Keeping Our Eyes On The Prize

I'm in school, I'd like to be a "rocket scientist".

But there is no way I would ever want to work on the NASA manned spaceflight program unless something radically changes.

It seems to be a consistent pattern over the course of decades of having everyone do a monster pile of work, billions of dollars worth, then destroy it from the top.

A long, slow death, where its starved for cash over years before finally put to bed and Washington has them run the course again.

Far as I can tell, Constellation was killed from the top and I don't mean Obama. There was the political requirement - Griffin himself noted this was just to get it through congress - that they use ATK motors.

Fair enough, except when the SSME wouldn't work and they had to rejig the whole thing, suddenly they're developing a new 5-segment SRM and new upper stage motor and suddenly the budget explodes because they're married to ATK.

And do they get the money? Of course not. Bush never asked for it, and congress, who holds the purse strings anyway, never lifted a finger because it seemed all they ever do is let the president propose something, pretend they don't like it and then pass it once they get more perks.

There was a little hope for change when the current administration - I'm not saying "Obama" because he doesn't give more of a fuck than anyone else there - the administration suggested changing the procurement in a way that decouples the rocketeering from Washington requirements (use this part from Utah, that part from ...) and Washington reshuffling.

But the house, due to the hard times, can't afford three hundred million dollars for crew. They need to be "budget conscious" by opting for the eleven billion dollar HLV that they will NEVER afford to fill.

No wise person would ever seek to participate in all this.

This is retarded and makes me sad for America.

I have been working on the various aspects of the space program for 30 years.. I too, in school wanted to be a "rocket scientist". I had read the "Limits to Growth" while at MIT and finding a way to get new resources off the planet seemed like the best way to escape the outcome of fixed planetary resources..

I say this because more than anything, our space program lacks a compelling "why do it". I see lots of vague sci-fi-ish answers which are pretty meaningless and so the program lurches one direction to another with different administrations as there is no long term compelling vision. Out technology now lags commercial technology by years and we do endless fantasy studies. Space science continues to perform well because they *do* have a vision and the DoD people also work towards their vision. We have lots of discussion of "how" and "what" but no "WHY".. so human space sits low on the priority list.. two weeks of funding in Iraq is more than we spend in a year on human space. With all the clamor of "saving Constellation" , I have yet to see anyone offer to increase the budget $4B a year.

With Peak Oil and Peak Resources we do have some real needs that the program can meet (He3, solar power satellites, asteroid mining etc) and we have people who have looked hard on how to do this.. but our leadership yammers on about "going where no man has gone before" and we go nowhere...

If you want to inspire people to work in this field, then give them a compelling vision... like having a high technology civilization to bequeath to their children.

"It appeared as pure magic to see something so massive lift off the Earth," said Brad Toellner, an aerospace engineer major who has been working at NASA as a part of its Cooperative Education Program for the past four years. "It seemed so different from everyday life."

Because it IS different from everday life.
It's life leaping of this earth! It's the next step. It is indeed a force of nature as Neil Degrassi Tyson called it. And he was right about something else, that we must do these things to inspire children.

Of course it is going to resonate with many of the young.
They instinctively *know* that this is something critical and important, they many not know how to articulate that or have the education to explain it. But it's there for a reason.

It's hardwired into life on this earth to expand and grow.

Doing things now, building now, launching now is how you inspire. Not talking about it or outsourcing it and crossing your fingers. NASA human spaceflight is a nation defining endeavor, and it is a species defining endeavor.

What will inspire tomorrows rocket scientists?

By actually launching *rockets*.

You build heavy lift, you build craft that takes us out and away to explore, you WILL inspire.

"Where are the dreams that motivate and inspire? Where are the visions of hopeful futures, of times when technology is a tool for human well-being and not a gun on hair trigger pointed at our heads? Our children long for realistic maps of a future they (and we) can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?" –Carl Sagan

NASA does and can do that if we fund it properly and quit sabotaging it, both politically and financially.

The Mars rovers are great, but the human element is missing. There is nothing like being there. Otherwise it is just like another video game.

And the Children shall lead them...

this is all spin. you can take the inspiration argument and spin it any way you want. Eventually children grow up a little and realize that if only .6 of applicants actually become astronauts, maybe it would be good idea to keep their options open. but meanwhile, that realization doesn't necessarily cause them to stop doing their math and science homework.

meanwhile, there are robot competitions all over this country. I know a great engineer at the power plant that I work at who mentors some of these kids. They are inspired by many of the other things that NASA does besides, what some see as routine shuttle flights to ISS. They are very excited by the Mars rovers. Wait till they see the Robonaut in action!

