Usually I focus on the future direction of the agency, but this week I want to acknowledge the current environment and the challenges facing our workforce during this time of transition. Earlier this month the NASA Administrator informed congress of the agency’s plan to inform the Constellation contractor community of the action required to prepare for termination costs to be incurred in the next fiscal year. Yes, I know. What does that mean in English? The bottom line is that some of our friends in the aerospace community are being laid off.
Sure, I could sugar coat it with a string of buzz words. The truth of the matter is that families are being impacted as the agency goes through a period of transformation. Outstanding engineers are going to work wondering if a letter is waiting for them when they arrive at the office or when they get home. No matter the industry you are in, having friends who are worried about their own future and how they will provide for their families makes for a tense environment. Yet, to the credit of these outstanding employees they are giving 110% in the midst of all of the uncertainty. Once again my hat goes off to the amazing dedicated team that gives so much to our national space program.
For those of us who will be able to carry on the dream of “boldly going where no one has gone before” let me offer the above image from
Pat Rawlings.
It is a perfect metaphor for the position that the agency currently finds itself and at the same time reminds us of the destination that the President asked us to reach in the mid 2035 time frame.
In the image above you have an astronaut descending down into the unknown valley.
You can’t see the bottom of the valley.
Instead you can see the peak in the distance that the other astronaut is scouting out.
You get the feeling that she is taking one final look at the destination that they are planning to reach.
Trying to hold that image in her mind as a reminder of where she needs to go once she descends with her colleague into the valley.
NASA is about to enter that valley.
It is leaving a peak of human exploration with three large programs (Shuttle, International Space Station and Constellation) and is descending into a valley where a lot of uncertainty resides.
It reminds me of a scenario planning exercise that we had conducted about 3 years ago where the facilitator shared the story of IBM’s turnaround by Lou Gerstner.
He used the same metaphor but added one additional component to the analogy.
The challenge in most companies is that they want to go from Peak to Peak without descending into the valley.
They are looking for continual growth without ever having to go back down to regroup and prepare to climb an even higher peak.
Yet those that are willing to navigate the valley and keep their vision on the next peak (even when it might not be visible) will be able to reach higher ground.
Another great discussion on this concept is found in Spencer Johnson’s,
Peak and Valleys.
Now, back to Pat’s image.
There is something subtle that is implied in the image.
The key to their success lies in the leader clearly identifying the peak/destination that the team will follow.
It takes leadership to help the rest of the team see their destination during those times when it may not be obviously visible.
Without the leadership’s vision it is easy to get stuck and lost in the valley.
Luckily NASA is working hard to define that next peak before we enter the valley.
One such activity is the
Human Exploration Framework Team (HEFT) that is working to clarify the path to the destinations that the President articulated on April 15
th (human mission to an asteroid in the 2025 timeframe and to Mars in the 2035 timeframe).
The products due from the team this summer will give NASA a path through the uncertainty that looms ahead of us.
Shortly after the Apollo missions, NASA was pushed to reinvent itself after we lost a portion of our workforce. Coming out of that period we created the most incredible spacecrafts in the world, the Space Shuttle fleet. We did it once and knowing my fellow colleagues we will do it again. I for one can’t wait to see the new heights that NASA will reach after it passes through this time of transition.
Sharing the Vision,
Steven González, Deputy, Advanced Planning Office
This week I had 4 different thoughts that I wanted to discuss and couldn’t decide which one to choose, but then realized that they were actually all connected.
The connection actually lies in the title of a movie that my family experienced early in the week.
“
The Human Experience” is the “story of a band of brothers who travel the world in search of the answers to the burning questions: “Who am I” Who is Man: Why do we search for meaning?”
In their travels they live with the homeless in New York City, visit the lost children of Peru and the lepers in Ghana, Africa.
Watching it our family couldn’t help but be amazed by the incredible human spirit that thrives even in the toughest of situations.
Over and over again the message was reiterated how the full spectrum of human experiences is what unites us and lifts us up.
Stories of strength and hope in the most adverse conditions remind us of the depth of the human spirit.
Then a friend of mine shared with me Neil deGrasse Tyson’s, “
What NASA means to America’s Future” speech at the University of Buffalo.
During his speech Dr. Tyson, stated that “NASA is a force of nature like no other” and that “NASA can dream about tomorrow” and we “need someone to keep the flame going.”
