…Perhaps Tell A Child (To See The Parade of planets TOMORROW!!!)

It is certainly the case that the media these days finds a special name for everything. It is never just a ‘full moon’ but is instead a Super Blood Harvest Werewolf Moon (or whatever). So, I tend to be skeptical whenever a catchy name is attached to something you can see in the sky. But it this month it turns out that The Drifters (and James Taylor) were right … “at night the stars put on a show for free”.

So, I have to agree that “parade of planets” is sufficiently descriptive and sufficiently un-hyperbolic to be worthwhile. And it is happening this week. So, maybe consider telling a young person about the “parade of planets” that will be visible this week (strongly visible on August 12^th, Wednesday). By simply walking outside at just around sunrise you can see Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Uranus, Saturn, and Neptune, all on display together. Some will be visible with just your eyes, but binoculars will bring the others into view.

For those who are allergic to events near sunrise (hey, I get it), later in the evening on that same day, you should be able to see the Perseid meteor shower. The “kid version” of that is this: our whole Earth is passing through a cloud of dust that was left behind when a comet passed through our solar system, and the “falling stars” you see up there are bits of dust and rock that were blown off that comet by the particles that blast off our Sun all the time.

Here is an article with more detail about the “parade of planets”.

… Perhaps Tell a Student or a Friend (that humans just hit the Moon, but didn’t mean to)

We humans have a history of hitting the Moon. Sometimes it is on purpose. NASA’s (LADEE) Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (which you can learn more about at this link) slammed into the moon with the actual intent of hurling up dust to see how it settled back down to the surface in order to study the “lunar atmosphere”. It also, gave rise to the wonderfully meme-worthy “LADEE Launch Frog” (a photo which, amazingly, links NASA Science to the French newspaper “Le Monde”, the Marriott Hotel across from NASA HQ in Downtown DC, and the University Of Maryland, and, of course frogs).

But oddly, even hitting something as big as the moon is not as easy as it might seem. Famously the 1959 Soviet Union mission named Luna 1 was intended to impact the moon. At that point, right at the beginning of what would become “the space race”, you can imagine that the goal was as much to ensure that it was actually possible to land on it (or that it wasn’t made of ‘green cheese’) as anything else. But Luna 1 missed its target and just jetted its way out into empty space.

Not to be outdone, NASA followed with Ranger 4, a probe that was to impact the far side of the moon in 1962. But due to failures in the solar arrays, the mission was a failure and didn’t hit the target as planned.

Apollo missions, of course, impacted the moon. Some bits (the parts with people on board) can properly said to have “landed” but other parts of those missions (like bits of the rockets) were better described as “impactors”. In fact, NASA installed seismometers on the moon to measure the effects of its own rocket parts (as well as meteors strikes) that hit the moon.

Impacts didn’t stop when NASA halted the Apollo program. According to this Space.Com article,, between 1993 and now, 11 probes from the US, China, India, Japan, and ESA have slammed into the moon.

The latest lunar impact happened last week when large parts of a SpaceX rocket hit the moon. The impact was captured in real time by cameras aboard a South Korean satellite. You can read about that here.

… Tell a Geeky Friend (that you can’t land on Jupiter)

You can’t “land” on Jupiter, because there is no “land”. That is what it means to be a “gas giant planet”. It is gas. There is nothing solid to land on. There just isn’t. No land. No mountains. No ‘ocean floor’. There is just nothing to ‘hit’. The atmosphere gets thicker and thicker, but there just isn’t a point at which things become ‘solid’.

NASA tried to “land” there. In 1995 the Galileo satellite began a descent into/onto Jupiter. It had a parachute AND a heat shield and entered the atmosphere at a mind-boggling 100,000 miles per hour. But it just kept going and going. Even after 58 minutes, there was just nothing to ‘hit’, and it finally succumbed to the heat of all of that dense and swirling atmosphere.

Closer to its ‘center’, Jupiter is a wild place. Jupiter’s gravity squeezes everything near the planet so much that the layer (comprised totally of hydrogen, a gas) closest to its ‘core’ is compressed so much that it behaves like a metal – so, it is a gas that is compressed into a liquid that is so very strange that it acts like a metal and can even conduct electricity.

Things are weird at Jupiter as this article points out.

For what it’s worth, Jupiter’s strangeness doesn’t stop with the planet itself. Jupiter has moons, many of them. One of them Europa, has water (one of the rarest things in all the Universe so far as we know) and has more of it than all of Earth’s oceans combined. The “Europa Clipper” mission is going there to explore those oceans since the current thinking has always been “where there is water, there might be life”.

… Tell a Center Director (that it will all work out in the end, but it COULD be made worse, so don’t)

Just imagine that you are the center director of NASA’s premier science center. Purely hypothetical, of course. Now imagine, because of budget realities and geographical proximity, that in the late 1990’s one of NASA’s smaller facilities, a launch center, say, was added to your center to make a powerful Senator happy. Imagine that it was never a good fit, but that good people, doing their best, made it work as well as it could have.

Now imagine, again this just a mental exercise, that a new administrator comes along and decides to align the agency by “capability’ and decides to associate that launch site (let’s say it is in some place that is coastal, like Virginia) with NASA’s other launch-related site (say, just for kicks, in Florida) that is at least familiar with “launch stuff”. The administrator did this (let’s just say) because it seemed to him that, from a functional perspective, it makes more sense than associating a ‘science center’ with an ‘operational launch site’. Yeah, I know … none of this would EVER happen … we are just imagining things here … we are in dreamworld here.

Further imagine that the new “home center” for the little launch site was in, say, a really politically well-connected state and had a really well-connected center director and that the new NASA “home center” was really well-connected to a major agency / national initiative named after a Roman God (say, oh, I don’t know, “Artemis” … I just picked that at random, by the way) that was intended to win a ‘race back to the moon’ and that the race had taken on international levels of significance. (of course, I am way out on a limb now and all of this is fantastical)

Let’s even go further than that and declare that that well-connected Center Director, in spite of not having a technical background at all, has (so far, at least) shown himself to be wise enough to delegate all the technical stuff to his very capable technical team with guidance to all involved to “make it work for the agency’, and that, by doing this, he was really seen by all as ‘taking the high and efficient road’ to doing what the Agency had commanded’.

IF … and this is a huge IF because, of course, this is all just a thought experiment … all of that were to happen, it would be a truly unwise course of action for the center director of the aforementioned science center to attempt anything that could be construed as a “money-grab” out of the whole affair in order to try to retain bits of money that it takes to operate the component facility that is moving to a new center.

Such a center director would be far wiser to recognize that that the winning strategy here would be to act as a facilitator (rather than a barrier) to the intent of the Agency Administrator. In short, the money is not worth the trouble it will cause.

In this purely hypothetical thought experiment, acting in a way that makes the transition work more smoothly (even if it results in money going to the other center in the very short term), would result in goodwill from the agency administrator and help with the obvious (and huge) near term lack of resources for overhead costs. On the other hand, an attempt that is perceived by the White House as “nickel and diming” over tiny things like institutional budget details’ looks very much like thumbing your nose at the Agency Administrator and the President’s well-connected friend (who is, by the way, thankfully starting to look like a surprisingly good delegator of technical things). Such things would make it harder to get the future science and institutional funding the science center wants and deserves.

A better move:

• · Recognize that the dollars involved are not worth the mud that will be splattered if you get in a fuss with a Human Spaceflight Center over something they have already saluted to.

• · So, let the component facility describe its requirement to its new master center and acknowledge that figure as reasonable (which it probably is) to help facilitate what the administrator wants to happen smoothly.

• · Then rightly claim that because you had been so diligent in creating “efficiencies across your center and the former component”, loss of it’s some portion of the funding and the capabilities/people it supported will result in shortfalls for you, but since you have worked in good faith to see the transfer went smoothly, that will need to be made whole for that part of things.

Trust me, that “better move” will work out.

All hypothetical, of course.

… Tell a Member of Congress (to vote for The Senate Version)

This is different for me and for this substack in that it is not about “science” but is instead about “the business of science”. So, I will keep this as brief as I can.

• · As has been the case in too many recent years, the federal government is likely headed for a “shutdown” unless a spending bill gets passed. Fortunately, work has begun on just such a bill.

• · The Senate’s version of that bill expressly forbids the Office Of Management and Budget (OMB) from refusing to spend the money that has been allocated to the various parts of the federal government (including NASA) that “does science”. In fact, in a shocking display of bi-partisan agreement that science should not be political but should instead be about science” the Senate vote on that was 90 to 6.

• · But in Congress both parts (House and Senate) must agree to the same language, and the House didn’t include that specific language. So, if you are into things like scientific exploration, figuring out how the Universe works, understanding the laws of physics, and creating the new knowledge on which our future technologies and medicines will stand, it might be worthwhile to make some noise (as yourself, a citizen, not as a federal worker, just as a voter) expressing your support for the Senate position. For those of you new to this, you find “your” member of Congress at this website.

  • I get it that some of my readers might be a little wigged out by the idea of contacting someone in Congress these days, but that is ok. You know all those people you “told” something to as a result of all the earlier stuff in this posting? Well, you can also tell them to do the contacting. It really is a numbers game, so more contacts are better, anyway.

I have greatly over-simplified this, so here is a link to an article with far more information. The point is that, from your private (not work) email, you can (totally at your discretion) send an email to your representatives and let them know you want science to be rationally (not politically) directed).

… Tell Yourself to WAIT

Whether you are leading (or even just attending) a small meeting or leading a large organization, there is deep wisdom in the word “WAIT”.

But in this case I doesn’t mean “pause”. In this case it means “Why Am I Talking?”.

The point is that sometimes, even though one thing most people are good at is talking, the best thing you can do is to pause and listen once you have said what you need (truly need) to say.

As a leader, you are often expected to talk first. And that makes a lot of sense. Sometimes you are ‘setting the agenda’ or ‘initiating the change’ or whatever. If the job is to inspire a team that has been recently beaten and battered by a trip over the waterfall, then you should spend a LOT of time helping that team see that the battering is over and how you will steer them to a better place. That is a good reason to talk if you now lead such a group. You will need to create and clarify and codify your vision over and over and over again because the team will need a lot of reassurance. If you don’t do that, you are sorta falling down on the job (to be blunt about it). So, there are certainly times to talk when you are leading something.

But once you said what needs saying (whether it is good news or bad news), it is time to pause and to ask for feedback. It is time to ask things like: how is all this sounding, what is the team sensing, what is working, what is failing, what are the barriers, what are the challenges, what are we losing, what have we already lost, what are the opportunities, what isn’t bearable much longer, and what simply must change.

And if, because they are so stunned that someone is actually asking them what they think, they take a moment to gather their thoughts or take a breath and hope that this time they won’t get whacked in the head for saying what they really think, it might take a moment for them to produce a response.

That heartbeat, that five or ten seconds of quiet, will scream like a banshee into your leader ears and compel you to say something to fill the silence.

Don’t. You have said what you needed to say, and now more of your words won’t help. Sometimes you are there to listen. When that is the case, don’t talk. The letters .. WAIT (Why Am I Talking) is something you can write at the top of a notepad, your laptop, or your, Ipad, or on the back of your hand, if you need help remembering.

But whatever it takes, remember to WAIT … to ask yourself, “Why Am I Talking?”. It might be with a large group or it might be with an individual. Regardless of the audience, you are the leader, and you are not threatened by hearing what is in your audience’s head. And, you don’t need to comment on everything. So hear them out. Wait. You might actually learn something that will help you move forward.

That is it for now.

Take care of yourself this week. Do AWESOME things and do GOOD thngs. You CAN, so you SHOULD.

Jay

When I was working, this is what my shirt pocket looked like. There was always a simple index card. On the plain side of the card was written my schedule (at least as it existed at the start of the day. I had a cellphone, but coverage at Wallops was terrible, so the paper was more reliable, and if something big changed, Brenda Harrie would hunt me down, take the card, and change it herself. God bless her, wherever she is; she cared about me far more than I did most days). On the other side were a few lines for notes. There wasn’t much space, but that lack of space (remember that it is want, not plenty, that keeps you focused) was good at making me just make note of truly important things.

The old-school chain that held my badge was the same chain that had been given to me on my very first day working for NASA. Most people I knew had fancy lanyards with cool logos, but after having had that chain for a few years, I decided to just stick with that one until I retired and then turn it back in, since NASA had given it to me in the first place. I actually managed keep it the whole time I was working (it broke once but I fixed it – that is the nice thing about the old-school chains), and I plan to turn it back in whenever NASA gets tired of having me as an Emeritus. I am sure it will just be thrown away, but it feels somehow important to give it back.

My badge also lived in my pocket in spite of the rules about displaying it, The problem was, it constantly got hung up in things, so I just kept in there. I became conscious of that as a privilege only late in my career when a visiting Navy captain pointed out that “only the senior officers kept their badges in their pockets”. And it was true. If anyone else hadn’t had their badge out, someone would have said something.

And there were always pens, just like the ones in the photo.

Usually there were two pens. One was either blue or black, but there was always a red one. Maybe it was obnoxious (my daughter has strong reasons to agree that my having one around could be truly obnoxious), but I read everything with a red pen in hand (I still read nonfiction with one of those same pens). And I wasn’t slow to circle, strike through, “X” out, or make notes. I remember buying green pens of the same brand on the idea that green was somehow gentler. But writing a big “X” or writing “No” in green ink is just confusing, so I settled on red. The other color was there in case I had to give an “official signature”.

• Remember this, too: Sometimes in life, there are people, usually bureaucrats of some sort who require only black or blue ink for some document. My own view on this is that it is somehow an overreach of administrative authority, but I have learned this in life: If you meet someone who requires a particular color of ink, they and their organization (see: “Vogons”) probably care more about the rule and color of that ink than they care about you or what you write, so it would be a complete waste of effort to argue with them.

So, for more than 30 years, I lived each day with at least one pen in my shirt pocket. I had a few leaks (the red looks particularly dramatic on a white shirt), but I was never sorry to have had it with me.

The point of this whole discussion is this: always remember to bring a pen when you are working.

Bring A Pen, Even If The Commute Is Long

Fifty-seven years ago this week, on July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin was really glad he remembered to bring his pen. He was on the moon, and it came in handy.

The pen, a felt-tip model manufactured by the Duro Pen Company, had been part of the set of “personal preference” items that Buzz had brought along for the first ever moon landing.

• The personal preference items have a long and storied history in the Apollo program. The “personal-ness” of the items meant that anything brought along had to fit into the Apollo program’s “Personal Preference Kit” (or “PPK” – because, of COURSE, there is an acronym!) container. The official rules of the time required that the astronauts identify what they would take at least 60 days in advance and generally fit into some standardized but pretty broad categories. The categories were: historical artifacts, flags and patriotic symbols, commemorative items, religious or spiritual items, family mementos, recreational items, or scientific or educational materials.

• Famously, Neil Armstrong took some wood from the original Wright Flyer’s propeller and a bit of fabric from its wing (note that the fabric idea was replicated later by the tiny helicopter that flew on Mars). But other astronauts took notable things as well. Mike Collins took US and US Air Force flags. Alan Shepard took golf balls and a “makeshift” golf club which he used to take the first ever “lunar golf shot”. Edgar Mitchell took 100 microfilm Bibles. Stuart Rosa took tree seeds.

Along with whatever else he took in his PPK, Buzz Aldrin took a felt-tip pen. That turned out to be a good thing.

The two men had returned to their lander after the first ever moon walk and were preparing to rest. But Buzz noticed a black piece of plastic on the floor of the lunar lander. It was just a tiny thing, looking a bit like the head of a roofing nail, but below the broad, flat head, the plastic of the shank (the long cylindrical part) was broken. According to his own autobiography, “Magnificent Desolation”, Aldrin’s heart sank as soon as he saw it. The plastic was the broken circuit breaker that was to have enabled the arming of the engine for their lift-off from the moon. Without that circuit breaker being pressed, no electrical power would reach the engine. There would, therefore, be no lift-off.

This was, as they say in the space business, a problem.

Apparently, there was disagreement over how it got broken, but, given the two people who were there, they didn’t spend time on that (there is a lesson there for us all: don’t fuss, focus!). Instead, they immediately reported it to Mission Control (another lesson: fess up). So, as they rested (it was scheduled, after all, and even to this day, Mission Control likes to keep to schedules even if there is a calamity afoot), the ground teams worked through possibilities for re-routing power around the broken switch.

But no solution was found. The two astronauts were told to “look for a local workaround” (translation, “We got nothing, you are on your own.”) Something would have to be jammed into the hole that had been left by the plastic pin. There were plenty of things around made of metal, but this is not what you want in a circuit breaker. After hearing from Mission Control that there was “absolutely no way to re-route the power”, by his own admission, Buzz …

• (of COURSE, it was Buzz who came up with the idea of using his own finger, and you would know what I mean by that if you have ever met him … I did once and still remember it as a career highlight. I was sitting in a technical meeting and this tiny little guy with wild hair and wearing cowboy boots asked me if the seat next to me was taken and, if not, could he sit there. I stood up, heart pounding, and said “Sir, I am so honored to meet you, and I swear to you, you can sit anywhere in this room you would like to sit, and I will personally move anyone out of whatever seat you decide you want.” He laughed, shook my hand, and sat down. I have not one earthly clue as to what was said in the technical presentation since we whispered back and forth through the whole thing.)

… came up with the idea of using his finger but decided that would be a bad idea. What they needed was something non-metallic and small enough to fit in the hole.

But Buzz had a pen in the pocket of his space suit, the pen he had brought with him in his kit. He talked it over with Neil and they agreed it might work. No doubt there was a check-in with Mission Control (because that is how things work in Human Spaceflight), but when it was time to leave, Buzz himself pushed the tip of the pen into the circuit breaker hole. There was doubt about whether or not the fit was tight enough to keep the pen from just falling out of the hole. Or maybe it would break off and become useless or even block the hole and any future attempts.

But none of that happened. He pushed it in, gently let go of it, and it stayed. It worked. The pen stayed in the hole, worked long enough to allow power to get to the engines, and the two lifted off from the Moon as planned.

So, bring your pen to work, even if the commute is a long one. Pens are useful things.