Of course, kids want to go into space. Even without NASA, Hollywood keeps that inspiration fresh. And some say that commercial human spaceflight will send more humans into space at greater numbers within the next ten years than strictly gov't programs would. As a kid in the 80's, I thought I would be going to Mars. but now, I think I could one day get to LEO, and it would be a dream!

I'd be more curious on what inspired Elon Musk, or the VASIMR guy. We want our future entrepreneurs and scientists to feel that there is a place for them in America's future space program.

When I was a kid, it was the Voyager probes that excited me most. Apollo put me to sleep. And the Mars rovers? Growing up all I ever heard about was Mars rovers. Its extremely exciting because we're actually exploring out there. Yes, we are exploring. NASA today is exploring Saturn, Pluto, Ceres, Mars, the Moon and more.

All the articles people actually bother to read about are things like this.

People are EXTREMELY excited about Kepler.

> NASA does and can do that if we fund it properly

> The Mars rovers are great, but the human element is missing.

When are people like you two going to grow up?

NASA isn't getting money you want. It is time you start talking about something realistic.

"If you want to inspire people to work in this field, then give them a compelling vision... like having a high technology civilization to bequeath to their children."

I think a compelling vision is a high technology civilization living and working in space and on other worlds.

How do you instill such a vision?

It needs to start at a young age when children are still impressionable, ages 6-12. They need to understand the long term prospects for developing civilization's future capabilities. Keeping high school and college kids interested in space, science, technology, engineering...is needed too, but the age to get them hooked and interest is much younger.

Aside from a week or two spent covering the order of the planets, how much time is spent in elementary schools today covering the history of technology, the history of transportation, the history of aviation or the history of spaceflight?

Heavy lift is not the magic key. ANY lift you can touch and watch and participate in will inspire. Example: planes of all sizes inspire; even fast trains inspire.

The problem JoeCooper complained about is real, and I like the way he explained it. I think the solution is to get HSF on its feet outside of NASA and out of Congress's chains. And we should start designing the BEO exploration craft now, with two scenarios: (a) new behemoth launch vehicles and (b) EELVs, on-orbit assembly, and depots. See which future actually comes to pass. I'll put my $1 on (b) now.

"He3, solar power satellites, asteroid mining etc"

These are all fantasies created by people who want to raise the demand curve by claiming human spaceflight has infinite value. We don't even have DT fusion, the advantages of He3 are limited, and if we really needed it we could make it on earth just by letting tritium decay.

The truth is that human spaceflight is marketable, but the market is highly sensitive to cost. At $20M you can sell 1 or 2 seats a year. At $100K you could sell at least a hundred, even suborbital. So the only way to make human spaceflight practical is to reduce the cost by at least a factor of ten. That's what the Shuttle was intended to do; it was much more expensive than planned. but it was only our first attempt.

Practical human spaceflight requires RLVs and new technology. The billions to be spent on Constellation redux will accomplish nothing.

I can tell you right now, as a student working on his Master's in Aerospace Engineering...

Nothing disgusted me more than watching the House spending more time on what states get to have a retired Shuttle than the actual space policy itself.

Don't get me wrong, in reality I would support and be willing to work on any space plan that results of this, but the sooner HSF is out of the hands of Congress, the better.

Very well said CessnaDriver!!! When you get the bird on the pad and the crew loaded onboard all the politics, blogs and BS is far from your thoughts. We focus on nothing but the mission and that "cool" part of the job makes it all worth doing. It inspired me as a kid and still does today 40 years later.

GK, schools no longer teach any history. This generation of young Americans are growing up ignorant of how America came to be. It is no longer fashionable to call for American exceptionalism, the idea that America was created as a special place in the world, an idea not just a place on a map. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. As long as some of us spend more time apologizing for America rather than explaining its true greatness,no one will ever come to value, truly value, our freedom.
Next year marks a half century since Gagarin and Al Shephard put their lives on the line to begin exploring space by people. Let's hope buried somewhere in those NASA bills is funding to use the occasion for great public outreach.
Oh and to show I've put actions behind these words, I'm planning a graduate degree in American History and more writing about space history, too. Just taking me a bit longer these days...

Then we have to be smarter and develop the message in the name of science, technology, engineering, and math. The goal is to get kids hooked on space and the future, not to teach history.

