would suggest that with such enormous financial resources, the DOD can afford to be a lot more wasteful. And this is exactly what the evidence shows. Check with legitimate news sources and you'll be disgusted by what you find. Here's a sample:

"Defense Department Cannot Account For 25% Of Funds — $2.3 Trillion"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

"Military waste under fire / $1 trillion missing"
http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-05-18/news/17491492_1_pentagon-gao-financial-accounting

And please keep in mind that it was the DOD -- not NASA, or NOAA, or the EPA, or USDA -- that spent $640 for a single toilet seat.

Words work if they truly describe a mission. If they are just bull for managers then words do not work. When I was a teacher, schools sought accreditation through the a process called WASC where administrators lied extensively with the help of teachers who focused on the lies to get ahead instead of teaching. Everyone knew it was a hollow joke and the words had no effect. Prior to WASC, however, the teachers wrote out a five point mission statement which did inspire and focus our efforts. With NASA, as with education, it will depend if the words match the actions.