Buzz Aldrin kept the pen and the broken bit of plastic from the Apollo 11 mission. Now, just recently, Buzz, now 97 years old, put the pen up for auction and even included the broken circuit breaker. The items sold for $850,000.

Time to buy another pen…you never know when you’ll need one. I recommend red.

(links related to this story can be found here and here)

But Wait!!! The Soviets Used Pencils!

The story goes like this:

After sending astronauts to space the first few times, the US realized that ballpoint pens (being gravity-fed) were useless in space. But this was the height of the space race, so NASA spent millions of dollars to develop a pen that worked in zero gravity. The pens cost more than a million dollars each but could write upside down, at extreme temperatures, and even underwater, thus solving the problem. But faced with the same problem, the Soviet space program used pencils. Silly Americans!!!

What an awesome story! Americans shake their heads when this kind of stuff comes up. We know that such things happen. Didn’t the Air Force, after all, spend 10,000 dollars on a toilet seat? (hint: it did) Didn’t there used to be a mock Congressional award for where the government, in the view of former Senator William Proxmire, wasted the most money? (there was, see the link for the Golden Fleece Award here)

Except this one didn’t happen. There was no NASA-developed million-dollar pen.

In the start, there were pencils. It seemed the obvious choice to everyone involved. Pencils seemed simple, and simple is king in the space game since few space-things are.

But it turned out that pencils weren’t so simple. Just using them creates graphite dust. Sharpening them creates sawdust. Erasing something creates rubber dust. All that floats around in your spaceship doing nefarious things to circuits, food, and backs of throats. No one, not us or the Soviets, used pencils more than a couple of times.

A pen was a better choice, but Paul Fisher (of the Fisher Pen Company) invested his own funds to create the “space pen”. It operated in any orientation, worked in temperatures ranging from -50 degrees to +400 degrees, and worked underwater. They were used by NASA beginning in 1967 and were purchased commercially (apparently by both NASA and the Soviet space program). Here is a link with more detail about the “million-dollar pen”.

Also, just to clear things up, the Air Force did spend about 10 thousand dollars on specialized toilet seats used in C-5 Galaxy Aircraft, but, due to what seemed like exorbitant costs, switched to 3D printing the seats for about 300 dollars. Here is a link to that story.

But What If There Had Been No Pen?

It is easy (and almost fun) to talk about things that nearly went horribly wrong but turned out fine. In many ways it is a lot more comfortable to talk about near misses that way. It is a lot easier than confronting what almost happened but didn’t, because you got lucky.

• The “Lessons Learned” and “Close Call” people out there will recognize that having a mission critical plastic button protruding out of an electrical panel in a cramped space with astronauts trying to maneuver around in full space suits is less about bad luck and more about bad design (which was later fixed).

But it didn’t have to turn out that everything was OK. It is a sobering thought to face the fact that a million things could have gone wrong during that Apollo 11 mission (and any other human spaceflight mission, in fact), and Neil and Buzz and Mike might never have made it back. In fact (just as exists today, I am told) prior to their mission launch, the US President was provided with a statement to be read to the public in case there was a calamity. You can read that letter, in full, here.

NASA’s “Vast” Budget for R&D

It is an article of faith in NASA circles that its own budget for technology, research, and development is tiny compared to that of the Department of Defense’s. According to a recent statement by the Space Force’s Chief Scientist, the Department of Defense takes a position of (my own term here) “respectful disagreement”.

Like so much, I guess, the reality of the situation “depends on how you count”, but if you just pull on a few Congressional Report threads for fiscal year 2025, you will see that NASA’s “space technology budget” was about 1.2 billion dollars. At this point, much of that has been rolled into the newly formed Research Technology Mission Directorate. There is, of course, other “technology” work going on at NASA, some of it specifically focused on Human Spaceflight, some on Science, as well as other bits and pieces. And that is where the “depends on how you count” thing becomes important. The Congressional Report document above, in “Table 2” identifies NASA as having about 10 billion in “R&D Funding”. But, whatever it is, 1 billion or 10 billion, the full funding of the agency itself is about 25 billion dollars so there is a pretty firm upper bound on it.

Likewise, the Department of Defense also has a few dollars squirreled away for R&D. That same report, on that same page, identifies 91 billion dollars in “R&D” “military” funding. So, assuming a few tens of billions of dollars amounts to a non-trivial difference, there is a non-trivial difference between the assets available to each one. Further, just to state the obvious, it sure seems that DoD has what most people would call “more”.

So, it was with actual shock that I listened to the Chief Scientist of the Space Force refer to NASA’s R&D budget as “vast compared to ours”. (This came in what was a very good interview on the Aerospace Space Policy Podcast, a consistently-great podcast I strongly recommend.) The specific reference to NASA’s ‘vast’ budget occurs at about 18 minutes and 40 seconds into this episode.) Honestly, I tried to come up with an interpretation that made this at least plausible, but given that even “just” the current (FY26) USSF RDT&E budget is 29 billion and the FY27 request is for 40 billion, I just can’t to get to “vast”.

And, yes, I am picking nits from what was a very good podcast. There was a wonderful discussion of quantum (meta) materials, autonomy, and several other technologies, but, having worked for NASA, where the absolute conviction is that the real money in the government rests with the Department of Defense, I nearly choked when I heard the reference to NASA’s “vast” resources.

To get back on a seriously informative track, the podcast references two very interesting items (to me at least).

The first is the recently published Space Force Future Operating Environment 2040. Here is a link to the document, and I have just started reading it (red pen in hand, of course), and will offer interesting thoughts here or (if I end up having a lot of thoughts/red marks) over on The Organizing Thought.

The other interesting thing (again, maybe just to me) was the standing up of the Space Force “Space Futures Design and Analysis Group” which will, as an organization, focus on technology investments, wargaming, and analysis of future threat. Fun stuff. Here is a link to that.

A Very Brief Word On “Launch Operations”, and “Launch Decision Authority”

This is one of those “if you know you know” things, but here goes.

Launch Decision Authority (LDA) sounds like one of those very important things that would feel very powerful to have listed on your “set of things I could do today if I was associated with a place that launches rockets”. In fact, it is a thing to be approached with some humility and trepidation, a great deal of cooperation, and an immense amount of awareness of the very valid, very useful, and very powerful tensions that exist across the set of parties that are involved in launching something into space.

Even an incomplete listing of the various stakeholders includes a mind-boggling set of participants: the launch vehicle team, the payload team, the safety team, the environmental team, the spaceport team, the range (or host site) team, the downrange team, the airspace team, the surveillance team, and that list keeps going and going and going.

Briefly stated, NONE of those teams have “the ultimate button” that opens the gate to space. In fact, there usually is, literally, no big blinking button that launches a rocket since computers and clocks normally do the deed. Instead, properly thought of, EACH of those teams has the ability to open part of the gate.

And each of those teams comes with its own bias, its own predisposition, its own value proposition, and its own highest concern. Each often comes with its own reasons why it is “ready to go” or, if not, “conditions that would have to be met to be ready to go”. During the time that those reasons become more clearly known and are eventually met, each team exerts a tension, usually in some way non-aligned (or even opposing), on the tensions exerted by some or all of the other teams.

The resulting imbalance, like hands on a Ouija board, moves the project, mission, or activity, across a wide range of statuses until, finally, if teams start working together, it rests at a place where it COULD be approved for launch. That place, that point, IS the Launch Opportunity. Its steward, is the Launch Decision Authority, a person whose job it is to stand above all those tensions, unmoved by any of them but holding them all in a complex and appropriately ranked priority that considers not only the project, the range, safety, and all the rest, but also considers organizational and even (sometimes) National interest.

The LDA, unlike the other teams’ leaders and members, must hold sacrosanct none of the individual elements, but, instead, all of the individual elements, the sum of them. And each team or team lead must recognize that in saying “My part is ready.”, the subsequent failure of that part is on THEM, not the LDA, because the LDA represents the sum total capability itself. The LDA, in large part, is the localized personification of the capability, and the LDA’s special required ability is to look at all that balanced tension, agree that it is in stable tension, and that it aligns with the capability of the local operational capability to support successfully. The failure of an LDA is of far more serious consequence than the failure of any element since it represents the failure of the entire capability and its processes. It can be a career- or organization-destroying thing to have happen.

After an LDA’s certifying (or stating or signing or whatever method is used) that things are indeed ready, the team assembled is empowered, under some operational lead (usually a “Test Director” or “Launch Coordinator” or some such name), to execute the operation that is defined by that specific state of tension. The LDA may be a watcher at that point but is not necessarily a participant unless some team comes to understand that its status was incompletely defined or satisfied and chooses to revoke its prior held position of “being ready”. Then it is back to being unbalanced until a new equilibrium is reached.

That is what LDA means.

If it is too highly placed in the organization, it is so removed from operational reality and the needs of the participants that is it a meaningless process exercise. It also exposes that high level individual, personally, to the catastrophic results that occur if the function is poorly executed. If it is too low, i.e., one of the participating parties applying tension, then it is too involved to have a holistic view and also simply lacking in the authority required to commit to the planned operation.

So, just a few thoughts on a very niche topic that might be under discussion in some locales.

That is all I have for this time.

Have a great week, and in having one help someone else have one just as great.

J

Antonio was born in 1949. He was born in Galveston, TX. But because he was the son of a Spanish diplomat, that birth didn’t necessarily confer US citizenship since, as is the case with all official diplomats, the parents have “diplomatic immunity”, so the children born to them are not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” as is stated in the 14^th Amendment. It was only much later, when he became a naturalized US citizen, that the judge who performed the ceremony admitted to him afterwards that he had never naturalized someone who had been born in the United States.

Antonio wasn’t thinking about that, of course. He was just a baby, and his parents moved on to the next posting in Rio de Janeiro. Other assignments followed, and Antonio traveled the world as he grew. In the early 1960s, his family was assigned to a posting in Rome, Italy. There, Antonio attended the Liceo Espanol Cervantes, a public Spanish international school with a college preparatory “fifth year” for students with academic promise.

Antonio was a pretty good student so far as anyone can tell. (I have met and worked with Antonio, and he is truly the last person who would ever be self-complimentary about anything, so that part about grades is a little unclear because he just laughs about it.) Let’s just say that the grades were “good enough”, so he qualified for that fifth year of college prep. One other thing was pretty good as well – even though there was only one other student in the fifth year prep class with him, that other person was Mirella, a girl Antonio not only liked enough to ask out on a date (his first, apparently), he liked her so much that they would later marry.

Antonio Goes to College in America (and rocks It)

Antonio’s father was eager for his son to study engineering in Madrid, the family’s official home. While Antonio did go to Madrid for a very short time, he really wanted to study in the United States. Even more precisely, he wanted to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT was his only application.

It was then that a miracle occurred. He was accepted. Antonio says that the reason he got in was that MIT did not understand his time at the Liceo Espanol Cervantes (this makes me believe that when Antonio chuckles about his early grades, “good enough” is maybe the right way to describe them). The way he tells it, they assumed it was a college and he had completed a year there plus some time at a university in Madrid.

This interpretation of things seems to be about right because not only was Antonio accepted at MIT, he was given college credits for his “prior academic work” and started at MIT as a sophomore. Within a single semester, Antonio had earned enough credits to be classified as a junior. After one more semester, he had enough credits to be classified as a senior. One semester later, he graduated from MIT as an aerospace engineer. I’ve heard him tell the story – there is a lot of laughter involved, and his eyes sparkle as he tells it.

Antonio Enters Real Life (and rocks that too)

Soon, Antonio was married to his high school sweetheart, moved back to Boston, and gone back to MIT for a master’s and doctorate degree. He did research at Draper Labs (a cool and important place, by the way) and did some work on the Space Shuttle’s avionics in the late 1970’s. He created the guidance system that the Shuttle used for its descent, approach, and landings. You know, little things like that.

Antonio Gets a Phone Call and Builds a Rocket

One day while he was still an assistant professor at MIT, Antonio got a call. The voice on the other end of the phone said, “You don’t know me, but I know you, and I want you to help me build a rocket.”

Antonio listened and soon accepted a job doing just that. The goal was to build a new kind of rocket. Antonio would lead the team that would do this. The rocket would be new for two reasons. First, it would be new because of how it was launched. Second, and for many people most unbelievably, it would be new because it would be developed using private funds rather than government funds. If successful, the team that Antonio led would create the first privately developed space launch vehicle. Spoiler alert: they were successful.

• Yeah…that’s right. While Elon Musk was 9 years old, Antonio was guiding the Space Shuttle back to Earth. Before Elon had turned 19, Antonio’s rocket had successfully completed its first launch attempt. Yep … you read that right. It was a private, commercially funded rocket and it worked the first time they tried to launch it with a payload on board. Rocket people know how rare and hard that is … some recently seem to have forgotten that as they “work to meet the schedule promised in a tweet”. That’s when you end up with fireballs over Texas or on launch pads at the Cape. Just sayin’.

The rocket, the Pegasus Launch Vehicle, was named after the winged horse of the same name from Greek mythology. It is not launched from the ground like a ‘normal rocket’. Instead, it drops from the bottom of an aircraft (originally a B-52 and later an L-1011) as it flies at about 40,000 feet. Accomplishing all this, dropping from the aircraft, gliding for a bit to achieve safe separation as the plane veers away, orienting itself using the winglets attached to the first stage of the rocket, and then blasting its way into space, requires some pretty high-end guidance smarts. When you look at it that way, it is easy to see why Antonio was the right guy to have leading the team. Here’s a link to a good description of a typical Pegasus launch timeline.

Antonio’s Rocket Turns Out Pretty Well (and even launches from his home)

That first launch happened in 1990. There were 45 launches in all. Of those, all but three were successful. One of the launches, number 15, launched in 1997, and while it was the first one I had anything to do with (I made some modifications to the ground system that was deployed to serve as the flight safety system for the mission), the real achievement was that aircraft took off from Spanish ground, from Gando Airbase, Grand Canary Islands, Spain. It carried “MiniSat-1”, a small satellite developed by the faculty and students from Spanish universities. I cannot imagine what that must have been like for Antonio — to have created the rocket that carried a satellite that was carried to space on a launch that was the first ever conducted from his home country.

Antonio Gets Recognized for Generally Being Great

In 1991, US President George H. W. Bush presented Antonio with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for his work on the Pegasus. More recently he was elected to US National Academy of Engineering, but he is one of those guys whose list of awards and honors simply goes on and on (and he will never be the one to tell you about them).

I Meet A Pretty Cool Guy Named Antonio (who is helping build another rocket).

I met Antonio much later. By the early 2000’s he was a legendary figure, still revered for his expertise. I met him as his company was developing a much larger (and more traditionally launched) rocket, the Antares. He never seemed like a giant. He was just the guy who always seemed to know everything about everything but never made you feel stupid when he explained it. He might smile at you when he answered, but he took our questions (there were many since new rockets make Launch Range people (like I was) nervous) seriously. When there was a problem he became laser – focused and we had to surround him with experts just to keep up with his brain. And though it did have a later failure, that rocket, too, worked the first time it was launched. I was on console and watched it succeed that first time. It was stunning … mostly because it worked – a true rarity in world of “first launches”, and Antonio had done it twice.

• Just as an aside, it feels like there is a lesson there: at the very least, we can say that “it can be done” if you spend enough time on the engineering (in spite of what we see on the news and on the “tweets” of billionaires who assume that money can buy exemptions from the Rocket Equations and from the need for strong Systems Engineering practice. Here, by the way is a video presentation by Antonio Elias on just those topics. In it he gives some highlights from the original development of the Pegasus Launch Vehicle. But mostly it gives insight into Antonio and what it takes to get a rocket to work the very first time you launch it.

But Why The Article About Antonio?

Honestly, just because he is one of the coolest people I have ever met, and because the rocket he invented is about to make its last flight.

Why Pegasus Mattered (and why it disappeared from use)

Pegasus was unique, of course. Not only was it small, but because it was air-launched, it offered a company (or a nation) the ability to “launch from anywhere and to any orbit”, a true advantage now that the idea of ‘resilient access to space’ has become a powerful buzzword more than a quarter of a century after its inaugural launch. There was also a “rapid” aspect to the Pegasus. Because the rocket could be assembled and stored with its payload already loaded, you could imagine that it could go from “zero to launch” pretty quickly – a real advantage for some space related needs. Finally, it was also a relatively cheap ride to orbit for its time, costing only about 50 million dollars for a launch. It was limited by its lifting capacity, though, and could manage only about 1000 pounds of payload.

But because they were small, and because of some of the unique manufacturing processes used to make them, some of the parts could be made in advance, and, very importantly, the ‘smarts’ of the rocket, those avionics systems as well as some of the propulsion elements, could be stored for quite some time. Antonio’s employer, Orbital Sciences Corp (later bought by Northrup Grumman) eventually had created enough of these components for 46 launches.

At first business was pretty brisk, but even though satellites were becoming smaller and smaller (which could have played to the strength of a vehicle like the Pegasus which had a limited payload capacity), the concept of “Rideshare” overtook the need for the Pegasus. In a “rideshare” arrangement, a large “primary satellite customer” agrees to have smaller satellites “come along for the ride” in a way that allows all of the “riders” to divide up the cost of the launch while special systems assure that the primary can’t get damaged if one of the smaller/secondary systems develops a problem. This reduced the comparative cost effectiveness of the Pegasus, and the system fell into disuse after 45 launches. The last one was in 2021 – a successful launch of a Space Force satellite called Odyssey.

But that one set of components, the 46^th and final, remained in inventory. It is about to get used.

The Swift Observatory

The story of the upcoming Pegasus launch actually begins back in 2004 when NASA launched the Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer (it was later renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory). You can read about it here, but to summarize (and probably horrify all of my astrophysics friends):

• Swift is really three telescopes on one platform (thus the term ‘observatory’ gets applied). The value of that is so it can see lots of different sorts of energy … many different wavelengths … that are typically associated with ‘big events’ in the universe – things like gamma ray bursts, nova events, and other explosive goings – on. That alone would make Swift useful, but there is one other feature that makes Swift unique. That is its ability to be scheduled very very flexibly. In as little as 10 minutes it can be reoriented / re-pointed at some area of the sky to see what is going on. This is super useful in the case of those ‘big events’ I just mentioned. When something huge has been detected by some other telescope, Swift can (swiftly) be brought to bear to study it in just the sort of energy bands that would be most useful in seeing it. That ability to study things over the short term OR over the longer term is called “time domain astronomy” and Swift is one of NASA’s masters of that art.