I like that. A force of nature that carries dreams forward.
It is not just the dream of those that work in the agency but it carries the unfettered dreams of a nation and the world.
And as President Obama stated at his
speech at the Kennedy Space Center, “Now, little more than 40 years ago, astronauts descended the nine-rung ladder of the lunar module called Eagle, … It wasn’t just the greatest achievement in NASA’s history -- it was one of the greatest achievements in
human history. And the question for us now is whether that was the beginning of something or the end of something. I choose to believe it was only the beginning.”
It doesn’t matter which camp you are on whether NASA should provide access to Low Earth Orbit or transition that to the commercial providers because at the end of the day I believe we all agree that NASA has always been and will always be here for the benefit of
all humanity.
So I believe the focus of our conversations should move from how do we get to space to how do we add to the human experience?
What can we do to benefit all of humanity?
Or better yet, why not tackle the challenge posed by the former Director of DARPA, Dr. Tony Tether, at the recent JSC Innovation 2010 event. (A great event that I will share in my next blog.) After his presentation he was asked what he thinks should be the mission or rallying cry to focus NASA’s innovation? His answer was priceless and so to paraphrase his response,
“When NASA first went to the moon, we all wanted to go. Forty years later we still ALL want to go. NASA has forgotten that we all want to go. If it can remember that fact, then there is nothing that can stop it from achieving the impossible.” It is the human experience … we all want to go. It is the pushing forward against impossible odds that lifts the human condition. So how do we lift the human experience beyond the boundaries of this Earth AND lift the human condition back on Earth? That is a “noble purpose” worth talking about.
Sharing the Vision,
Steven González, Deputy, Advanced Planning Office
I am at the
Bayou Regional FIRST robotics competition and am amazed at the NBA atmosphere of the event.
Filled with everything from the bleacher stomping “We will Rock you” to the sound system that gives you a second heart beat and team mascots cheering on the adrenaline filled crowds.
A bunch of wanna be engineers along with scores of families and friends that are excited by the 6 robots battling out to score the most points by kicking a soccer ball into a goal.
Today these future engineers and scientists are the rock stars of the Alario Center in New Orleans.
My hats off to the Stennis Space Center for their support of an outstanding event and inspiring our next generation.
There is much talk about the lack of a destination and how we need one to inspire our future generations but I think there is much to be said about making science, technology, engineering and math fun. Watching this crowd I think more will be inspired by their achievement in making a robot that will go to the national competition than a Mars mission by the end of this decade. Yes there is a place for a destination but that is not the only way we can inspire. We should not underestimate the power of mixing education with entertainment to attract our future workforce. I know some will say that I’ve gone to the “dark side” but then again how many of us were attracted to the world of engineering because of the creations of Lucas and Roddenberry?
Edutainment cannot only inspire but it can also educate the world about the scientific and technical advancements we are making. Even though many are inspired by the amazing images from our technical achievements like the images from
Hubble, engineers are not the best ones to share our discoveries and educate the public of our discoveries.
Just ask my family.
My thespian daughter can weave a tale that will keep us engaged throughout dinner while my tales may last through desert.
I like what Will Pomerantz , Manager of Google Lunar X-Prize, recently shared in his
blog about the power of mixing the entertainment industry with our engineering discoveries, “Scientists and Engineers have fundamentally important and exciting things to tell the world about--but are ill suited to do the telling. By working together with entertainers, they hope to play to each group's strengths, with the end result of conveying the key messages to an audience in an understandable way. To that end, the National Academy of Sciences is organizing events like last night's salon, and even offering free scientific consultation to film makers and other entertainers who want to improve the scientific accuracy of their products.”
I believe it will take artists, entertainers, writers and the left brain people of the world to create the stories that will inspire and educate our nation. It is images like the one at the right, from an artist that I continually get my inspiration from, Pat Rawlings, that will inspire a future entrepreneur to create the first Ivy league campus on the moon or for us Texans, a Texas A&M satellite campus near Tranquility base. What engineer wouldn’t want to be part of this cathedral building project?
What if we not only used robotics but video games as well? What are the other possibilities to inspire if we mixed NASA’s discoveries with the world of entertainment?
Sharing the Vision,
Steven González, Deputy, Advanced Planning Office
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