They watch NASCAR, get all the info they can on the cars and the drivers and the races; they play video games and learn as best they can how to do their best; others like the US Army track their playing and records and then recruit them into the groups that they do the best in.

We need to use our smarts about how to do this. This seems to have passed NASA by. Its no one's fault but our own.

GK, all too true.

Tech fields need reform in many ways. Everyone on these boards talks about inspiring the young -- meaning children. What people don't seem to recognize is that the lives we offer young adults cause them to leave tech fields. Who wants to work for someone who expects you to be a student into your 30s? Or demands 70, 80, 90 hours of work per week? What's worse, all too often tech projects offer too little for what they cost as well. See this week's series in the Washington Post on security for example.

Who will inspire the kids?

uh…Miles O'Brien? Sheesh. Funny question from CNN.

Editor's note: I'll be willing to wager that Miles has had a substantially positive effect - both during his time at CNN and after including his chairmanship of the NASA Advisory Council Subcommittee on Education and Public Outreach and his membership (with me) on the board of directors of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education - to say nothing for the multiple charity and educational activities with which he is involved. Do a little research before you dump on people anonymously.

With the exception of Earth Science and Aeronautics, what NASA does has nothing to do with solving the problems of the taxpayer. And having said that, all what NASA does holds the promise of inspiring someone. It doesn't have to be a young person.

And inspiring anyone should not be what drives NASA. The moment you craft a NASA to be 'inspiring' to someone there is a loss of freedom at NASA as you are now doing something 'in order to'.

Let NASA play at exploring the stars, the planets, the earth, making new discoveries that have nothing to do with solving the mundane issues of human existence. Empower NASA to bring as many average citizens with them, to include them, in this 'game'. If what NASA does winds up solving some problems here on Earth, then fine; if not, fine too.

The world is filled with bad news at every turn. IMHO bad news represents 1% of what is happening in our world; what else is going on out there is 99% good things - unreported by the media.

So let NASA be something that is visible to the public eye, in the media, that represents an activity of humanity that brings the excitement of new discovery and exploration to the masses, with participation by the masses.

If someone gets inspired by that great. If not , great.

Let NASA be the dessert at the buffet table.

If the next generation's going to have scientists, it's going to be in spite of their experiences in school. With the current climate of "if it's not on the high-stakes fill-in-the-dots tests, we can't afford to teach it" in the schools right now, we're ruining our future scientists left & right. Many of the states only test the 3 R's, & the way that a lot of teachers approach that is not by sliding science in as an excellent way of teaching how the 3 R's intermingle in real life, but by drilling the kids to boredom on the same stuff over & over. I can't think of a worse way to keep any kid interested in school.

I'm an amateur astronomer. My club does outreach sessions several times a month. It's both sad & encouraging to hear kids marvel at Saturn or the Moon or a star cluster, & then to hear the parents say, "My kid's just eating this up, but they never get this in school. What can we do?"

I often respond that they should write to the school board demanding more science in the curriculum, & that they should continue to take their kids to outreach nights like ours, to museums, to galleries, & to the library-places where they can experience the life of the mind outside of school.

KC,

I'm 99% sure he was dumping on CNN for _firing_ Mile O'Brien, i.e. tossing their space guy out on his rear.

Your post gives me a thought.

A lot of people think of NASA as the whole space program. People expect NASA to do everything, or mainly their thing, in some huge zero sum game.

But we have plenty of space programs and there's a whole private space sector.

Looking at the Earth? There's an organization for that. Security? The DOD has that. There's no reason to talk about NASA space in the context of national security, cause, if the DOD needed a manned vehicle, they could have one. They've got their own spaceplane, the first new orbital space plane since the Buran in the 1980s, and its in orbit right now.

NASA is just the thing visible in the public eye and most attention people pay to NASA is when they're discovering new worlds and civil-eye-zations and boldly going.

Many things they find are mere trivia for the forseeable future.

But our society, as expressed through congress, seems to value this at about 15 to 20 billion a year.

Maybe its OK for NASA to be the one that does something not particularly, immediately useful, but just something that's cool, as long as it fits in the budget.

Or maybe we could agree on something that's useful and convince congress that it fits their specs.

I hate (no, honestly I don't) to drag out my ancient TSR essay addressing this, but the core challenge is to engage the folks (especially the young 'uns) with effective storytelling, because EVERYBODY loves a good story, even if it's true. It's as ingrained in our nature as arguing over politics...and one could even demonstrate that politics is actually a form of storytelling about history and possibilities.