Swift Has an Altitude Problem

But remember how I said that Swift was launched in 2004? Well, that is a long time to be in space for a satellite in low earth orbit. That is because even though the satellite is in space, there are enough particles in and around Earth to slow it down over the course of years. And when a satellite slows down, it gets lower.

That has happened to Swift. It has gotten lower and lower over the years. If there is much more of this ‘getting lower’, it will soon deorbit and reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and be destroyed.

But Swift is still a really useful observatory, so an idea was hatched to save it by boosting it up to its original orbit.

There are all sorts of problems with that. You have to have some sort of contraption to grab it (it wasn’t designed to be grabbed) and then boost it back up to where it belongs. The contraption that will do that is the LINK spacecraft, a 425kg satellite with three grappling arms. There are predecessors and other versions of such satellites. NRL built one. NASA built one. China has built several. But I will leave the exploration of that side of things to you. For what it is worth, even though launches are always somewhat risky, this is probably the hardest, riskiest, part of the mission, in my opinion.

The other challenge, the one where that last Pegasus comes into play, is the fact of Swift’s current location and orbit. As I said, it is far lower now and is an orbit that, quite frankly, no one is really interested in going to visit. That means that the only way to get there is with a dedicated rocket (since no one wants to share a ride to an orbit they don’t want to go to anyway). But a dedicated rocket is really expensive.

What is needed is a relatively cheap rocket that can be launched into a pretty rarely-used Low Earth Orbit and on a fairly short notice. Recognize those capabilities??

The 46th (and last) Pegasus

So the 46^th and final Pegasus was tapped for the mission.

It is planned for launch tomorrow, June 30, 2026, from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The launch range there is Ronald Regan Space and Missile Test Range, one of the coolest and most unique of the US launch ranges.

And that is why I wrote this. I saw the launch announcement and thought of Antonio and what an awesome guy he is and what an awesome story he has.

And I thought you all should know it.

Wherever he is, I hope Antonio is watching the launch.

Have a great week everyone. Thanks for sticking with me through this story.

J

Sometimes a question has the answer embedded in it. When that happens, things become very clear if you are paying attention.

That happened during a recent industry symposium. Here is a short article about the event, but I will distill it here and give a little background because this is really important.

People in and out of the space industry go on and on about space debris. Depending on who you talk to, there is so much up there that we won’t be able to launch anything whether it be weather satellites or space-billboards or space hotels. There is discussion of calamitous Kessler syndrome events which will create showers of metal all around the Earth and even the creation of armored satellites.

In reaction to this, there have been government “technology demonstration missions” that grapple out-of-control satellites to refurbish and refuel them. In addition, there has grown up a small cadre of companies who plan to demonstrate systems that will maneuver to and then capture bits of debris and remove them from their harmful trajectories. As described in this article (about 3/4s of the way down), other demonstration missions will show how they can remove defunct satellites from orbits and deliver them to the surface or to some orbit where they can do no harm.

But then…and this is just a brilliant example of how the right question can clarify things… Eric Romo, President of Impulse Space asked, “Does anybody actually believe that that’s about space debris?”

And everyone laughed. !!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is because, at a national level, none of this, none of the actual government effort around space debris, is about space debris. It is about being able to disable or disrupt our nation’s adversaries’ space assets and to do so in the face of their demonstrated ability to disable or disrupt ours. All that space debris, all those items zipping around the planet … those are practice targets.

Want specifics? Here’s an article about recent Chinese demonstrations of “space debris removal” that are characterized by US officials as “anti-satellite” systems. Here’s another such article. And here is an article about the US intent to be able to maneuver in space to a degree that it can capture or disable adversarial space assets while simultaneously escaping from the clutches of adversarial attempts to do the same to ours.

So, what was FINALLY said out loud, in the form of a question, is that all of the grappling and maneuvering isn’t really about getting rid of debris but is instead about trying to create it during an in space conflict — in the form of disabled satellites.

Let THAT sink in.

Boom Times … (in New England)

This keeps happening. By “this”, I mean, the fact that we humans keep getting surprised by things falling from space. By “surprised” I mean that we literally do not see these things coming. This time it was in the skies over Massachusetts, but the story of that incident (link here) could be told of many regions. Here, for example, from last month is one from over Phoenix. Here is a summary of some of the more notable large meteor strikes captured on video.

What’s the point? Just this: Sizeable meteors happen. Some dubbed “city killers” (like the one in that last video clip where one killed 1,500 people in Russia) are large enough to wreak havoc anywhere on the planet. There is a great deal of talk about “Space Domain Awareness” or SDA. To be clear, our SDA goal right now is closer to the old Spy vs Spy comics where one spy is the US and the other spy is China or Russia (take your pick) so we can see how they might be attacking our space assets. But it might be worthwhile to consider being “aware” of meteors as well since they can, well, kill you.

New Glenn … (You Had a Bad Day)

A few weeks ago, there was a space industry discussion in which the NASA administrator pointed out that the US lacks sufficient launch infrastructure. Now that means a bunch of things. It’s kind of easy to assume that he might have meant “launch capacity” in terms working rockets that can carry all the things to space that we need carried there. Rockets, after all, are the big, visible things associated with going to space. But there are other parts of that infrastructure, and it is often overlooked.

• And here is a note about things that are “overlooked” – it is very often a good thing. I say that because when stuff is reliable and works, it tends to not get attention. Part of my respect for launch ranges in general is that they exist in this odd world of never being noticed because they generally work reliably and safely day in and day out. And that is true whether rockets work or not – it is very rare event to see an actual injury to anyone in the general public as a result of a launch problem. That is a tribute to the launch ranges which have to be good on the normal days and great on the bad ones.

But there was a very bad day last week down at the Eastern Range in Florida. If you are reading this then you are probably the type to have already seen the video of the horrific, turns-nighttime-into-day, explosion of the New Glenn rocket (link here).

That explosion was just about as bad as you can imagine since it happened as the rocket was still sitting on the launch pad. So, unlike what would have happened had the rocket been high up in the air, the blast not only destroyed the rocket, but also destroyed the launch pad and much of what was around it. I’ve seen that sort of destruction up close (thanks to this beauty which was at least a few feet away from the launch pad when it exploded), and it is brutal.

But how brutal was it really? Well, it is early so there is still some analysis going on.

This video is awesome in the way it looks intelligently at some of the just-released images of the launch pad. What you will quickly notice is that the problem is not that a rocket was lost. In fact, losing rockets during their early phases of development is not at all rare (as this story about SpaceX’s long string of failures, as they still try to get their latest rocket going, makes clear). Instead, the problem here is that it will take many months to repair the damage that was done to the “launch infrastructure”: towers, concrete, one-of-a-kind components and piping and valves and mounts that were created just for that particular type of vehicle.

What’s the point? The biggest weak point and bottleneck used to be rockets. For a long time we only had one or two that actually worked. Now, we have a fair number of them, and more are on the way. But the launch pads, the launch sites, the launch ranges that can safely accommodate the nation’s required launch cadence – these things are rare, usually specialized, and vulnerable not only to bad actors (enemies) but also to really bad days. Calling out that shortage is important. Calling it out to a Congress that seems to be waking up to the importance of space is maybe even more important.

The Star … (behind SpaceX)

More than 20 years ago I was at a picnic in Logan, Utah. It was maybe 2003 or 2004, and the event I was attending was, honestly, a group of pretty familiar faces. We all came every year, and there was always the same group. This was the annual “small satellite conference”, and it was not a huge event. It never had been a big deal in those days, but for a small set of believers (I was one of those), it was important. Unlike the big industry conferences, this event was dominated by spacecraft component companies no one had heard of, rocket companies that hadn’t yet launched a rocket, and dreamers (or visionaries) who imagined the skies full of satellites that would give access to cellphone callers and internet terminals anywhere in the world. Crazy, right?

The conference in those days was pretty low key. I remember the picnic part. There was a big field with wooden picnic benches, and you got your paper plate and had it filled with as much BBQ as you could manage. We ate BBQ at the benches, at any table you wanted, while the bright sun hung low and hot over the mountains. I met amazing people there, and one of them was Gwynne Shotwell.

In an industry where it was (and still is) dominated by men, Gwynne was an anomaly for more reasons than that one . We all knew Elon by that point. He made a lot of noise about crazy stuff like going to Mars even though he had no working rocket. But no one else (other than NASA and the gigantic aerospace companies) had working rockets either, so that wasn’t what made him stand out. Instead, it was the fact that he seemed willing to throw all of his money at the problem that attracted NASA and DARPA and a few other interested parties. To be honest, the plan on the government side was to let him throw his money at the problem of cheaper launch vehicles -- if he made progress, then it would eventually benefit the government, and if he didn’t he would be just another gazillionaire with a dream who took a few steps that would maybe benefit the next guy. (brutal, that way, isn’t it?).

But then we met Gwynne. I swear to you right now, we talked about Gwynne. We talked about her because Gwynne, far more than Elon, had “it”. She wanted to talk about the reality of building and launching a small rocket that would be cheaper than anything currently on the market. She, a mechanical engineer who truly knew her stuff, talked in mechanical and aeronautical equations as quickly as she talked about the economics of launch. I was a Range Commander at the time, and she was the first person I EVER heard who asked “How can I make this rocket so it is easier for launch ranges to work with?” There aren’t words to describe how unique that was. Even her boss didn’t ask that – his question was more like “What congressman can I call to beat you for telling me that what I want to do isn’t going to happen quickly?” (I think that still is his question, honestly.)

Anyway, Gwynne, in my view (and in the view of many, many people in the space industry) made Elon’s visions real. As his commitment to getting that early Falcon 1 rocket to work became clear and both NASA and DARPA provided help, that help flowed through Gwynne. She was the one that navigated the technical realities, the budget realities, and the dreams of the billionaire.

To be fair, I never oversaw the launch of a SpaceX rocket, but I know through my contacts in the Range Commanders’ circles that they were never easy in those early days. You just never quite knew what you were launching because there was a lot of “excitement and change” (that means “pressure and chaos”) as a result of “energy from the owner and his eagerness to work through political rather than technical paths”.

But after meeting Gwynne over BBQ on a picnic bench in a meadow in Logan Utah, I suspected that somehow this rocket was going to work.

I say all of this because SpaceX is about to “go public”. It is about to become a publicly traded company. Now, of course, it is all about Starlink and “trillion dollar valuations”. But none of that, in my view, would even be a topic had it not been for the early and constant presence of Gwynne Shotwell, and I mean her, personally.

Elon Musk, of course, is a visionary figure who sucks all the oxygen out of a news cycle, but there is some attention for her lately, and that is why I raise her as a topic. Because SpaceX is about to become a public company, the increased attention shines a light on Gwynne who is still the person that makes it all happen. That light, in my view, is much deserved. If you want to know who imagined SpaceX, that would be Elon, but if you want to know, in my view, who created what you now know as SpaceX, that would be Gwynne Shotwell.

Here is a long form interview with her. In this interview, early on, you will hear what we all saw in Gwynne out there on the picnic tables – a person who could talk about space stuff at whatever level of detail you wanted. Talking to her was like taking a class in something highly technical, and after talking to her, we all understood who was going to drive SpaceX to success if success was at all possible.

Gwynne Shotwell remains someone worth your attention.

StarCatcher … (the company demonstrating “power beaming” , not the awesome Broadway show)

There is an awesome Broadway show, that I bet few of you have ever seen. It is called Peter and the Star Catcher, a show that offers a wonderful take on the children’s character “Peter Pan”. Unbelievably, one of the most incredible performances in the show is delivered by a piece of rope. Clearly it is a thing that must be seen to be believed. You can see highlights of the show here (the rope makes a brief appearance).

Unrelated at all to that play is the upcoming demonstration by the company Star Catcher Industries. Later this year it plans to launch a demonstration mission that will deliver a power upgrade to any satellite in orbit. The idea is seems pretty straightforward: it will use mirrors to concentrate and redirect sunlight directly at the solar panels of any satellite in order to increase the solar power production for the system. The goal is to create an in-space power grid. Here’s a link to the company website with information on their technical approach.

I am not that familiar with the company, but this is pretty interesting to me. Why? Because it leverages the systems that are already out there and already well understood – solar panels on spacecraft. It is not hard to imagine this as an initial step toward normalizing the idea of power distribution in space. Yes, a fission reactor would be awesome, but at some point you need wires or microwave beams, and these will need a plug … a connection … something that isn’t already up there. And if you are putting a rover down into some lunar crater that has never had light hit it since time began, it might be nice to have enough solar power to run a heater as the rover scrambles about in stupidly cold temperatures.

Another Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) for Space Capabilities

In yet another government admission that its own processes get in the way of effective acquisition of space assets, yet another government agency, this time the National Geospatial Agency (NGA) has announced a “Rapid Capabilities Office”.

RCOs have been all the rage. The Navy had one. The Space Development Agency (which, itself, is supposed to be a ‘rapid capabilities’ acquisition organization) has one. And other agencies, including NASA have had organizational units where the goal was to ‘buy things more quickly’.

Why is this happening now? I don’t think this is government – driven; I think it is government reacting. I think the best interpretation / explanation is that the industry has (finally) become maturely capable of delivering many capabilities. Where once there truly was a need for routine government oversight AND insight into everything that was purchased related to space, that is no longer the case. That is, there are many, many space systems that can be reliably purchased now from many sources. So, things are different now.

In the past, the government WANTED to buy things quickly but all that insight and oversight was necessary to a much higher degree. The product maturity and reliability wasn’t there. But now, government is a tiny sliver of the market for space assets. People are making real money in space these days, and many (not all, mind you) assets have become commoditized. But since government rules are slow to change, you are seeing a proliferation of new organizational units which have permission to operate with a lighter touch.

The point? I would look for more of this until government rules catch up with the higher levels of maturity in the space industry’s offerings.

The Wear and Tear … (of Space)

Space stuff wears out. Sometimes that wearing out happens over time. The International Space Station (ISS) is having an air leak issue again. After nearly three decades of use, this is perhaps understandable.

But it isn’t just “in space” things that wear out. How about driving around the surface of Mars? That can wear out your tires, as recent photos from NASA’s Curiosity Rover make clear.

And, of course, entering a planetary atmosphere (say, Earth’s, for instance) can really ruin a paint job. Here is a photo of the Artemis capsule after the famous “entering the atmosphere at high speed” return to earth.

The Long Telegram … NASA Version

Back during the Cold War, just at the beginning of it in fact, a diplomat named George Kennan framed the strategy that the US would soon adopt in the face of its new global adversary, the Soviet Union. In the telegram, 8,000 words long, Kenan argued that the Soviet Union acted largely out of a deep and abiding fear of being encircled by its foes and out of a deep ideological commitment to doing anything possible to destroy capitalist nations. He asserted that it could be resisted only by resolute, persistent, and powerful resistance. In short, the USSR, because of fear and ideology, was “impervious to reason”, but was “highly sensitive to the logic of force”. This became the US strategic framework for 50 years. You can read Kennan’s masterpiece here:

The long form communique is, in my view, a lost art. Emails and text messages have taught us to be brief, and that brevity has, I think, cost us the nuance and completeness that comes if one takes the time to put down what is in one’s head. For a leader this means that the nuance and completeness that is perhaps verbalized in a meeting or a ‘high level out-brief from the retreat’, can get lost in translation as it is passed, from vested interest to vested interest, down through the management chain until it lands on the desk of the working level employee. A long telegram, letter, or (more modernly) email can bypass all that and put a senior leader’s thought directly in the hands of every employee and stakeholder. It takes some boldness (there are always critics, often fairly so), and some stuff will always be left out, but the intention to share the vision is a good one to indulge.

So, I am generally a fan of the recent long missive from Jared Isaacman that effectively restructures, and in some ways, rethinks NASA itself. The email is not quite Kennan-length and clocks in at ‘only’ 5660 words, but it is a strong bit of strategic direction.

There is no possible way to comment on all of it at one go, but I will offer some thoughts as they came to me as I was reading. I am going to try to be brief here (yeah, I know) but will come back to many aspects of this in bits here and there in later weeks but will do something more encompassing over on The Organizing Thought.

Main Points I Took (Gut reactions to a scan through the email)

· It starts with a reiteration of the theme that if you are going to go to the moon to stay you have to do it often and you have to be launch vehicle agnostic (even if one of the vehicles is yours).

· The Moon base goal got a lot harder with the New Glenn explosion, but the strategic themes for “why a moon base” were great: “deliver novel science”, “stimulate a lunar economy”, and “be a proving ground’ for going to Mars.

· My sense is that the “orbital economy” stuff about ISS is more and more aspirational…I have been in a number of conferences and meetings lately and it seems to me there is a lot of handwaving and no business case that closes on commercial options.

· No more cuts or base closures … the people and sites we have are the people and sites we are going to have. We will restructure as needed.

· Use “NASA Force” (authority to hire from our contract staff) to rebuild our depleted CS workforce. The stated goal here is to ‘free up resources’…that is, get a cheaper workforce and apply the savings. That does not feel at all credible to me, certainly not at scale.

· The first big change is this: Mission Directorate heads will report to Isaacman directly while Centers will continue to report to the Associate Administrator. Significantly, the centers continue to be charged with “executing the mission, maintaining workforce, facilities”, and so on, so no change there. But the MDs will be charged with “leveraging Center resources, industry, and international resources”. There is a lot in that. It makes clear that the Administrator, not the MDs, set strategy and goals and the MD’s salute and create plans to achieve that. How? One has to assume that order matters, so if you are in a MD, you’d have to assume your “A+” grade would be to max out all Center assets allocated to you, create innovative ways to use industry and international to augment the Center work even while pressing centers to be quicker to turn their innovations over so as to get on to newer/harder things. To me, the nice thing here is that there is one Agency strategy, not one for each MD. That is cleaner.

