NASA Ranked #5 in Federal Government Workplaces

Kudos to Goddard, which ranked #7 among the government agency subcomponents.

I bet we would have been lower had this poll been taken February 2nd.

Gosh, Ames Research Center only got a 2.30

Keith and Frank,

Certainly times are tough and I do not disagree with your general comments regarding the rollout. Change for change sake is not good. I think in NASA's case it could benefit from a little shake up.

The state of affairs today within NASA is awful. There are a lot of great folks who want to do good work, but they have no clear direction. What we do know is that whichever direction we go it will not be cost or schedule optimized.

At some point, we as a community need to start pulling together and in the same direction. I appreciate this site as an information source. I loathe this site when you have bitter and attacking comments. You know full well that the survey is a fluffy feel good sort of thing ...totally qualitative...and you have managed to make it look like another NASA failure. NASA is down and you just keep kicking them. You can certainly take the low road and make the comments you have...it's your site and you are entitled to your opinions; however, I think it is a testament to the good people of NASA that they continue to consider it a great place to work in spite of the the chaos. These good people will persevere through this time because of their dedication and optimism.

It's certainly your nickel and you can spend it however you would like. I for one would like to see you take the high road and help lift us up...or at least leave well enough alone when there is something positive to reflect on in these tough times.

Respectfully submitted

Don't you think a bit of Tough Love is in order? NASA has a great mission and a good news story, but the current state of leadership - misdirection - and Congressional refusal to face budget realities-is the worst ever in this storied agency's history. We do no good IMHO by glossing over the huge disconnects that rage within it. Sometimes the truth hurts. If nothing changes and soon, NASA for all its past glory will be irrelevant to most Americans. And decline surely follows that dictim.

... Much like the Republican's false characterization of Obama's health care bill as containing "death panels" ...

That remark is off topic and has nothing to do with NASA or with space projects.

Keith, you damage your web site by allowing off topic, pro-Democrat political commentary such as this.

"most of the people that work at NASA HQ that I know are deeply divided and unhappy at the agency's current mixed status-maybe Constellation and maybe not."

At least within human space flight, I have a hard time telling whether there is a plan and if there is, what it is.

"an inept NASA messaging machine to lose control of its own message....NASA still seems unable to explain what it wants to do, and why it matters"

Amazing that even with all of the uncertainty of what is going on, no one seems to be able to elucidate how NASA is reacting and what it is doing. Total communications failure. This is a big issue in terms of communicating to the public, but it is just as big an issue internally in terms of maintaining morale.

the current state of leadership - misdirection - ...-is the worst ever in this storied agency's history....The good folks need reinforcements and the deadwood need to take a buy out.

This is the crux of the problem. Fact is that the leadership has totally mishandled things, beginning with the roll out of Constellation and continuing with the lack of truthfulness in coming to grips with costs, schedules, missions, planning; this was most notable during the Augustine hearings when NASA managers vowed honesty and Augustine's response was 'we don't believe you';and it continues today with a total lack of leadership of the direction in which to head. Is there a direction? Does anyone know?

The real issue with reinforcing the good and eliminating the deadwood, which is which?

Many of the best, most capable and most productive have been marginalized; the leaders, who are by definition the highest ranking, are the ones that created the present problems and who are totally lacking in leadership and communications ability.

I appreciate this site as an information source. I loathe this site when you have bitter and attacking comments..NASA is down and you just keep kicking them. You can certainly take the low road and make the comments you have...it's your site and you are entitled to your opinions;

I don't blame Keith, Frank or the other editors of the Watch for the bitter and attacking comments. The comments are symptomatic of real communications, organization, personnel, management and leadership issues. The issues are not new; they were pointed out in 86 after Challenger and in 03 after Columbia. That the program has been directionless and uncommunicative with regard to the present and future just reflects more of the same.

It seems that we keep coming back to a discussion of NASA's "direction" and "what should NASA be doing?" -- this is just one of many, many posts that where people are debating this issue.

I don't see any way to get common consensus on this issue until we can answer a more basic question -- What is NASA for? What is its purpose. When I look at the words and actions of all of the players -- House, Senate, industry, media, NASA itself, space advocates, man in the street, etc., I see many different opinions (stated or inferred) as to what NASA's purpose is, its reason for existence. And I believe that most of these opinions are based solely on assumptions, not certain knowledge.

Since proposals about what NASA should be doing are inevitably based on what NASA's purpose is, there's no way that there is going to be any agreement on a "plan" (or set of plans) for NASA.

Let's discover and agree on the "Why" and then we might make some progress on the "What."

Steve

I don't see any way to get common consensus on this issue until we can answer a more basic question -- What is NASA for? What is its purpose ...

... Let's discover and agree on the "Why" and then we might make some progress on the "What."

You're sort of stuck in a "DO loop," don't you think?

These are good points. NASA’s purpose has changed over time and its changing again now.

Prior to the 60s moon race, NASA’s purpose was mainly research into aerodynamics, propulsion systems, control and automation systems, and new technologies.

The 60s moon race changed the organization into one which was building big, new pieces of hardware.

The Huntsville rocket team would design, develop and build the rocket, and once they were comfortable they’d established the design, they would contract the production, assembly, integration and operations.

The Langley manned space group worked in similar fashion, doing the design and fabrication of the early vehicles in-house before contracting for production, integration and operations.

When Langley moved to Houston, the pace of the program by 62 and later was such that the basic requirements and design for Gemini and Apollo were established by NASA and then the post PDR design and development was turned over to the contractor with NASA oversight through control boards. Operations was led by NASA the detail work on CFE was hired out to contractors. GFE was still maintained in-house by NASA.

Shuttle’s basic configuration and the design requirements were set by NASA. The SRB’s were scaled up from Titan. The detail design work was done by Rockwell and the other contractors.

The Space Station module and solar power system configurations were established by NASA working with several competing contractors and remained pretty constant since 1987. The other external elements went through a series of significant configuration changes between the mid-1980s and early 1990s; the Fisher-Price study basically said there was no way you could build a truss out of parts and the configuration evolved to the pre-integrated truss.

25 years ago, the idea was that NASA was going to get out of the operations business and turn over Shuttle operations to the STS Operations Contractor (STSOC). It was deemed that NASA really should not be doing operations. Many aspects of mission support and GFE hardware support were also turned over to STSOC against the wishes of the NASA engineering management, none of whom wanted to lose NASA in-house capabilitiy.

Over the long term, mission operations could never quite give up their functions and so Shuttle ops support became half NASA/half contractor. Engineering functions were less successful in hanging onto their work.

STSOC was supposed to make Shuttle more cost effective and make integration timelines more streamlined and more efficient, but it didn’t.

A lot of NASA people who had been getting hands-on hardware experience before STSOC lost that opportunity and NASA more and more became contract managers. This led to the current practice of having a lot of managers where experience was not a requirement.

This time, instead of an independent program office doing what it thinks is right for what a handful of inexperienced top level managers believe is a short-sighted cash savings, someone with a broader responsibility needs to be taking a look at NASA’s functions and responsibilities and maintaining workforce expertise and make sure that decisions are made for strategic reasons.