This reluctance to learn the fundamentals of good storytelling has for ages been NASA PAO's greatest failing, and the failing of many others in the space field. If you can get past my illustration of how boring NASA TV is (a major focus of the initial response), my essay describes the nitty-gritty of the problem and, in the 2nd part, suggests some idea seeds aimed at attacking it.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/802/1

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/807/1

Something which occurred recently demonstrated the validity of this premise. My kids and I were re-watching episodes of From the Earth to the Moon, Tom Hanks's HBO production. I found myself feeling, and saw my 16-yr-old, and my 12-yr-old also feeling, completely on-edge...over the issue of the Apollo 15 crew getting their coring drill unstuck.

Almost trivial subject matter in the big scheme of things, but the story was so effectively told that we really CARED about what was happening because we had been drawn in were emotionally connected to the characters and what THEY cared about.

We have to get the folks to care again about spaceflight. And I firmly believe down to my core that this must start with effective storytelling.

Of course, this is built on the premise that we're at least doing SOMETHING in space to tell stories about...

Your narratives are similar to the story that Bob Rogers

http://www.bobrogers.com/

and several others have been presenting for many years. Rogers and other have been presenting his ideas to the NASA Means Business students

http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/nmb/past_programs.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH_6mCdDEzE

http://www.opennasa.com/2010/05/06/a-relevant-human-space-program/

since about 2003 and more recently to the AIAA, AAS and several other groups.

NASA is not in the entertainment business but it has always been willing to assist those who are. NASA is in the education business per its charter, and so the goal needs to be to get space into the schools and the best age for interesting students is well before high school.

As far as teaching to the test (comment from https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnMXUQzVHNAwSjhpSvXu7OM5Eq40K4Zny4 ) this was an erroneous plan put in place by the Bush 'No Child Left Behind' program which did not work, and Mr. Obama has done nothing to change it, disillusioning most now in education.

Digital media makes the space stories more available than ever before and we can either guide young people to the space stories or they will go elsewhere:

https://acrobat.com/?i=2R3j3y-Kyh26dBFs3LriqA

... a soon-difficult-to-answer question to kids is why 35 years after the Apollo-Soyuz mission it's the latter that takes U.S. astronauts to a 3-crew Space Station (same number as Skylab).

Yes, I know, 'one day' ISS will have a whooping crew of six. Sure. I've been hearing that since the 1990's.

Here is a good analysis:

www.gmupolicy.net/aerospace/WorkshopFinalReport.pdf

The ISS does have a crew of 6. That is why there are 2 Soyuz vehicles parked there.

....Almost trivial subject matter in the big scheme of things, but the story was so effectively told that we really CARED about what was happening because we had been drawn in were emotionally connected to the characters and what THEY cared about.

It's the element of PEOPLE that links us emotionally.

Interesting paper, done about 5 years ago, prescribed exactly what Constellation needed to be doing if it was going to survive and gain public support. Five years later as near as I can tell they did not one thing that they needed to have done.

It's the element of PEOPLE that links us emotionally.

As I pointed out explicitly in my ancient essay. "Gotta be able to see their faces" was one of my observations.

GK, this report played a major role in Shana Dale's establishment of the stratcom dept. at NASA HQ in 2007. Sadly, while Lori Garver wanted to continue it, General Bolden abolished the department and function. Until NASA management sees value in the outreach, we're not going anywhere, sadly.

Bolden has only been there about a year, right ? What did StratCom do in the previous 3-4 years ?

how's about bringing exploration to the masses. Something like this, using an RCS instead of fans:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2010/07/20/lustout.hkong.idrone.flying.cnn?hpt=T2

Of course, solar electrical would be nice so you don't run out of propellant.

Based on the contention, the lack of a workable and adequately funded plan, and the poor performance that Bolden (and Obama) have made in rolling out their ideas, I wish Bolden would get some serious help first in meeting with his underlings and establishing a strategy and then in communicating it.

Bolden seems to need help with strategic communications internally even more than externally.

The latest Congressional 'compromise' is no better than what we've been dealing with for the last 2 years.

Their biggest achievement was to get the Smithsonian to add NASA to the Folklife festival on the mall in 2008. It was the largest NASA exhibits ever in DC, timed for the 50th anniversary of NASA. Huge numbers of people visited and saw details about NASA that many probably never knew about. I spoke at one session that had about 100 people in the audience. Probably the last time people would see inflatable Ares-1 and Orion CEVs.