· Combining SOMD and ESDVD into a single Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate makes a ton of sense. There was always too much sloshing back and forth of the money (and lack of money) between the two former MDs. This never helped anything. Now the administrator can make that someone else’s problem and tell them to solve it themselves by making the hard choices that have to be made.

· Combining ARMD and STMD. Yeah. This had to happen. STMD wasn’t big enough to fend for itself. Even combined, it will be tough since the temptation of a ‘research organization’ is to, over time, forget that it is not there for itself but to create new technologies for missions to pull from. Making matters worse, such an entity, one that works on ‘future problems”, always looks like a tasty treat for operational organizations that need money for real problems today. So, that will be a challenge. As for its component parts,

o Aeronautics understands what it is doing (and has good, often unified allies in Congress and Industry) and won’t struggle to continue to have a portfolio of tech development and research that is aligned with national goals to maintain US superiority in aeronautics and aviation research.

o Space Reactor Office: that can work since the goal (even though it is a hard task) is tightly focused. The question will be money and how to get through the launch permitting. It might be worth inventing a Star Trek style teleporter just to get an eventual reactor up there without the risk of a launch anomaly.

o Advanced Research and Technology: this one will be tough because it is a bit nebulous. Nebulous things tend to get eaten by strong managers who can make a strong case for near-term, mission-related resource needs. But truly advanced technology R&D is the ‘seed corn’, and you have to have it even if you have to fight to keep it.

o Space Comm and Nav: honestly, my sense is that this should be a an org consisting of a portfolio of 1) comm projects whose objective is to get itself out of business by letting industry do the job, and 2) advanced nav projects that will likely persist for decades as we get farther and farther from Earth.

o SMD: will just say I have always been a fan of Mark Clampin. I think it is a mark of trust in Nicky and Mark that the organization below them is left to their judgement. They are given broad discretion that is not in evidence anywhere else in this document.

o MSD: Pendulums swing. That has been the nature of things in MSD for decades. In a legitimate attempt to save money, the agency consolidates to look for reduced duplication and for synergies and that seldom pan out. Then, in an attempt to get rid of the overhead that comes from a consolidated/standardized approach, functions move back to centers who are charged to self-optimize and right size. Pendulums do eventually find an optimal point, but it takes a long time (as nasa is demonstrating). But in all of that, the fact remains that the agency has a huge bill to maintain its infrastructure and little ability to redirect funds from other accounts to pay for it.

o Centers: Finally!!! Whether you call it “Centers of Excellence” or “Center Roles” or anything else, thank goodness. The simple idea is to tell the centers their fundamental purpose – to assign each piece of the “NASA Puzzle” to a specific shape and location. Yes, they will still try to do more, but at least there is a clearly assigned role. Hurrah and Hooray!

o Within the Centers, very quickly:

§ Ames: “Innovation” is an ethereal thing to have as your main gig, so that is really worth some thought and maybe some worry.

§ Armstrong: Makes total sense.

§ Glenn: Makes sense (and Dawn Schaible is one of the agency’s true treasures).

§ Goddard: Again, makes a ton of sense, since, over the broad and often multidisciplinary span of “Earth and Space Science”, it literally has no broad peer. (also, a project manager as a CD has worked before, but the deputy role probably needs to be a scientist)

§ IV&V: Exactly right, and Wes is simply awesome.

§ Johnson: Yep, not only is this right, there would have been some sort of earthquake or eruption had there been something different.

§ Kennedy: Space Launch is close enough to right to make sense, but Brian is probably the weakest imaginable CD given his complete lack of experience. That said, even the “weakest imaginable” candidate can succeed if they bring wise leadership and delegate well. So, watch closely. “Launch” tends to be one of those things that brings its lessons with brutal swiftness (witness the recent New Glenn event). If he is in any way successful, it will be because the team around him makes him so (but that is always the case, right?).

§ Langley: This is the toughest piece, honestly. What is here is good, but Langley truly does some of everything and some of that “everything” is really pretty critical to the bigger themes. You can’t really say that in a strategic document, but they really do. For me, Langley is sort of like a “plus sign shaped piece” that sort of nestles in near and around the other big chunks of the puzzle. So, I’m not complaining here, but maybe I should write something about this in the future.

§ Marshall: There is a lot in there, but MSFC is a big place and quite skilled at all of it. I am sure everyone at MSFC will recognize what is not specifically called out (the word ‘rocket’).

§ Michoud: Makes sense. (that is an incredible place, by the way….boggles the mind with its size.) It’s not obvious that the agency has really figured out how to maximize its use. That would be a worthwhile exercise.

§ Stennis: Perfect.

§ Wallops: (Sigh) Makes perfect sense given the functional alignment goal (but the wording is odd … does just the “Director” report to KSC or all personnel?). Wallops’ task will be to offer its expertise to KSC in a way that is, simultaneously, helpful to KSC without sounding like it thinks it should be a peer. There is plenty to learn from KSC as well. This whole thing will be a study in leadership. The interactions between those two individuals and those two cultures could lead to 1) literally, nothing more than a connection in name only, 2) a disastrous and continuous family spat, or 3) a mutually beneficial, knowledge/experience sharing palooza that could help the sites, their spaceports, FAA/OST, and aspiring spaceports around the nation.

§ White Sands Testing Facility: Exactly right. Just like WFF, Stennis, IVV, and the other small “outlying facilities”, WSTF has a clear role, hyper-focused and talented people, and fairly high demand for their services. Honestly I think a smarter thing is to link them together in some sort of loose virtual coalition and let them see what they could do for the nation’s space ecosystem if they had “lighter touch” processes, but doing what is done at WSTF is an expected move.

§ JPL: Yeah. I have always offered that the JPL motto “Dare Mighty Things” is an engineering motto, not a science motto, so actually calling out their purpose as something that really speaks to that challenge is a good thing. (more on JPL later with the contract re-compete)

§ NOJMO: This is probably a total “what the heck?” for most folks but this is the office that oversees the contract that NASA uses to run JPL. I highlight it here for two reasons. The first is because it is the office that will largely oversee the aforementioned recompete. The second is because, remember how I said that if you have a project manager running Goddard you need a scientist as a deputy, preferably one who has worked on things like large contracts and has had to deal with agency and center-level stuff? Well, Antti, would be one of many examples of that.

o Associate Administrator as Chief Engineer: This is nuanced and probably one of the things that could make most NASA folks a little itchy. That’s because they know that the Chief Engineer has to be able to object to things not being done with sufficient technical rigor – even in the face of schedule, budget, political, or other pressures. In theory, this could be viewed as strengthening this (as is called out in the CAIB reference) since the Chief Engineer role is now elevated. And it’s true that in separating the MDs (which report to the Administrator) and the Centers (which have the actual technical expertise and report to the AA), the independence is preserved. I am intrigued and interested in the framing of the job as “achieving the Agency’s goals with ‘rigorous impatience’ ”. That is a wonderful term, and I hope Jared invented it. That said, this has to be watched over time. Unfortunately, you tend to learn about problems with this particular item just after a calamitous (and sometimes deadly) failure, so watching for tiny cracks here is important (but hard). If I were involved I would spend a lot of time talking to the Technical Authorities (TA’s).

o HQ Move: this is completely expected and there has long been a discussion that NASA maybe needs a third or less of its people actually located in DC. So you could see the agency shrinking its downtown DC footprint. “Remaining in the DC area”, at least as far as SMD (one full floor plus some in the current building) is an easily broken codeword for “moving to GSFC”.

o Detail opportunities at HQ: while many in the agency cringe at the thought of going to HQ for any period of time, that is a poor attitude. Nothing yields understanding and perspective like spending time there. What is poorly understood is that the people there, as they try to work through what the agency should do, have ALL of the same technical, schedule, and budgetary constraints, as everyone else, but they have, in addition to that, a layer of political and formal/informal power constraints that tend to make problems even harder. That complexity is really hard and the people do an awesome job of it most of the time. Being close to that on a detail, is a great way to give yourself a superpower.

o Workforce Initiative: I struggle to see how this will work in ways that will save money. My questions come to me far faster than answers, so I don’t have much to say about this yet.

o “We are listening”: This is actually true. If you talk to people around the agency (I do that), you will run into a surprising number of people who will eventually say, “OMG, I can’t believe it. I sent an email to Jared after one of his agency-wide messages and…get this…I ACTUALLY got a response!!!”. So, yeah. HQ is listening now. Like all executive organizations, they will hear better if you articulate things respectfully and helpfully (even if you are raising a problem), but they are listening and that is good.

o The JPL RFP (recompete of JPL contract): This has been discussed for years. Let me just offer that it is my belief that this is truly not born from a desire to move JPL from CalTech to some other FFRDC partner (I think the niceties about how JPL and its leader are deeply appreciated reinforce that notion). Instead, I think it is much more grounded in compelling a reconsideration of the fee structure, levels, and permissible usage, allowable under the FFRDC construct. Like all of NASA elements, JPL does incredible stuff, but money is money, and they use a lot of it and in ways that are not available to the actual Centers. So, my uninformed view only, this is about the money.

o Actions and Directives: There are a slew of these – specific directions to various leadership elements on various topics. All of them convey seriousness, priority, and urgency, that back up what was discussed earlier in the document. As I have mentioned before, whether it is in legislation or in something like this, it makes sense to read these because they put the “specific meat on the generalized bone that is laid out in the prose”. In general what you see are directions to flatten things organizationally, I will cover these in some detail over on The Organizing Thought soon.

Those of us in some way affiliated with the agency probably got the email directly when it was sent out, but for those who don’t, you can read it in its (long form) entirety here.

So, that is it for this time.

Summer’s here. Enjoy it however you enjoy it, and enjoy hearing about how those around you enjoy it as well. Sharing that sort of stuff is part of what links us together better, so ask about your friends’ plans and share yours.

It’s also intern time. So, be nice to an intern. Take their aspirations, ideas, and questions seriously. Maybe even ask them something to provoke an insightful response. Things like:

• · What’s one thing you see that doesn’t yet make sense?

• · What’s one thing you can imagine telling your friends about when leave us?

• · What thing that you studied or experienced before coming here has prepared you well for what we are asking you to do?

Whatever your interaction, if it is offered kindly and respectfully, they will remember you for it, and you will both be better off for having taken the time.

Have a great week coming up, and, since we all have our struggles, try to help someone else have a great one as well.

J

Back To Normal? Um…maybe “back” but not “to normal”

This was the title I had planned a week ago. But all the text (can’t you see it?) that I had typed below it got deleted. I had written up about how civilian space, buoyed by the success of Artemis II, was in the process of getting back to some sense of normal posts. Instead, you got that last long speculative piece about the new “Director of Launch Operations” and its impacts on various NASA sites.

So now I find myself still trying to get back to ‘normal’ even while going down new rabbit holes about the potential beginnings of new type of organizational model for NASA (or maybe just a ‘one-off’ change…who can tell?). But I also found an avalanche of new NASA photos, the discovery of thousands of new planets that were hidden in plain sight, and even some possible movement / new insights into two questions that has been bugging us all, “Why does hot water freeze faster than cold water?” and “Why can’t we get to Mars faster?”

So, maybe it is “back to normal”, just a completely different normal than the one I was thinking about, but the theme that seemed to emerge for me was “shortcuts”.

Quantum Physics Enters the Mpemba Game

To make an unbelievable-but-true story very short, in 1969 a Tanzanian teenager, Erasto Mpemba (show above many years later), was in a hurry to make ice cream and observed that hot liquids often (but maybe not always) freeze faster than cold liquids. After wondering how this could possibly be, he wrote to academic authorities in a letter that began:

• “My name is Erasto B. Mpemba, and I am going to tell you about my discovery, which was due to misusing a refrigerator….”

• (so much to learn from just that: don’t be afraid to ask questions; if you discovered something, lean into it; if you misused a refrigerator, own up to it and move on to what matters… I just love this kid.)

Anyway, Erasto’s question initiated years of research and, according to everything I can find, no one has yet come up with a solid explanation of why this happens. So, I was truly intrigued when I saw this article that describes how, with nothing else really going on in the world these days, quantum physicists are now on the case.

The quantum angle here, strongly related to the notion of entropy at the quantum level, is that in colder water, the molecules are already “closer to lining up” (i.e. solidifying) so each molecule has fewer options for becoming joined. But (completely counterintuitively as is the case with just about all of quantum anything) with warmer water, nearly every molecule could hook up with pretty much every other molecule, so there are many more pathways to being frozen. That increase in options, happening gazillions of times for each cup of water, means that the hot water takes ‘shortcuts’ not available in colder water.

Look, I know this is not space – related, but, geez, how can you resist a story about a kid in Tanzania with some ice cream and a refrigerator who has stumped the entire science establishment for more than half a decade?!?!!!

Here is a more technical version of the story for those interested in more info, and here is a an article with a little more of the historical perspective on it.

Artemis II : The Unofficial, Unaired Mission Update (and the live demo of the capsule size)

If you are reading this, you probably watched AT LEAST the Artemis II Launch (i.e., the second scariest thing because, oh crap, who wants to see an emergency ascent abort?) and the Artemis II reentry (because, oh crap oh crap, there is no abort system that can help if the reentry goes bad). You also watched, probably in replay, the tons of footage of the astronauts floating about and pleading with Earth’s citizens to get along with each other.

But here are two videos you probably missed.

The first one is the astronauts’ visit to the Jimmy Fallon show. To be fair, Jimmy has long been willing to pump up his shows with NASA stuff (the Hubble Gotchu’ piece is truly classic), but a few days ago, the show hosted all four of the Artemis II astronauts and blew everyone’s mind with a demo of just how “not much space” they hung out in over the course of their ten day missions. I always love it when normal, “non-space” people get actual perspective on space travel. It seems clear to me that Mr. Fallon’s mind was truly blown when the crew showed him how little space they had to work with for the mission. You can see the video here.

The other video is, ahem, even less “official”, but imagines a Day 9 video shoot in Orion (note how spacious it is, by the way) where in the crew really seems to be wishing for that shortcut to the end of the mission. Just thought this was worth sharing with this crowd … if nothing else as a shoutout to the way the Saturday Night Live cast stuck it out with the ‘bouncing to simulate weightlessness’ throughout the skit.

“All” … The Whole Roll … (of film)

This is a far more traditional “shortcut”. You have seen images on various news sites showing some of the photos taken by the Artemis II astronauts. The key word there is “some”. But as you should know by now, NASA does not really keep many secrets, so of course there are more pictures, and of course NASA has shared them.

• As an aside, this is “doesn’t keep many secrets” thing is really true. NASA, as an agency, is positively terrible at deciding on its own that something should be a secret. Now, don’t get me wrong – the agency deals appropriately with classified data – I am not accusing anyone of anything since there are certainly some individuals (and a precious few organizations) who have it as all or part of their jobs to deal with classified (actual “don’t-tell-anyone-or-you-will-get-in-trouble-because-this-is-related-to-national-security” stuff). But those people are part of a vanishingly small minority at NASA.

• Instead, what I am talking about is the tendency to “tell what you know as soon as you think it’s cool or that you’ve figured it out”. It is in a very real way “bred into” the agency. Often the tendency to share information happens on the supposition that crowdsourced error detection is a great thing. And, in fact, it is a great thing, and there is almost an actual organizational dependency on that attitude. It is part of the culture.

• At NASA, you win by sharing what you know, not by hoarding it. And you win by “showing your work” so others can check it and maybe make it better. This is very hard for outsiders to internalize. To those entities where secrecy is the name of the game, it is positively head-spinning. The effect is that it is sometimes exceptionally hard for other agencies (where, for instance, “security” or “intelligence” or “reconnaissance” is literally their middle name) to get comfortable with having NASA on their team – even when NASA has figured out something that will be really helpful to them and their missions. Their hesitancy to engage NASA makes NASA hesitant to engage them … so you end up with something that looks like a high school dance where only the wallflowers were invited and no one dances.

• Honestly as someone who spent years bridging those two worlds, it is entertaining to watch. In the end, everyone acts in a way that would make the American people proud – the various pieces of the government work together to share advanced technologies, cutting edge resources, game-changing innovations, and all sorts of imagery. These benefit the entire nation – science, planetary protection, security priorities, and many others. But it is often a very strange and uncomfortable ride for all involved.

But I have strayed from the topic (again). And while my point is that NASA is the one place in the whole world that is least likely to hide what it knows (especially from the public), this is about the totality of the photos taken by the Artemis II astronauts.

You saw a few. But there are tons of them. And when you are an agency which did a livestream broadcast of a first-in-50-years rocket launch, lunar rendezvous, and Earth reentry, you are sure as heck gonna share all the photos taken by astronauts on a successful mission.

So here’s that link. Browse and enjoy. And for heaven’s sake, someone hook up a bit of AI to that library and see if there are discoveries that have been missed … NASA would love you for it. Here’s a link to the media story that brought this to my attention.

Ten Thousand Worlds … (10,091 to be exact about it)

That last bit of joking about AI wasn’t joking. Just last week researchers announced the discovery of over 10,000 new ‘candidate’ planets. This was as a result of applying AI to the data already collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS, which you can learn more about here).

Just to pick on one of my favorite topics, the stunningly unappealing naming conventions used by Planetary Scientists and Astrophysicists, I will offer this gem: One of the planets discovered by this AI based method has been named TIC 183374187b. Now THAT is an exciting name, don’t you think? It is certainly NOT something you could call home to Mom about. Imagine that conversation:

• - Hey, Mom, I discovered a new planet, TIC1833374187b, and guess what, it’s…

• - Oh, that’s wonderful dear, let me get a pen so I can write that on the calendar. Now, what was it again?

• (and it just keeps getting worse from there. It would have been so much better if they had named it something memorable. I would start with something more like HellScape Giganticus. Not only will Mom remember that one, but when you go to your kid’s school on parent day and tell the class that name, your kid gets instant cool-parent points.) I mean COME ON…you just discovered a world the size of Jupiter and the temperature of Mercury…go a little nuts, or you will never end up on Jimmy Fallon’s show.)

But seriously, in 1995 humans knew of exactly one planet that existed beyond our own solar system. Thanks to the Kepler Mission and the TESS missions, we turned that into about 6,000. Now, after unleashing AI on datasets we already have sitting on hard drives, we have 10,000 more. Keep it going.

