I’m at the annual winter American Astronomical Society meeting, and just left an interesting address by the new NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. He’s a former astronaut (he was on the initial Hubble Shuttle mission back in 1990) and Marine corps pilot, but now he’s the top guy at NASA.
It’s a tradition for the NASA head to speak at the AAS meetings. I’ve heard talks from ex-Admins Dan Goldin, Sean O’Keefe, and Mike Griffin, and this one was very different. NASA is at a very tumultuous point in its history, with the Shuttle winding down, the future of the Constellation rocket program uncertain and under fire, and even the direction of the agency itself unclear. Because of this, and because President Obama has not made a public policy statement about these issues yet, Bolden could not give a nuts-and-bolts speech, which is understandable. For those of you who weren’t following my live comments on Twitter during the talk, here are some of the highlights.
He was very clear that we all need to do what we can to inspire kids about science. In a remarkable turn, he literally choked up on stage while talking about putting together a telescope with his granddaughter, and saying we need to get more kids to look through eyepieces. “Look at this!” he said, “This is what we do!” That resonates with me, of course; I’ve made that exact comment on this blog dozens of times.
He also said that manned space flight would not be paid off the back of science. This generated applause from the audience. However, I’ve heard that before, just a few years ago from Mike Griffin… and then saw science missions’ funding cut back to pay for the lunar exploration program. So while I agree with Bolden’s sentiment, I don’t know if he can pull that particular feat off. I sure hope he can.
When asked about the issues with delays in the Shuttle replacement, he stated that “This President won’t be the one who presides over the demise of the manned space program.” (quoting from my memory of what he said). He also stated how strongly Obama supports science; something we already know but it’s damn good to hear it again.
He also said, “If you had told me 20 years ago that we wouldn’t be back on the Moon by now, I’d have said you were smoking dope.” That was great to hear! I know a lot of us outside of NASA have been saying that for years, but it was refreshing and wonderful to hear the head of NASA saying it, and saying it so frankly. He even repeated the statement to make sure we got it. Very cool indeed.
Overall, Bolden reinforced how committed NASA is to science — something that needs to be said when addressing 1000+ astronomers, who traditionally and by large majority tend to support unmanned robotic exploration over the much more expensive and usually less-scientifically oriented manned flight. He stressed that we all need to be teachers, and we all need to be the inspiration for the next generation. I agree in general, and certainly in specifics about inspiration.
So this first date with the NASA chief went as a lot of first dates go. Hopeful, with some reservations on promises made based on the delivery of further evidence, but… hopeful.
[During the talk I sat next to my dear friend and woman-full-of-awesome Pamela Gay, who has posted her thoughts on this as well.]
“Critics of NASA IV&V would argue that we have never been effective or productive to justify the $35M annual budget. The argument I make is that the intent of IV&V is not as a lead effort to debug and assure mission success but rather as a final step in assuring mission success. We receive documents not in draft but primarily first and later revisions after peer review, V&V and/or I&T have analyzed artifacts. This is the ideal circumstance. We do receive, in fact, drafts and documents lacking project V&V and under such circumstances we do find more issues.
But the bottom line is that we cannot be expected to find numerous high severity issues or many issues overall. On this basis, the NASA IV&V funding level is well spent. NASA IV&V has delivered high severity issues to many projects that have saved development time and/or prevented serious events from unfolding during a mission’s operation. Additionally, IV&V has functioned also as a watchdog and has kept Project developers, V&V and I&T more on their toes. This latter point is a hard to measure return on investment but it is significant. One other question that arises is whether, IV&V needs to reside off-site, as presently, and remote from all Projects. It is not necessary to be remotely situated to maintain independence of the V&V.
However, I strongly disagree that NASA IV&V should be disbanded, removed from WV and distributed to NASA centers. The present IV&V facility has acquired an excellent group of analysts who, if given a proper directive, method and also cooperation from the Projects they support, will deliver the analysis and issues that cost-effectively raises the mission assurance of every project they review. Our existence is the result of the efforts of our Senator and Congressman to bring technology jobs to West Virginia. The nation’s capital metropolitan area, FL, TX, CA, AL, MS, OH have benefited greatly from the presence of NASA Centers.