Here is a link to the story of the 10,000 new planets.

Stuck in a Moment And You Can’t Get Out of It …. (or a rock…what if you’re stuck in a rock?)

If you have ever done that thing when you are using a drill and suddenly the drill gets stuck in the wood somehow and now it feels like the wood, the bit, and the drill are somehow all one thing, and you are like, “OK, now what do it do”. If you have ever done that then you will completely commiserate with NASA’s Curiosity Rover when it did exactly that with its own drill and a rock on the surface of Mars.

Just like you, there was a bit of an “Oh crap, now what” moment when the drill they thought was drilling into a large piece of the planet turned out to be not some giant buried boulder but just a smallish rock. That resulted in the rock starting to turn with the drill and then getting stuck on the end of it.

So, what did the team do? They did what you would have done – they shook the whole contraption around for a while, tried drilling “the other way”, tried drilling more, finally did all of that pretty much at the same time before the rock fell off and hit the ground.

Sometimes there isn’t a shortcut around the use of “old school solutions”.

Here’s a link to the story with a video of the “drilling gone wrong on Mars” event.

A Quick Shortcut to Mars … (with an important caveat)

Going to Mars is more than a notion. Even if it was a lush paradise stocked with all the stuff you would need while you were there and for the return trip, Mars is a hard destination.

How hard?

Under the best circumstances, using the best systems available to us right now, the trip would take between two and three years. That is nine months to get there, nine months to get back, and a 16 month-long stay while Mars and Earth got into alignment to allow the trip back. So, yeah … it is more than a notion.

That is why I was stunned to read that a cosmologist in Brazil has figured out that it could be done in only about 90 days. That is still a long time to spend in a space capsule the size of a minivan, but that is a lot better than two and a half years!

So….how?

To me there are two truly interesting parts to this story. The first part is that the cosmologist who authored the paper describing this idea was inspired to look for a new trajectory (pathway) between Earth and Mars by watching how asteroids moved between the two. His thought was that asteroids just might naturally tend toward pathways we might not have yet noticed. And that is just what happened. So, that was cool.

But the second ‘interesting thing’ was that in order to follow this new pathway, we would have to have a rocket that traveled MUCH faster than anything we have ever yet developed. And honestly, that sounds a little bit like cheating, doesn’t it. But it’s worse than that since if you go a lot faster, you have to slow down that much more when you get to Mars so you wont slam into it or burn up when you hit its atmosphere (or in the Earth’s atmosphere when you are returning at that same high speed).

So, I am not sure how to think about this. It feels like I am being told, ‘If you want to get to Mars quicker than you currently can, you should figure out how to go faster.” That is a vast oversimplification, but it still feels that way to me.

Here are two articles about this. This first one is not very detailed and is here, but for those of you wanting the full blow by blow detail, this article is a little more explanatory.

For more information about ways you can actually participate in looking for planets, you can visit the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 site which allows you to help search through already-collected science data for evidence of additional large planetary bodies beyond Neptune in our own solar system. It is one of many citizen scientist initiatives with NASA backing.

Regarding that whole “Launch Operations thing” …

(some more thoughts and a caution about taking shortcuts when it comes to high visibility changes to governmental organizations)

Where to start?

Honestly, I still think my prior posting is a decent introduction to what actually happened and the ‘what ifs’ that could have resulted, so it might be a good idea to at least have that whole diatribe in your head before moving on. You can find it here.

Briefly stated:

- Former NASA Chief of Staff Brian Hughes was (unexpectedly) named NASA’s Chief of Launch Operations with authority over launch operations activities at KSC at Wallops Flight Facility.

- What followed was a great flurry of activity to transfer (“rebadge” in NASA parlance) people at WFF from (their current center) Goddard to KSC.

- In multiple public statements, it was offered that there was no hidden agenda here other than to attempt to manage similar things (like launch range and launch preparation activities) in a consistent manner. It was just a matter of noticing that KSC and WFF were similarly occupied with “launch stuff” and determining that it might be efficient to have them in the same organizational unit.

Thoughts And More Reading of Tea Leaves

Honestly, it seemed a simple thing on the surface. The Kennedy Space Center senior official (called a Center Director) had just left, so it would be easy to imagine that putting someone new in place with a special focus on part of KSC’s work and most of Wallops’ work. There was a question along the lines of “Is Brian the new KSC Director with WFF a new part of that Center?” OR “Is Brian a “portfolio manager” of the things at NASA closely related to launching things?” That felt like a nuance in the grand scheme – something where maybe there was a distinction without a difference.

The whole thing seemed as straightforward as figuring out what office he would sit in and whose pictures would be on the “Leadership Wall” (a wall arrangement of the headshots showing the senior leaders) at KSC and Wallops. In anticipation that it WAS a simple thing, Brian had a nice photo all ready for framing, and the GSFC leaders were removed from the WFF “Leadership Wall”.

“Simple Things”

But then it turned out not to be so simple. As I had pointed out in my original posting, it really was silly to think that a political appointee with no technical qualifications could just be “named” as a Center Director of KSC, a position for which, according to NASA’s Procedural Requirements (NPR 3317.1), an appointee “…must meet the qualifications of the position as determined in writing….”. But these qualifications were not met. (and, to be clear, I am not blasting Brian here. He has his skills for sure – you don’t get named by the White House for anything unless there is something you are good at. But being a NASA Center Directors are “highly technically skilled leaders”, as is pointed out in OPM documents and exemplified by decades of incumbent resumes. So, things began to look a little less clear.

Things spiraled a bit from there since, without the authorities of a Center Director and the organizational weight that comes from that chair, the new appointee had little traditional organizational authority even while bearing fairly vast levels of ability to tell people what to do. So, while there is much ability for the “Director of Launch Operations” to demand reports and explanations, to conduct assessments and studies, and to suggest structural changes for the benefit of the agency, there is very little ability to actually simply conjure up those changes.

So, there was a grand reprinting of the photos on the various leadership walls, and, organizationally at least, things stand today just as they always have with Wallops a component facility of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. No rebadging, no organizational change, no structural upheavals other than those in the hearts and stomachs of those (NASA employees and contractors) riding this roller coaster.

Just a quick word to those people — the people hard at work at KSC and WFF: I am convinced that not one single person in this whole chain of affairs was truly trying to upend your life or your career or even upset your sleep. What I AM convinced of is the following:

• - Launch Operations has attracted a TON of attention lately. Some of that attention has come from Artemis but much of it has come from the growing list of companies (and their very rich owners) who want to get into (or expand) that business. And even THAT isn’t bad since our nation needs as much access to space as it can get – for exploration, for technology development, for hypersonic systems, for science, and for stuff we haven’t thought of yet.

• - But these owners are making use of a rare tool – the private connections to White House power – and their phone calls have one request : “Could you PLEASE somehow see to it that launch range costs get lower, launch approvals get quicker, and, for goodness sake, make all launch ranges have the same set of rules for all (technical, safety, environmental, public announcement, ….) that we have to do to launch.

• - So when those calls came into an office (imagine one shaped like an oval, let’s say) and many of those discussions centered around the question of “Why does NASA do things differently than private launch ranges or military launch ranges?”, a very quick way to get out of that conversation would have been to name a “Launch Range Director” to go deal with it. So it wasn’t that anyone was trying to “get you”, they just weren’t thinking of you at all.

So where are we?

Well, in terms of my prior article, we are in the “Choose Your Own Adventure” section and we are squarely in the part that is related to “Capability Management”. We are at the point where the new Director of Launch Operations is trying to figure out just exactly what all this launch operations stuff is all about, why billionaires are complaining about it, and why launching from one place is different from launching from some other place.

For now, KSC is KSC and WFF is GSFC/WFF. It is my view that, because of all the reasons I listed in my earlier article, that status quo is likely to linger for a very long time and could even end up being codified into law if someone ends up thinking to write it into a piece of legislation.

In the rush to make the billionaire phone calls go away and the desire to “quickly understand this whole Launch Operations thing”, the nuances, like “what is the difference between a test range and an operational range?” won’t matter and will be skipped over until they suddenly do matter and someone can effectively explain why each one is needed. Likewise, the costs of things like “beach replenishments” (millions of dollars per year) will be overlooked until it’s time for someone new (like DoD or a state spaceport or the FAA) to write a check for it.

So, things are, as I suggested they would be, on something of a hold. Why? Because there is not yet a uniform understanding of the problem or even the definitions involved.

I was in a great conversation about all of this recently with someone who pointed out that sometimes those who are in a great hurry will offer up that “Nice guys finish last”. I responded that that all depends on what you call the finish line and that how you define it says a lot about your goals and priorities. So, if the ‘finish line’ means “make the phone calls stop”, that is one thing, but if it is “do the right thing for the nation’s launch capability”, it might mean something very different and might take a bit more time.

Remember this because it is always true:

Organizations exist to help us follow the rules we made when we were thinking clearly and not in a hurry for what seems expedient. That isn’t to say that rules or procedures or organizations never change, but they change with purposeful thought. And when you screw that part up and you skip the purposeful thought, you end up sitting in a cubical down the hall instead of in a Center Director’s office.

So, take a breath. Figure out and clarify what you’re actually dealing with and be careful of shortcuts when it comes to things (like launch operations) that can go very bad very quickly and can cost a whole lot of money to own and operate no matter who owns them.

Have a great week everyone.

J

The News: NASA has named former Chief of Staff Brian Hughes as the “Director of “Launch Operations” and has identified that this includes portions of KSC and Wallops Flight Facility.

While I would have offered them anyway, when the news hit, I was asked for ‘thoughts’.

Note: my take on this is informed by conversations over the past month or so with people inside and outside of NASA. I am thankful and flattered to be asked my thoughts, and I always attempt, as best I can, to offer frank assessments and inputs to what is asked. But unlike those responses, here, I offer a blend of those attempts at ‘unbiased inputs” as well as my own opinions and my own speculation about things.

Still, and very importantly, with this posting, I am not trying to ‘take a side’ (not yet anyway) so much as explain how I see and think about this.

What Am I Talking About?

NASA recently announced a change affecting its Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) and Kennedy Space Center (KSC) sites. The change joins portions of each site related to “Launch Operations” under the leadership of Brian Hughes, former NASA Chief of Staff. The link to NASA’s announcement is here.

For some people, the question is: Brian Hughes???? Are you kidding me right now?

For other people the question is: KSC and WFF??? Are you kidding me right now?

For still others the question is: Haven’t we been through enough?

For others (mostly people like me) the question is: What, exactly, do you mean by “Launch Operations” because it’s probably not as clear as you think/want?

Where Did This Come From?

This announcement is the result of two things:

• Direction from the White House to “find a job in Florida for Brian”.

• A frequently voiced thought by Jared Isaacman that it might make sense for NASA to consolidate/combine its launch activities at WFF and KSC.

Regardless of whether or not someone thinks that any of this makes sense, that White House direction (which cannot be refused), the task itself, and the person chosen to lead it, will likely mark the beginnings of some uncertainty and maybe misery for the people doing “launch operations” stuff at KSC and for WFF.

In what way does it make sense?

1. Any job assigned (and acceptable) to Brian would be related to Florida. That is where he’s from and where he is most useful to the president. He is politically very active there and was influential in the Trump campaign there. It is where he aspires to be influential and he probably desires some eventual elected office there either as a state or federal official (which would make the president happy). So, getting back to Florida activities would have been important to him (and maybe something the white house wanted as well). Lastly, since his last assignment was with NASA, it would be NASA that gets the call.

2. As you may know, KSC is much more than ‘launch operations’, though there is a LOT that is like a spaceport. “Launch Operations” is a shiny thing right now with the launch (and success) of Artemis and such. Launches (and therefore launch ranges) always attracts attention. So “Launch Operations” is a natural thing to assign to someone to whom you MUST give a job and who wants shiny things with which to craft an eventual resume and keep climbing ladders of power.

3. There would be broad ridicule if Brian had been made KSC center director. He simply isn’t qualified and that would have been a joke. Even the astronauts probably would have balked at that since the KSC director has a (respected) vote in whether or not they launch. So, that wasn’t an option. (more below on KSC as a center and the recent change in center director).

4. Jared (but not only Jared…the question / idea has been raised many times) has had (and voiced) the thought a few times that the launch/spaceport parts of KSC and WFF should be somehow unified or at least aligned. That isn’t crazy. There is some stuff to be learned, though as everyone at both sites knows, the KSC ‘launch ops” activities are more like a NASA - focused spaceport that uses the Eastern Range for its primary launch range while Wallops is an actual launch range that (for NASA and many non-NASA things) uses VA Spaceport as its spaceport. Complicating things, KSC’s spaceport activities are only ‘part of’ Florida’s ‘spaceport ecosystem’ whereas VA Spaceport Authority is the totality of the non-federal spaceport at Wallops. But…and this is vital and probably a good reason to have Brian there … the Florida ecosystem is larger, more intricate, visible, and complex in its relationship to Florida. So, having someone like him who knows about Florida politically is not silly.

5. A closer relationship between WFF and KSC also isn’t crazy. In fact, it makes a lot of sense. Contrary to what you would see in the press, there has been a longstanding practice of the two working together even while the spaceports in each state sniped at each other. There was a time when, as WFF was returning to “orbital class launches” WFF was portrayed in Florida press as a threat/competitor to KSC. But that was mostly because of the fact that it might consume parts of the launch range - related funding from NASA’s budget that had been long the exclusive domain of KSC. The old HEO (which had to pay for “range costs” at KSC and Eastern Range) fanned those flames in the hopes that it wouldn’t have to pay for anything at WFF (which has always had an SMD focus). But in the end that faded when WFF started to be actually useful to HEO, and the two sites very rarely found themselves in any sort of competition for actual launch activities until the recent eruption of small launchers. Even then, the competition has been largely between the spaceports (Florida and Virginia) with KSC proper and the WFF Range being highly cooperative. So, all of that history just to say that the WFF-KSC Relationship is a natural one as far as actual “launch operations” are concerned. They share needs for similar technologies, processes, and personnel skills. Each has the potential to make the other better able to support different customer sets. WFF could teach flexibility, the actual practice of Range Safety (vs. crew or vehicle safety), and detailed range perspectives/challenges/technologies to KSC while KSC could teach WFF more about the value of process rigor, the handling of large/visible customers, and how to better integrate with commercial spaceports.

Why does it potentially invite uncertainty and misery?

1. Sudden leadership changes make employees queasy. It’s tempting to speculate that Janet’s departure was at least in part because of KSC being divided up – the launch operations being sheared off from the Center. It certainly leaves the center somewhat divided/weaker/smaller even while playing to Jared’s desire for functional (rather than geographic) organizational units. Even though KSC is very large, the amount that gets rolled up into this functional group could leave the remainder quite diminished in terms of size, capability, and stature. So, if you are at KSC, you probably wonder which part you are in now – the “Brian part” (which he will surely try to maximize) or the “other part” which will probably feel like the oddly-formed, weak sibling compared to its former self. The center will therefore feel vulnerable to be merged with some other center since JSC and MSFC are always hungry hippos for anything related to human spaceflight. There will also be a temptation to call this the beginning of the long-rumored “Jared’s Red Wedding” where leadership heads get sent rolling as part of a clearing out of wide swaths of NASA’s leadership roles. I am less inclined to think that sort of thing for two reasons: 1) Janet’s departure feels like a very KSC-specific thing and, as I said above, if you are Janet (who is sharp, savvy, and honorable), you simply don’t hang around when someone cuts your job in half, and 2) Jared has stated in some inner circles that he has no intent for a bloodbath for the sake of a bloodbath but would rather announce his intentions for change and allow most current leaders to react as they will.

2. No entity at NASA (maybe on Earth) has perfected the practice of paranoia better than WFF, so this will cause immediate consternation, doubt, confusion, and fear. That paranoia is understandable, though. When you are small, everything looks like the thing about to eat you. So this whole machination will given rise to new and exquisite levels of agitation for WFF. And that is completely fair given the history of things trying (sometimes with success) to eat them.

3. Given the natural bent and past history of Brian Hughes to talk boldly about ‘reducing government’ it is not hard to imagine that a tempting first step for the new leader of “Launch Operations at NASA” would be to allow the combination of “something with something” and then work to make the “combined something” smaller (i.e., “reduced”). Then, if you are someone like Brian, you take a victory lap before applying for the next job (I am truly not intending to criticize, it’s just that is some folk’s standard plan for life). But the questions are “what to combine?” and “what to reduce"?”. The goal would be to try to make the two (KSC and WFF) look similar and then shrink them as a result of legitimate synergies. But as I pointed out above, they are (within the context of actual launch operations) quite different. One (WFF) is a federal launch range and a state/commercial spaceport. The other (KSC) is a federal spaceport with deep dependencies on a federal launch range in a different Executive Branch department (DoD).

4. The great unanswered questions for employees and contracts are things like: “Who do I report to and what do they want?” and “What organization am I actually a part of?”. For the new “Launch Operations” sites in particular the questions are “Who is going to pay for all this stuff that my old center used to pay for — things like bridges, facility repair between launches, electricity, beach replenishments, travel, and the overhead of supervisors, lawyers, and all that goes along with being in “Launch Operations”?” Another great one for a “Launch Operation” is “How is the independence of safety and environmental protection assured?” These are just a few of the things that have to be (and actually ARE) being worked out (but which are not yet fully clear).

“Moving Forward” — Choose Your Own Adventure

Solutions for “moving forward” exist, of course and most of them will impact some population at the two NASA sites. Here are what I can imagine as pathways. Each one involves choices, challenges, and some outright barriers. Some, a few, may even involve the potential for benefit to employees and stakeholders.

A Smart Starting Point

As a fun (and maybe even useful reference point, NASA has actually taken the time to define what is involved in launching things. This is called a dictionary (or ‘lexicon’ — a fancy name for “defining what you are talking about” — NASA developed the following entry … one of 174 such entries that list all that NASA does). Yeah…you read that right … all of this is about one (maybe three) entries in the list of 174 broad technical things that NASA does.

Here (image below) is the list of things that NASA has defined as part of “Ground Support of Space Flight”. Note that one of these is “Launch and Range”. That is, there is no direct translation to what the recent announcement has termed “Launch Operations”. So, just to move forward, lets assume that what this really boils down to is just two things that I will loosely call “Launch Stuff” and “Spaceport Stuff” where Launch Stuff corresponds to the final entry in the list below and “spaceport stuff” will basically remain as something for which NASA has no current definition.

Even though there remains some uncertainty about what the term “Launch Operations” truly means, a truly sensible starting point would to sort through all the KSC and WFF stuff to identify what is and isn’t “Launch Operations”. For example, you could get the Range Commanders Council (RCC) (the nation’s experts in such matters) to help you pick out all the actual stuff from the newly declared portfolio at both sites that maps to “Launch Range”, put that in a bucket, combine it with the WFF Range (which is already well-segregated from both “mission stuff” and “spaceport stuff”). You would call the combination “The NASA Range Complex”. It would consist of range related personnel, instrumentation, airspace, processes, and facilities, and all of it would need a home.

For the Range Stuff, There are Options:

i. From there you could offer it to DoD’s (Major Range and Test Facility Base) MRTFB (which would entail some sort of budget exercise for the agencies or for Congress and would not make a big dent in ‘federal employees’).

ii. Similarly you could offer it to the Space Force since they have launch ranges and know how to handle them. At the Eastern Range this could maybe expand capacity which is already stretched at Eastern Range. (this isn’t a thing you do in a day, though, as vehicles require very specific and expensive infrastructure) At WFF the Space Force is already a frequent user (though, why buy if you can rent as needed?). Again, you wouldn’t see big, if any, reductions in total federal employment and budgetary gymnastics would be involved.

• Note that the Navy, which has a LOT of dollars (between 500 million and a billion) of infrastructure investment (there is literally a functioning Aegis Cruiser there, after all) at Wallops. So, the Navy could also receive the offer, but this would really only make sense at WFF since both NAVAIR and NAVSEA are historical users with ongoing mission and physical presence there already. But even with the Navy at Wallops, there is the “why buy it when you can rent when you need it” problem. Also note that from a federal perspective, this (WFF as a Navy asset) sort of splits things up right when you just joined them together, so synergies would be lost.

• Lastly, in spite of the reasons I have offered for each federal entity not wanting to pick up a new responsibility and own WFF, there does exist one reason why you might want to leave it in DoD hands. The reason is that WFF offers an optimized location for defending the nation’s capital from a very simple, relatively low-tech, sea-based missile/UAV threat. No more details offered here, but look at a map — it is a short (and very direct) flight from the ocean to DC if you are a bad guy with a little boat, but WFF with its sensors and launch capability is in the way of the worst - case flight paths.

iii. You could also offer it in an RFP to industry and completely commercialize it. The problem here is that both KSC and WFF come with huge ‘hidden infrastructure costs’ in the form of bridges, beach replenishments, and obsolete equipment (not to mention insurance costs that are currently self-insured by the government), that would make making money nigh on impossible in anything at all approaching “the near term”.

• Just as an aside here, this is actually a nontrivial problem: Ranges are money-losing propositions. You might point to the commercial (SpaceX) operation in Brownsville, but remember that even there, the range itself is simply the “cost of doing business” where the business is Starlink satellites and whatever else Elon launches in order to make money. That isn’t to say, someone won’t bid if the money is right, but the government won’t spend less than it does now, so, if this is the path, the goal isn’t cost containment so much as ‘getting stuff off the books’ and “giving money to whoever gets the contract’. That CAN be in the national interest in some cases, so I am not poking so much as it may sound.

iv. You could offer it to the Florida and Virginia Spaceport Authorities (separately or, more creatively, I think, to some sort of pseudo cooperative cross-state ‘authority’). My sense is that the states might go for this because of the strong desire in each to continue the growth of their spaceports. To a spaceport, “the range part” feels almost trivial (a normal feeling when something isn’t your job) just as the Range’s tend to feel about the spaceport part. Still, the leap from being a spaceport to being a spaceport + launch range would be harder than either of them realize. But it would not be impossible.

v. (addendum from original posting): You could decide that your goal is not the reduction of "civil servants” but is instead the combination of support contractors. In this option you link together those things that are “Launch Range stuff” at KSC and WFF and issue a combined contract that covers those activities at both sites. This would be standard practice for any normally thinking NASA leader since it plays to every preconceived notion of how to save money in contracts. The savings (and this is just my guess) would be small since, with launch ranges, “you need what you need when you need it and at the strength you need it and if you don’t have that, you are NOGO for launch”. That said, a very rational approach for a contractor who understood that the way to support each site’s operational needs would be to replicate existing ops-day staff at each site. Still, maintenance matters and is a huge cost in range circles, so sharing those personnel (and spare parts) could result in savings so long as there is some commonality in baseline equipment. So, there is a way to thread this needle and have everyone proclaim success, but it is a small needle since there isn’t a lot of equipment commonalty. But, just to close with an important thought: launch ranges are very very local things, even on ‘normal’ days but especially on days when things have gone terribly.

vi. (addendum from original posting) You could (and this assumes the most benign of intents from the new Director, so will be hard for many who are involved) decide that this isn’t about reductions or anything “nefarious” but is instead about what NASA has often termed “Capability Management”. That is, this is truly just about taking two things that have at least some commonalty of knowledge, skill, ability, and experience, and trying to make them (civil servants, contractors, facilities, etc) work better together for NASA and the Nation. In my mind, this is the only credible near term goal you could actually have and hope for any success. There are hurdles (distance, traditional inter-center resistance, the natures of the two sites, the mission sets typically supported, even lack of common terminology), but there are also chances for actual synergy AND there are people at each place that have experience working at the other site. In fact, this last thing (people with cross-site experience), becomes the “superpower”. If someone has this, they just became among the most valuable assets within the “Launch Operations” capability. Success here would look like shared people, shared processes, shared lessons learned, appropriately shared contract mechanisms or even contracts, and shared learning experiences and training. Again, all of this depends on taking a little bit of time to look at the lexicons/definitions that will let everyone start to get on the same page. (Note that this is truly boring and hateful work if you are in a hurry and maybe even if you are just “Type A”). BUT, skip this step and you have no hope. That’s because there will be no agreement about much of anything at any level of detail and everything just turns into a fuss about who’s right and why “their way won’t work for us”. In fact, I will offer that the best way to tell if this is the option that is being pursued is to watch for this step…if you don’t see this step, then this choice is not the one being pursued by the new “Director of Launch Operations” and the goal is something perceived as ‘quicker’ or ‘more visible’.

vii. You could just declare that NASA has no need of its own launch ranges anymore than it needs its own Metro stop. You could close one or both of the range operations down, release the people, auction off the land (beachfront property is good even if it is probably an environmental liability because of 60+ years of launch operations). Without question, this would fail due to industry and congressional and objection (and probably reversal) as well as to legitimate needs from users at WFF and KSC who are dependent on them for services. But everyone knows this, so choosing this path is just foolish, and I didn’t even mention the national space security implications of reducing the US’ points of access to the high ground of space.

For the SpacePort Stuff

What is left from an RCC study of “range stuff” would be “spaceport stuff” or “mission stuff”. There would be a lot more spaceport stuff at KSC than at WFF, and there would be “mission stuff” at both places (KSC supports many Artemis elements and WFF builds its own rockets from spare parts to do science missions).

You would omit from consideration the “mission stuff” since it isn’t “launch operations".

Now you would have all the “spaceport stuff” in a bucket. You would have to think very hard about whether or not this stuff belongs to the category of things called “Launch Operations”. The decision has implications, big ones, because getting it wrong means you have either left some gap, created some overlap, stepped onto someone else’s turf, or what-have-you. These are not small things, so you take a moment to do this (think hard about where to put ‘spaceport stuff’) if you are smart.

Brian IS smart on this sort of thing (not making grievous political errors), so I would expect him NOT to make this error. Making it would immediately alienate the Spaceports and their non-trivial power bases in the respective state and federal legislatures. That would be an “own goal” you just don’t have to execute. Far better to work with and leverage the eagerness of spaceports to continue to thrive.

But let’s say you do it and even “get it right” and you, Brian, find out that some of what you have in your “bucket” is best aligned with what the Florida and Virginia spaceports (or someone else) is already doing. Then the natural thought would be to offer it to the appropriate spaceports on a sole-source basis. More creative options would be to suggest some Florida-Virginia joint entity to pathfind a more national approach to spaceports OR to even skip the sole source offering in one or both states to see if competition can be spurred. Note that this last thing would be very hard given the startup costs involved and the inherent advantages to scale.

The spaceport stuff would be all the stuff related to preparing a launch vehicle (NASA’s or someone else’s) to launch. There is a lot involved in that and a great reference for that set of work is in a very good recent report by Aerospace Corporation called Spaceportopia and serves as a great primer on the subject if you know nothing about the topic. My discussion of (and links to) Spaceportopia are here.

Misery Made Clear

At this point, the ‘uncertainty and misery’ (for those who work at WFF or KSC) part of my comment should be quite apparent. While all of this maybe represents a growth path for those in the spaceports, for those desirous of the opportunity to make grand pronouncements about efficient government, for Brian Hughes’ future career, and those businesses with the chance to get large-ish contracts for their well-financed and well-connected businesses, the view is very different for the current workforce. For the average civil servant or contractor it means not knowing if you’ll have a job or, if you do have one, where it will be.

That, in itself, represents a risk to the whole scheme since few things are more localized, nuanced, complex, and dangerous than “launch operations”. Without the people who are “doing it now” there to help, any transition will be slow and fraught with risk on every dimension. If they panic and just leave, it could be years before safe and reliable operation is restored across the board.

A Twist That Could Play Out

One last thought. There is also the notion that, rather than offering any or all of these pieces to DoD, states, or industry, the “Launch Operations” elements (at least the launch range portions) could be offered, again in whole or in part, to the Office of Space Transportation at FAA. If you think of launch ranges like you think about airports, this can make sense.

That path would come with some benefits. The sites remain civilian, remain federal, and would be more reassuring to many of the current federal (and contract) workforce. In addition, the analog with airports would be reassuring, and congressional opposition would be muted since federal employment would change less in a given district. Downsides exist, of course, and I think the most significant one has to do with the federal customer sets at the launch sites: they are used to working with non-regulatory NASA rather than regulatory (FAA) launch providers. That seems like wonky “inside baseball” stuff and in some ways it is, but their collective customer experience would surely change. That said, everyone would get used to it, and FAA could (if they really focused on creativity and leaning into the future) bring some “airport like” thinking to the ranges. That wouldn’t be awful.

• Note (importantly): Of all the other FEDERAL entities I have named as the possible ‘recipients’ of any NASA attempt to offload any of this, only FAA could legitimately see itself as having something valuable to gain. While DoD and its components would rightly recognize the high and prohibitive carrying costs of the infrastructure and probably choose to “rent rather than buy”, FAA could see a long – sought extension of its influence and authority into an actual operational capability through the acquisition of actual launch range with which it could demonstrate that “ranges are like airports”. If I were in FAA / Office of Space Transportation, I would put some smart people in a room and think hard about the strategic opportunity this represent and whether or not to pursue the “launch part” of what Brian Hughes now leads.

So where to end this?

I am disingenuous if I don’t say right up front that I bleed, feel real pain and heartache, whenever anything affects the nation’s launch ranges, especially the one at WFF where I used to work. A big part of my heart still lives there, and I was very up front about this when I was asked for my thoughts as this was being considered.

I will also offer that I know enough about some of the individuals involved to know that they too often succumb to the wishful thinking that things are simpler than they really are.

I also add what i believe to be a general truth about the way the world works and which makes me somewhat fearful: where wonderful capability, desire for power, and desire for money, are all mixed together, it is wonderful capability that ends up the loser.

So, I worry. That is to say, “I am a little bit paranoid.”. My Wallops training is, therefore, still firmly in place.

I will leave things right there for now and will have the audacity to add my usual style of ending.

Have a great weekend. Remember that YOU are not “your job”. That is just a thing you do.

Just as importantly: If you see the world as dark, be a light. If you see the world as leaderless or poorly led, be a leader. If you see the world as cruel, be kind.

You can do this. I promise.

J

This isn’t crazy. There has been a strong shift in priority and acknowledgement of the high degree of exclusive focus on that priority.

This began with the announcement of the President’s Budget Request (PBR), and even though Congress restored much of what the PBR had proposed to cut, the fact remains that the Administrator works for the President and, to a large degree, will line up on the priorities expressed in that budget.

It is also fair to point out that on April 3, just a few days from now, the next version of the PBR will drop for 2027. While I don’t know for sure, it quite imaginable that the President will place a similar pressure on the domestic agencies’, including NASA’s, NSF’s, and NOAA’s, budgets.

And, by the way, a war makes this more likely as does the growing budget deficit. So, gear up for all of that.

Igniting The Notion of Organizational Re-organization

So, back to NASA and the reorg discussions that are milling about. Some of these are “announced”, but far more of them are, as I said, “milling about”. Senior managers at multiple centers and at HQ are “thinking about” and asking their subordinates to “think about” what a reorg would “look like”.

As I said, this isn’t crazy. Not just because 30% or so of the workforce left. Not just because Isaacman claims to be on the verge of going on a hiring spree of “thousands”. The world has shifted.

Even if your organization is firmly attached to Human Exploration, you surely have noticed the dramatic shifts. Gateway is gone and replaced by a nuclear powered powerplant / Mars tug. You suddenly have crewed launches coming on 6-month cadences. From a technology perspective, your focus (and money) is on a half dozen or fewer big things rather than the couple-dozen you were doing last year. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (and the centers that do that science) got the huge Congressional diving, last-minute budget save, but rather than saving the missions, they’ve been reformulated to be partnered in some TBD way.

And ISS. Geez, ISS, despite its rightful places as a triumph of engineering and international cooperation, is a mess and has been jerked all over the place. From “deorbit by 2030” ISS has moved to “never deorbit until you have a replacement” and has now landed at “who wants to play Lego in space, but, by the way, we only have 250 million dollars?” Honestly, I am not sure you could play a game better with the hand NASA is currently holding, but I think we all know that you don’t win jackpots with that set of cards.

• · In any situation, there is a point at which facts start killing the option space and jading even the rosiest view. ISS, with its facts of “the system is wearing out regardless of the dollars we spend”, “the nation insists on having a station up there”, and “we don’t have the money”, and “there is no business case that closes”, is at that point. I hate predicting things so will just offer this: it is very hard to see the US having an ISS equivalent five years from now. We may have some “hotels”, maybe even some “persistent platforms dedicated to specific types of research, but that record of having a persistent, occupied, US platform in LEO sure seems likely to be coming to a close.

I will just note that while ESDMD, SOMD, SMD, and STMD, have had their worlds completely upturned, Aeronautics has got to be doing that thing you seen in the old comedic Western movies where there have been bullets going all over creation and the hero is still standing relatively unscathed and looking over his own torso for the holes that he thought would be there but aren’t.

So, back to my point. NASA, at many locations and levels (but not all), is rightly thinking about reorganizing itself.

What to Think About When You’re Thinking About Reorganizing

It is nature of those in charge of things not only to “be in charge” (which is good since that is their job) but also to “charge”. That is, when faced with the “quiet order” to think about what a reorg would look like, it is a terrible temptation to start drawing org charts and putting people in boxes. Leaders often “charge forward”, especially after a time of radical change. This is fair since the good leaders will want to stabilize things as rapidly as possible, but I think there might be some prior thinking in order.

But what to think about?

Before we draw boxes, we take some time to describe the characteristics we want to see in the new organization. This is important at any time of change, but it is especially important when there has been a directional upheaval as has recently been experienced by these organizations.

Just to linger at the 10,000 foot level for a moment longer, let’s think about what we have all heard during recent budget battles, Agency announcements, Symposia, Conferences, Press releases, Congressional testimony, and so on. I am going to summarize these with brutal brevity (not a strength)

• · We just fired thousands and are going to hire new thousands.

• · We want industry to play a far greater role in everything and in far more ways.

• · Some of these new ways involve truly heterogeneous missions in every dimension.

• · Our plans and budgets (ISS, space nuclear, crewed mission cadence) don’t close.

• · Science inspires the public, so it MUST shine in light of the above, so we want more.

• · “More” science MUST happen in a “presidentially acceptable”, industry friendly way.

• · Our budget, recently rescued at the last minute, is about to be pressured again.

• · The one most helpful thing, a persistently stable focus, is unlikely to emerge.

• · For our best stuff to be fully used, we have to invent it and THEN get it from industry.

Whole posts, books even, could be written about each of those (I actually know people who are doing that, in fact). And, that list isn’t a complete one, but for now, let’s assume that is enough to think about.

Characteristics to Think About

There you are, managing your organization, and you’ve been asked to “think about what the org should look like”. I am suggesting that, instead, you should “think about what the org should BE like”. That is, I don’t think you should draw any charts or boxes but should instead think about the characteristics your organization should have or enable.

Further, I think these are some a few of the important ones in light of the above.

• · Permeability: the ease with which ideas, people, funding, knowledge, intellectual property, and other organizational assets flow across various organizational boundaries (this can be up, down, or across “within” the organization, or out, as in to the world beyond).

• · Connectedness: the number, strength, formality, and vibrancy, of inter-organizational connections between an organizational unit and external stakeholders, partners, etc, AND how the connections are managed. Some aspects of this can be found at my posting on the topic of “Organizational Relationships”, but here you have to think about managing that (centralized vs decentralized, for instance).

• · Visibility: the amount of attention this organization is going to attract and how it will attract (or avoid attracting) it. Including something like this here is an acknowledgment that some entities might be better of being “a little bit out of the direct spotlight”, while some units probably need to be moved to centerstage. But this isn’t just about “protecting the thing with the target on its back” because there are some organizational units whose actual job is enhanced by high visibility to stakeholders and potential partners. Likewise, there are some things whose best partners don’t even want to be acknowledged.