NASA IV&V remains a critical core group in the Technology Park developing in Fairmont and it is a very small price to pay to assist the West Virginia economy. Given the proper support from HQ and from the Projects we assist, the existing IV&V personnel in Fairmont can function effectively and fulfill the directive and fill the needs that have were found lacking after review of the Challenger and Columbia disasters and the string of Mars mission losses in the 1990s. As with the question of continued funding of major NASA Centers that have been on the chopping block over the years, politics is a major factor. The whole NASA budget is only ~1.4% of the Federal Budget.
NASA IV&V is 2/10ths of 1% of the NASA budget - a small sum expended on added assurance. Added expenditures and over-runs due to poor project management and design errors amounts to on the order of 100 times more than the cost of the IV&V budget. Our divulges involving modeling do not represent a catastrophic event or loss of mission. We argue that our mission be righted and our funding maintained. The engineers in Fairmont very eager to make needed changes.”
From what I have read
Comets use to hit the earth all the time
Look at the moon. Reason you can’t see the ones on earth is all the vegetation and over the billions of years the climate has erased them
The planets have shifted into a different orbit around the sun so most hit the back of Jupiter and never reach us. One day when we all shift it might be a problem. I think I will be way gone by then.
I read that somewhere and can’t remember
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NASA’s Contest to Design the Last Shuttle Patch
Wednesday, 6. January 2010, 21:46:08
NASA’s Contest to Design the Last Shuttle Patch
The space shuttle program is on its way out, but the core of people who built and maintained it will live on. To honor them, NASA gave its employees the chance to design the patch that will commemorate the shuttle program, which is slated to end in September, after STS-133 flies.
From the designs of 85 current and former employees, the Shuttle Program Office has selected 15 finalists. The prospective patches, presented here, will be voted on internally by NASA employees and judged by a small panel.
285px-shuttle_patchsvgThe program patch will help mark the end of the shuttle era. Begun rather enthusiastically in the late 1970s, the program almost didn’t have mission patches, said Robert Pearlman, the space history and memorabilia enthusiast who brought the internal contest to the public eye.
“In 1976, the Space Shuttle program designed a patch, called the Space Shuttle Program logo, which was a single triangle, blue and white. It’s very iconic,” Pearlman said. “And the original idea was that since the space shuttle as of 1976 was going to fly so many times and so often — every couple weeks — you wouldn’t want or need crew mission patches any longer. The idea was we’d do away with mission patches.”
But astronauts and other mission members dissented. By then, the patches had become a popular tradition within NASA, even though they’d only been used for a little more than a decade. In the wake of NASA’s 1965 decision not to allow astronauts to name their own vehicles, one astronaut decided that his Gemini V mission needed a patch.
gemini5insignia
“Gordon Cooper, looking for a way to keep a personal touch to the mission, borrowed something from the military, and created and fought for a patch,” Pearlman said.
His design, prominently featuring a covered wagon, became the first of hundreds of NASA patches.
So, after some wrangling, NASA decided the shuttle missions could have their own patches after all. The first patch, for STS-1, was designed by Robert McCall, a well-known space artist, Pearlman said. Subsequent works have come together in a variety of ways. Some have been drawn by the astronauts themselves, others by hangers-on or friends. Together, they form an odd pictographic record of a program that has been at the center of the world’s premiere space agency for more than 30 years. One of the 15 entries you see here will be the final installment in the series.
In the patch design at the top of this post, the sunrise/sunset represents the start and finish of the shuttle program, and the stars honor the astronauts who died on Challenger and Columbia. The artist wrote, “I picked the most dramatic angle of the Shuttle I could find to highlight the magnificence of the most complicated space vehicle in the world.”
Captions are summaries of the artists’ explanations. For full captions, go to CollectSpace.com.
Images: NASA.wired