• · Resilience: the natural or inherent resistance to becoming disrupted or thwarted by some set of circumstances that might reasonably be expected given our current set of “known knowns and known unknowns”. It is true that this type of resilience is often most applicable to “plans and strategies” rather than to “structures”, but if you think about this for a moment, you can quickly see that it has implications for the “verticality vs the horizontality” of your structure. That is, if you create a structure that rests on some foundational organizational unit, that foundational unit, needs to be quite resilient or problems will ripple out from it.

• · Strength: the actual depth of capability and capacity of the organization to perform its stated, officially prioritized, core goal. Strength is probably the most fundamental characteristic you must think about as a leader. In all cases, you must build on strength to create more strength. There must be (at the very least) ONE unquestionably strong organizational element, though more is better if you have it.

• · Resourced: money, people, tools, and facilities, but in the end it is money and how it will come into the organization. And yes, this is part of ‘Strength’ but is so important that it merits its own callout. The question here is straightforward: “Is the structure of this organization such that each element can identify a funding stream sufficient to sustain it?” Unless the answer is ‘yes’, you have created a future problem. You may, of course, be forced into that situation, but you should think hard about how you want to allow that poverty to be spread about (or concentrated) within your organization. And remember, it is fine to have an organization funded by a large number of sources, but that takes unrelenting work at the level “one above” that organization.

• · Emissivity: the type, reach, and strength of influence and tangible and intangible products outputted by the organization. Think like this: if the output of this organization is widgets or ideas or knowledge or whatever, what does that output look like from outside. How much influence does all that stuff have? Are those outputs “pushed out for all to see”? Are they “there for the asking to those who know”? Are they a steady-state, operational sort of product line that drops every day?” Are they rare occurrences that make a big splash? Do they attract headlines? Admittedly, this one is a different sort of thought for some and is in some ways related to others, but I think it matters. Right now, NASA finds itself needing to “light the way” in many ways: to the Moon, to Mars, to space nuclear power, to innovative partnering arrangements, to commercially viable space systems of every sort. So, its work, and its organizational units must be able to transmit that light out appropriately. A thinking leader will at least consider how best to array an organization to best cast that light appropriately.

(And yes, there are others characteristics just as worthy of inclusion. I have seven here, and I think that is a good number. In actual practice, try not to have more than ten or you will turn into a philosopher and never get anywhere.)

So, now what?

Get your trusted team together. Maybe that is a group of 3-5 people or maybe that is you and a bottle of wine and a white board … no judgement here. You will want to think about each one in turn with the following foci:

· How important is this to our organization?

· Is it important enough to be a “primary organizing principle”?

· What sort of organizational structure might best create or leverage this characteristic? What sort of organizational structure might best mitigate a lack of this characteristic?

o By “sort” here, you are thinking about general descriptors like “vertical”, “flat”, “highly granular”, “centralized”, “distributed”, …. So, you are starting to think about the general rules you will have when you start drawing the types of lines and boxes you have. And you will be doing it in such a way that the characteristics you thought about will be more inherently infused into the organization you will eventually create.

For those characteristics that you have decided are important, make sure you communicate those characteristics down into your organization, up to your own management, and to your peers and stakeholders. This has not only helps with transparency but also helps commit you and your team to the desires you have for the organization.

Lastly, in addition to all the other things leaders think about when thinking about a reorganization, the “new initiatives” at NASA seem to me to require a set of standard questions, that at least have to be considered. Much of this derives from the Administrator’s (and the Administration’s) desire for a different relationship between the agency and industry.

To me those questions include:

· For those things we KNOW we DO ourselves, how will we do it, where will we do it, and who, specifically, will do it?

Otherwise:

· How do we support others who DO the thing directly because they literally can’t DO the thing without our contribution?

· How do we catalyze or improve the efforts of others who COULD DO this thing but maybe can’t do it right now or can’t do it well enough without us?

Also:

· For the thing we DO that others do or could be doing, how do we enable more entities to be doing this, so we can move on to whatever comes next?

· How far ahead of the state-of-the-art do we NECESSARILY lead? That is, by our efforts in some areas, we produce a widget, but sometimes we produce a widget design. Still other times, we create a formula to design or produce a widget. In still other cases, we produce some of the knowledge required to create such a formula. And sometimes, we create the questions that make a community realize there is a need for knowledge. It is really important to think about where your organizational elements live along that curve.

So, just before a weekend (and, for me, just before a three week trip out of country), some things to think about.

For what it’s worth, I have been in “full watch” mode this past week or so and have attended a variety of press briefings. Among them:

• The NASA “Ignition”,

• Congressional testimony (the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee briefings on Space Security, Commercial LEO, and Deep Sea Mining, among others), and

• Industry Conference events including “Beyond Earth” and a National Academy “Space Science Day”

As always, if I squint hard, themes seem to emerge (and often conflict with each other), and have gotten me thinking new thoughts to offer here. But questions are welcome, too.

Have a great weekend, stay safe, and be a friend to someone who needs it.

J

—Note that this posting originated over at Organizing Thought abut feels sorta relevant here.

The New York Times review of the 1951 movie “When Worlds Collide” (about a rogue star and its orbiting planet that crash into and destroy the Earth against a backdrop love affair between a bold jet pilot and the daughter of a brilliant astronomer) contained this memorable line.: “Except for a rustle of applause to salute a perfect pancake landing, the drowsy audience at the Globe, where the film opened yesterday, showed slight interest.”

I think that counts as “harsh”. That said, I haven’t watched the movie.

But, even that review somehow unbelievably outranks the lack of widespread (and much deserved) recognition given to a recent discovery by astronomy researcher Anastasios Tzanidakis at the University of Washington. So, let’s correct that and give some recent news about worlds colliding a little more positive airplay.

Background and Praise for Our Hero

• · I will start with a shout-out here to Anastasios Tzanidakis. You can learn a little about him here but in case you don’t have time for the clicks, Anastasios is a graduate student and not at all what you were thinking when I used the term “astronomy researcher”. He is a 2016 graduate of Laguardia Community College, City University of New York, where he graduated with Honors and an associate degree in Mathematics. He followed that up with a BA in Astronomy at Columbia University (see…now you are paying attention!). He received his master’s in Astronomy at the University of Washington in 2022 and remains there in the final year of his PhD work. He was an active member of the commissioning team of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and his areas of interest are Science Communication, Software Algorithms and Data Science, and Time Domain Astronomy (remember this one). He is also the FORMER director of the University of Washington Planetarium.

The reason all THAT matters is that young Anastasios is the person we have to thank for this sequel to that old (and apparently terrible) movie. But this time it is real.

The Aforementioned Collision

It all started when two actual planets collided as they circled a faraway star. This was just about 11,000 years ago.

That would make for a very long story, but it took that long for the light from the collision event to reach Earth. When it did, the images from the event experienced the same thing that happens to MANY images of amazing things – they went utterly unnoticed and were merely stored somewhere on a hard drive.

Fortunately, our man Anastasios is interested in “Time Domain Astronomy”, so piles of sky imagery sitting on a hard drive is just what he likes to think about. Time Domain Astronomy is the study of how objects in space change in brightness, position, or spectrum, over time. That is, people like Anastasios study how what we can see of a faraway star or other object blink, brighten, dim, or move, and then they try to figure out what we can learn from those changes. It involves looking at a lot of old, stored data so any changes can be observed and noticed.

Something Seems Different

Usually the changes are very small; perhaps there is a star we can see from Earth that dims a bit periodically, so we can tell that something, perhaps a planet, has passed between our telescope and the star. Then the whole affair becomes a math problem in determining the size of the planet that got in the way (and dimmed the starlight a bit), how fast it is orbiting the star, how fast it’s moving, and so on.

Occasionally, there is a big change. Perhaps a star just goes “poof” (supernovae) or there is some gigantic outburst of energy from something nearby that we had never noticed. But these are rare. For example, we usually detect (with telescopes) only about 1 supernova every 25 to 100 years. And as for supernovae visible to the naked eye, humans have only witnessed these seven times in the last 2000 years. Links for that are here.

So, big things are rare.

A Technical Term

That rarity explains why Anastasios’ comment about what he saw when he was looking at the old telescope included the word “bonkers”.

• · Let’s again pause for a moment here and acknowledge the boldness exhibited by our young scientist in using a term that all of us can completely and totally understand. It wasn’t a “magnitude7.45 level event” or any such nonsense. It was freaking insane. May all of Astrophysics take note of his clarity.

The brightness of a particular star (the abysmally named “Gaia20ehk”)had begun to vary wildly and irregularly. By examining past years of data, our hero was able to confirm that things had been pretty normal for decades. There were dips here and there, probably indicating that the star had orbiting planets that occasionally got in the way of the light headed toward Earth. But then, in 2016, the star’s light began to flicker wildly and irregularly, and these flickers continued chaotically for years after that.

The math began, and soon it was clear that the flickering wasn’t because the sputtering “Gaia20enhk”, was about to experience some cataclysm. Instead, it was because something had happened – two of the planets that had been orbiting the sun had collided and smashed themselves to smithereens (a band I always tried to like but couldn’t). And Anastasios’ observation was the first time we humans have ever witnessed such a thing.

The thing that gave it away was just before the debris appeared and began to cause the starlight to flicker wildly, there was a huge increase in another sort of light – infrared light, the sort of energy we call ‘heat’. When the planets collided, the impact generated a huge amount of heat, enough to be observed by sensors on Earth.

So What?

Why does all of this matter? Why would anyone care? After all, the actual flickering of the faraway star is so faint it can only be seen with a powerful telescope.

Well, there are at least two good reasons why this matters:

1. Maybe most importantly, now we know yet another way that planets (and, therefore, any life that is on them) can be destroyed. There is an equation called “The Drake Equation”. It describes the factors that affect the possibility of there being a detectable “intelligent civilization” on other planets. There are seven such factors. The final term is L – the lifetime of the civilization (it’s ok to pause on that one for a moment since it is our nature to imagine that while some things may rise and fall, surely civilization isn’t one of them. Turns out, maybe not.) So, now we have a new cause to consider after things like asteroids and novae and cosmic ray blasts.

2. You can see another great reason why this matters by looking up at the Moon on a clear night and thinking about how it got there. More than a few scientists think there is good reason to believe that our moon was formed when our Earth collided with something that had also been in orbit around the Sun. Thanks to Anastasios we now have an example of that happening, so we can start to explore that theory with actual data.

So, a tip of the hat to Anastasios Tzanidakis (who I have copied on distribution for this one posting). Here is the article about his discovery and another one which is very good and far more technical than the first one.

The Runaways

No doubt your first thought when I use the name “The Runaways” is the American rock/punk band fronted by Joan Jett and Cherie Currie. That is understandable. After all, “Cherry Bomb” was a big hit, the two band leaders went on to great things after the band broke up. Joan stayed in the music world with hits like “I Love Rock n Roll” and “Crimson and Clover”, but you might also know Cherie Currie based on her later success as a “respected chainsaw woodcarver” and counselor. (sources)

But no. This is, of course, about “Runaway Supermassive Black holes”.

Because black holes aren’t scary enough by themselves. Even the idea of one being “massive” is not awful enough when we could imagine them being “SUPERmassive”.

Nope, the only way to add whipped cream to THAT dessert nightmare is to imagine that a bunch of them got loose and have become RUNAWAY supermassive black holes.

Well, thank the lord for JWST because that dessert is now served, and we have confirmed an instance of a black hole that is simply zipping around the galaxy at a couple of million miles per hour. As it flies it is sucking up everything in its path, leaving a trail of destruction behind it that is more than 200,000 light years long, and even creating a “wave” in front of itself that is nearly the size of a small galaxy.

The article, here, is a pretty easy read so, I will just hit some highlights … you know, things you can use to spook the kids and relatives at Sunday dinner:

How was it discovered?

Hubble “saw” a moving area devoid of any light, but JWST could see that all around the void was the telltale heat of things being sucked into it.

Where are supermassive black holes supposed to be when they are in their cages?

Normally we see them at the centers of galaxies (like our Milky Way), and very rarely are they seen anywhere else.

What could cause a supermassive black hole to ‘escape’ its normal place and become a rogue runaway?

Well, we don’t really know, but we speculate that two galaxies with blackholes at their centers could collide and one of the black holes might get hurled off into space. Another idea is that to smaller black holes might get close to each other and either collide or one of them could simply spin off in some wild new direction.

Now that we know about these things, what do we do now? These are scientists, folks. They will look for more of these in order to better understand them and model their formation, behavior, and demise. Because that is what such scientists do.

Here’s a general article on the topic and one that’s a little more technical.

A Completely Different Sort of Collision Involving Sense

I’m not sure I really have good words on this one since no matter what I make up, it won’t be as mind-boggling as the actual truth which I will state here as bluntly as possible after pointing out that there is, just maybe, enough to think about for the moment. After all, we already have:

• · a hot war (on which the leader of the US civilian space agency was asked to comment and then actually said something which maybe wasn’t the best choice for the situation),

• · an attempt to get people to the Moon (not only alive but in force and permanently),

• a weird unannounced initiative to get something/anything to Mars,

• · more space junk than we can even count already while a company, “Starcloud”, is filing a request for 88,000 new satellites each the size of a refrigerator and supposedly containing NVDIA GPUs (what will all the gamers think?) ,

• · Yet another instance of discovering, just days before it passes, ANOTHER bus-sized asteroid that will pass between the Earth and the Moon (just sayin’…we should be better at seeing these things earlier).

But no.

This was instead the actual story, the actual topic and chain of events that led to commentary by the NASA administrator and consumed a brain cycle or two. So, as reported by several outlets including from the “Daily Mail”…..

• 1. Star Trek actor William Shatner accused unnamed scientists of being on a “corrupt power trip” when they judged that Pluto was not a planet. He later accused them of “tyranny” for the decision.

• 2. Hearing no response from actual scientists, Mr. Shatner is reported to ahve observed the way that the Gulf of Mexico was “renamed” by Executive Order.

• 3. Inspired by the “Executive Order Approach to Scientific Truth”, Mr. Shatner, using his fame (which, alas, is actual currency at this time in our nation’s history) as an entryway, asked Elon Musk to (and this is a quote) “sign one of those Executive Order thingies to make Pluto a planet again.”

• 4. Mr. Musk (equally rich in both fame and fortune at present) indicated endorsement for the idea and said, “I’d support that.”

• 5. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah, whose scientific credentials are, sadly, not listed on his webpage) took to the social airways last month to plead with our nation’s chief executive, saying, “please do one thing for us and make Pluto planetary again.”

• 6. Finally, on March 13, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, in an interview with Florida’s “Daily Mail”, forgot a fundamental tenet of Stoic thought ( “You don’t have to have to talk (or even have an opinion) about everything that comes up, especially if it is silly,” ) and responded to a question about Pluto by saying, “I 100% support making Pluto great again.” He then offered, “I think we owe it to everyone from Kansas and all their great contributions to astronomy and aerospace to rightfully restore that discovery to a planet.”

My only closing remark on this is to offer the following both in honor of “Pi Day” but also as perhaps being disturbingly similar to the above:

A Moment of Exquisite Sense Bursts Forth In The Indiana Senate

In 1897, the Indiana State House of Representatives introduced a bill to set the value of Pi to 3.2 so as to “facilitate the squaring of the circle and for other educational purposes including the solving of heretofore unsolvable mysteries”. The bill passed out of the House and to the Indiana Senate.

On reaching the Senate, the bill was “brought up and made fun of. … The fun lasted half an hour” until one Senator Hubbell said that it was not fitting for the Senate, “which costs our citizens 250 dollars a day” to waste time on such a frivolity.” He stated that “even the consideration of such a proposition was not only not dignified or worthy of the Senate” but, further, was not even within our duties but those of learned scientists and mathematicians. He moved for indefinite postponement of the bill, and the motion carried.

May we find somewhere, the wisdom of the 1897 Indiana Senate to leave science to our scientists and get on with pressing matters in space.

The Leadership Corner

In case more is needed than the above guidance to observe the wisdom of the Stoics and remember that not everything merits your time or comment, I have placed a long form article over at The Organizing Thought. It looks at how to navigate the demands of the (very demanding) Present and the (always ethereal) Future.

The Takeaway:

As a leader you will always have the temptation to cling to the past. Sometimes (rarely, I would argue, and even then only partially) this can be the right thing to do. But in the inevitable tension between the present and the future, remember this:

Every day, the past diminishes and is farther away, and every sunset tosses a new present onto the pile of ever-weakening pasts. This is especially true when there has been a sudden change, an upheaval, a going over the waterfall.

Likewise, every single day, the future looms closer, overtakes you more and more, and, like the drip of water in a still-forming cave, makes itself known in a flow that will never, ever stop.

The point is that it is the future, not the present, that is irresistible because its force never relents. The urgency of the present is a distraction from the leadership requirement. It is a powerful distraction, to be sure, but neither the urgency of the moment nor the memories of the good old days are the actual Leadership requirement. For a leader, the future is the requirement.

So, the only question for the leader is this: Will you stride into the future, meet it, and perhaps even shape it, or will you be dragged into it? There aren’t other choices, because the future wins in the end. Every single time.

The full long-form article is here.

Now, that is enough.

Know that there is good in the world — there is knowledge and understanding and even kindness.

And always remember this: What is unknown will always outweigh the known. And though this can be terrifying or even paralyzing, you can choose to see it as wonderful and as the widest-imaginable invitation to explore, to learn, to discover, and to grow. So, choose this path instead: learn and grow by embracing the unknown, the different, the uncertain, because that is where the wonder is.

Have a great week, and help someone else have a great one, too.

J

In what is surely the dullest thing for most space technologists to imagine, I spent some time after (and a little bit ‘on’) my recent vacation (Bonaire is a truly wonderful place, by the way and I have pictures of an octopus and some sunsets to prove it and which you can see at the end of this posting) reading the recent 2026 NASA Authorization Bill which has been submitted to the full US House of Representatives for its consideration.

Why Do This When There Are Actual Interesting Things In The World?

A Case for Reading The Authorization Bill

Well, the Authorization Bill (if it passes and these eventually do) provides important guidance to the Agency for the next appropriation year. And remember … an Authorization Bill essentially tells an agency the possible scope of its work and lays out its rules. And while such a bill, if it passes, DOES become the law of the land and must be obeyed, it does not provide funding for anything so much as lays the framework within which that eventual funding must be spent. And that “becomes law” part … that means that what is written in the law with the word “shall”, MUST be done by the agency.

What sorts of things end up with those “shall” statements?

The short answer to that is “Required reports”.

Specifically, authorization bills typically REQUIRE (by law) that an agency submit certain reports to Congress. The language for these is usually the same and goes like this:

• · Not later than XX days after this legislation is passed, the NASA Administrator shall submit a report to Congress on __<enter congressperson’s favorite topic here>__ .

New Reports You Can Be Beaten With and Praised For At the Same Time

There are always TONS of these things in every Authorization Bill. If you look at them you can tell what Congress cares about, is worried about, wants to beat the agency for doing, or wants to commend the agency for doing.

• You can just imagine some Member saying, “Now I see here in your report submitted to us last month that you plan to modify the XYZ activity that employs 314 people in my district. Can you promise me right here, Mr. Administrator, that the nationally vital XYZ project will continue to inspire this nation’s students and also contribute to the next Moon landing, or do you plan to destroy all of that so you can continue to give that miserable tycoon, Enol Smuk, his normal trillions of dollars?” — or something like that.

That’s because each one of these reports provides a record that Congress can use to “call the agency onto the carpet”, so to speak. They can turn into talking points for members or can be used by the members (the Legislative Branch) against or in support of some Executive Branch activity that Congress likes or opposes.

If you are me, these are fun to see because they can say so much about the relationship between Congress and the Agency and its Executive Branch. Sometimes there is so much going on that the underlying reasons are because of differences between opposing factions within Congress itself, between an Agency and its contractors, or even between contractors that are at odds with each other.

One Example (Out of more than 40)

I am am in the process of breaking down each of the reports that would be required of NASA in the recent House Authorization Bill. For each one, I show the report requirement, the timeframe, some context, my own understanding of what actually lies behind the crafting of the language including who might have wanted it and why, and finally what NASA might want to think about as it responds to something that could, after all, be used to beat it about the face.

The problem is that there are more than 40 of them in the bill. I took the liberty of giving each one a name (they seldom have names) that I felt conveyed the actual point of each report. So my listing of the required reports includes things like:

• The “For Goodness’ Sake, Would You PLEASE Get to Work on Buying a Lunar Lander and Here Are Our Thoughts On How To Buy One.” Report.

• The “We Want to Make Sure You Understood That the Lander Not Only Has to Work as a Lander for Stuff but Also Has to Deliver People to the Moon” Report.

• The “We Let Some Companies Write This For Us So They Can Prepare For and Count On You to Have a Plan for Anything Even Remotely Related to Using Space Suits” Report.

• The “You Had Better Make Darned Sure You Don’t Leave This Nation Without a Working Space Station” Report.

• The “Dear God, ISS is as Big as a Soccer Field and You Had Better Not Deorbit That Thing and Cause an International Calamity OR Bust Your Budget While You Do It” Report.

• …..and about 35 more.

But fun titles aside, an explanation of the backroom shenanigans of forty such things would probably lose me all of my subscribers to Still Interested, so I am putting that (much longer) post over on “The Organizing Thought” since it is so policy-heavy. Still, I thought it would be cool to share one of them here because it has a nice mix of technical challenge, inter-agency intrigue, international and soft power implication, and actual future utility.

Report 15: The “What Time Is It on the Moon?” Report

• Not later than two years after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator of NASA shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report describing the strategy developed pursuant to subsection (b)(2), including relevant plans, timelines, and resources required for the implementation of a coordinated lunar time pursuant to such strategy.

Commentary: For me, this one is truly interesting in that there is a real technical challenge behind it. In addition, there are a number of interested parties that are revealing themselves by virtue of this report being here. Let’s look at some background first and then at the interested parties.

The Problem of Lunar Time

Time on the Moon is harder than you might think. As usual when complicated stuff comes up in space, Einstein is somewhat at fault. That is because his theories of Relativity tell us that time is literally faster on the Moon than it is on Earth.

I don’t mean that the “clocks run faster”, I mean that seconds don’t take as long to pass as they do on Earth. I mean that the physical processes of humans (like aging) and of matter itself (like radioactive decay) happen faster there than here.

Time is faster on the Moon because gravity slows time. The Moon has less gravity than the Earth, so time is slower here than on the Moon. That is what “Relativistic Time” (thank Einstein for that) means. The Relativistic Time difference between the Earth and the Moon is about 56 microseconds. Time is faster on the Moon by 56 microseconds when compared to time on Earth.

The Practical Problem for NASA Of Time Passing Faster in Cislunar Space

In real terms, let’s suppose you were on Earth and there was some astronaut circling the moon in a spaceship. Your job is to communicate with that spaceship, so you want to aim a radio or laser beam at the ship when it is time to send your message. Let’s assume you can see the spaceship and know how to calculate its future position using the Newtonian Laws of Motion.

You would think you should be able to predict where it will be when it is time to send your signal. BUT you would fail if you used your own “Earth time” to make the calculation of where the ship would be. That is because your own observation of the spaceship’s position AND your calculation of where the spaceship will be when your laser beam gets there will be off by the distance that light can travel in 56 milliseconds. Your signal would miss the ship by the distance that light can travel in 56 milliseconds … more than 10 miles!!! (this example is courtesy of NASA from this Lunar Time website)

But, as my former boss (the awesome John Campbell) used to say, “It’s worse than that.”

That is because the Moon’s gravity is not at all uniform (so even on sites spread around the Moon, time is different). That is true on Earth but the Moon is worse because its density varies so much from spot to spot, and its surface is so irregular. The plan, for now, is to put several atomic clocks at various sites and take an average of them to create a Moon Time Zone. For a while that will be “close enough” and will give us a way to state the time on the moon. Knowing that Lunar time is constantly 56 milliseconds faster, we will be able to make adjustments (just like we do on Earth when we make a meeting with someone in other time zones).

Commentary Continued: Interested Parties: Who Cares What Time It Is On The Moon?

· NASA cares: If you think about the example I just gave, you are very safe in assuming that the astronauts, the spaceship, the laser, and even the message being sent from Earth to Moon, probably have something to do with NASA. So, of course NASA cares. Not only that, but even among all of the others entities that COULD care, NASA, at least in the near term, is the entity that cares most. They, figuratively and literally, are the ones with the most immediate problem if this doesn’t get figured out. That is why, among all the other agencies, it got tasked by Congress with figuring out the answer and setting the standard for Lunar Time.

· NIST cares: NIST, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, is actually our nation’s timekeeper. They are the curators and operators of the atomic clocks and other paraphernalia that tell us what time it is. When we need to adjust things for “leap seconds” or whatever, it is NIST that takes the lead. So, if the US establishes a new time zone on the Moon, NIST will ultimately become the curator for that as well, so they will want to have a say on how it is done.

· DoD cares: The Department of Defense (which, I will point out, remains the statutorily correct, congressionally-authorized, and legal, name of that organization) cares. DoD cares a lot. It is their job, specifically that of the Space Force to ensure Space Doman Awareness in the Cislunar environment. That means it is their job to know where everything is up there. If China or Russia (or anyone else) puts a system on or near the moon, it is Space Force’s job to track it, know what it can do, and be ready to stop it from doing something awful to a US asset.

As in our example, it does not good to be off by 10 miles when you are supposed to be watching the “other guys”. So, DoD cares. Some probably would argue that the DoD need is a ‘higher national need’ than NASA’s exploration activities and that maybe that higher need means it should be DoD’s job to figure out the problem. But, in government circles, if you are the one with the initial need, you get the job and have to use your budget to do it. DoD will be a part of the team working on it and will offer requirements perhaps, but it isn’t their tasking.

· The Space Industry Cares: The very last thing that companies supporting the US space program want is to have to figure out what time it is. Generally things like setting standards for fundamental things is best left to governments. If you are company the only thing worse than not having a government approved time standard would be having each agency have its own standard. Industry is great at things like interface standards (USB and Bluetooth), standards for pressure vessels and electronic systems (ASME and IPC standards), and many more. But they don’t even want to have an uncertain period of competing standards when it comes to time since having to accommodate any variations in something as basic as time would be prohibitively expensive. So, they are happy to advise, but that is about it.

Response Considerations for NASA:

NASA’s challenge here will be in the work that has to be done to create a standard that will involve so many stakeholders. In its report, it must assure Congress that it has the technical problem well in hand, AND that it is involving all of the stakeholders to ensure the Nation emerges with a time standard that is useful to all who need it. There is also an opportunity for ‘extra credit’ on this time problem: Mars has a different gravity strength than either the Earth or the Moon, but it sure would be great if there was some commonality of process and format between the times used on all those places. So, NASA will surely attempt to solve this problem only once rather than for each new destination.

Surprisingly Relevant International Influence and Soft Power Considerations

One final note on this one. The development of this time standard has international effects as well. Maybe NASA will create it before any other nation does (after all, you don’t have to be on the Moon to define a Lunar time standard). But creating it, and then proliferating its use to other nations will be a statement of leadership and a mark of international power. Yes, there is power in a footprint in the lunar dust, but there is, arguably greater power when the other space-faring nations leverage what you have done and become compatible with the architectures our nation has put into place.

That’s it for this post. Tomorrow I’m hoping to drop a more normal post but I having spent some time on this, I wanted to share at least one that felt sort of “dual use”.

J

Oh yeah. Bonaire. Awesome place. Go there. Relax. Pictures below are NOT AI Generated and were taken by our very own cameras as we snorkeled around the island.

The launch range world has very calm sounding words for terrifying things.

One such phrase is “tracking multiple targets”. That means that instead of seeing one thing in the sky (as planned), ground-based instruments see many things. That is a very calm way of saying “that thing just blew up and is now in pieces”. Unless the point of the mission is to actually “perform an intercept” (another calm phrase that means “shoot something down with your rocket”), it is never good to suddenly see “multiple targets”.

Another such phrase entered into the news just a couple of days ago. That phrase was “anomalous plume”. The word “anomalous” is a hint that things aren’t good (literally, “not normal” or “not expected”), but when you add “plume”, you usually are about to have a terrible day. Plume, in rocket-land, after all, means ‘fire and exhaust that comes from a rocket engine’. So, when you have “anomalous plume” what you have is “unexpected fire and exhaust coming out of the rocket we just launched”. There aren’t many worlds where that can turn out well.

The “anomaly” in this story is that it DID turn out well.

Stunningly, during the recent launch of a Vulcan rocket out of the Eastern Range, one of the rocket’s engines experienced a “burn through” (that means an actual hole) which led to an “anomalous plume” (that means that actual fire came out of the hole), AND YET, the rocket continued to fly and even managed to deliver it’s payload (spy satellites) to the planned orbit.

I have seen a lot of launches, and I have to say I have never once observed a successful delivery after a failure involving even a minor “engine breach” (another calm-sounding range word for “hole in a rocket with fire coming out of it”). I suppose it is appropriate to offer kudos to the Vulcan rocket for having sufficient robustness to be able to accomplish its mission even after having a problem (and the inevitable loss of thrust that would cause).

Here is a photo of the actual anomalous plume.

In this image, you can’t actually see the launch vehicle (it was a night launch), but you can see the brightness of the exhaust as it exits the engines. The Vulcan has four solid rocket boosters that provide thrust for the first few minutes of flight.

From the angle of the image, there should be two ‘bright spots’ where exhaust (fire) is exiting the nozzle of the rocket – these should be comfortingly “round-shaped”. But clearly, there are three and that third one, the one just above the little nozzle on the right side of the image, let’s call that one “not comfortingly round” … thus the ‘anomalous plume’.

Here is the video of the launch. The clip starts at about 30 seconds before launch, and if you watch the video, you can see that at about 1 minute into flight (occurs in the video at 23:53), there is an explosion of sparks from the base of the rocket. It feels safe to assume that might be “indicate something off-nominal” (that is the range phrase for “holy crap, that did not look good at all”).

Here is a link to a pretty good article about this whole story. It includes the recent history of the Vulcan rocket (which, stunningly, includes a prior successful mission that also experienced a burn through).

If “Winning” Means “getting a foot on the lunar surface first”, then we won’t win.

During what was honestly a pretty inspiring and heartfelt address given at the Maryland Space Business Roundtable (MSBR, and kudos to them, by the way, for always managing to have a very relevant set of speakers and a generally well-run event), former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, made a pretty interesting statement.

• · Before I tell you the statement let me offer this caveat: I do not have a recording of this event. I was in attendance, and I tried to listen, and I (as always) took notes. I say that to say that I could have this wrong. Maybe I misheard. Maybe I heard right and the comment wasn’t intended as it was said. I always defer to the intent of the speaker when I am in the audience. So, what follows here is what I jotted down and what still rings in my ears. But, instead of using quotation marks, I used braces ( [ and ] ) to enclose what I recall his comments to be where I wasn’t very very sure.

[The upcoming Artemis launch will return American astronauts to cislunar space. That is true. But just in case any of you are wondering, we are not going to beat the Chinese to a human lunar landing. That result is already baked in. I’m sure of it. Let me be clear: If “Winning the race to the moon” means “getting a foot on the lunar surface first”, then we won’t win.” I think that we need to realize that for America “winning” means that we as a nation must return to the moon broadly and in a way that delivers assets and capabilities that enable a robust, sustainable, repeatable, and long-lived lunar presence. We need to do the things that will allow us to access the moon at will, whenever we please, and for whatever purposes we want.]

Again … maybe I heard this all wrong. I maybe even heard what I am inclined to hear since what I think he said (every word of it) is what I believe anyway. But it was odd to hear it stated openly and bluntly from a stage.

One last thought: I still don’t think there is enough thought (and effort) going into prioritizing the “broad delivery of assets and capabilities to the cislunar environment”. I think we are leaving a LOT of opportunity on the table, and I spend a lot of my own time talking about those things to legislators, technologists, and government stakeholders. For a bit more on this, refer to The Organizing Thought (see specifically the recent “Tale as Old as Time” article and its soon-to-be-published Part 2)

The Lunar Economy: DARPA’s View (published at last)

I have been waiting for this report to drop. For about a year now I have been in occasional conversations where it has been mentioned, and have even been flattered to have been asked for a thought or two relative to a couple of the topics.

What is it?

It is a DARPA study, typically audacious and as fact-based and technically-sound as could feasibly be executed, that attempts to answer the question: “What is possible in terms of a ‘Lunar economy’ within 10 years of today?”

The inherent assertion here is that lunar development at scale (by America) will only occur if there are reasons that cause that development to make economic sense. The report attempts to make some of those ‘economic sense’ arguments (and, sort of by default, debunking/discounting ideas that don’t meet that standard).

So, it is as much an assessment of potential economic as well as technical reality, and it is an attempt to show pathways that would enable synergistic approaches involving multiple government agencies, industry participants, academic institutions, and international organizations.

I confess I am still reading this. It is both densely detailed (DARPA often “shows its work”, so to speak), and it is long 227 pages, so it is not for the faint of heart. If you do read parts of it, remember that the report is NOT policy. Any authoritativeness derives from DARPA’s rigor in analysis and openness to the removal of constraints. So, it is best read as a framework for what is possible.

I will offer a quick (and early) summary of some of the major areas that the report identifies as primary enablers and the economically legitimate activities and pathways that might drive or inspire American industrial might to the Moon:

• · Wireless power which may involve generation from surface systems (like nuclear or solar) or from orbiting (presumably solar) power production systems.

• · In Situ Regolith Utilization (ISRU) involving either “molten regolith electrolysis” or “carbothermal reduction”. The report points out that waste products (including the thermal energy remaining in both the waste AND the thing produced) have important value to a lunar economy.

• · Re-ISRU is the concept that once something (an ISRU machine or even a lunar lander) has been used, the metal from which it is constructed essentially becomes a lunar asset with high value and will likely have high utility in a lunar economy.

• · Communications and Position-Timing-Navigation (PNT) capability describes what you would expect from such a discussion. It points out the fundamental importance of both capabilities as well as the value on Earth of having a distant (and relatively untouchable) set of assets as a node within national capability.

• · Robotics where the value in the relative near term is likely to be “robotics as a service” in which many functions would be rendered by Moon-based teams of robots hired out to support a variety of lunar actors to relieve those actors from the need to carry new robots every time they go to the Moon.

• · Landing pad infrastructure to enable and support more reliable and frequent heavy landers. Think of this as the lunar airport infrastructure with well-instrumented landing areas and paved pathways for entry and egress to nearby areas where cargo will be needed.

• · Infrastructure hubs are like nodes along the likely pathways that are likely to connect various areas of lunar activity. If you imagine such pathways serving the role that rivers provided during early days of the nation, these hubs are like the outposts that grew up along those rivers. Hubs would provide needed relay stations, storage of essentials, local power, and the like. Hubs would likely take the form of towers tall enough to collect at least some solar energy most of the time and could thereby offer power during some periods of surface darkness.

• · Logistics is a huge topic and the document describes a variety of challenges to the “simple” problem of moving things around when those things are needed. It speaks to rovers and roads and storage and all the stuff that is so vital and so often ignored.

• · Cislunar harbors are orbiting facilities, infrastructure that serves as a transition between near-Moon travel and “travel elsewhere” such as to Earth or to other places in the solar system. Such ‘harbors’ allow more efficient transport to the surface or away from the moon by encapsulating the different requirements of near and far travel.

• · There is also an effort to identify a logical staging or ordering of how these services might be sensibly assembled.

The report includes other topics that are vital to any economy but which might not immediately spring to mind. Insurance is one such item. Interoperability is also discussed as a vital enabler.

There is also a discussion of what is asserted to be an “analogue”; the US Antarctica Program is used to show how some of the lessons learned from work in Antarctica can inform approaches to long term activities on the Moon.

There. I have summarized a document that I have, admittedly, not finished reading. So I am sure I have done the effort some disservice, but at least now you know about it. I encourage your reading of the document. It will at minimum make you think. Here’s the link.

Shortfalls (the things we can’t yet do at the level of need)

A few years ago there was a list that quietly moved around NASA. It was called the “Tall Poles”. I still have a copy of it. The “Tall Poles” was a list of all the things we knew we needed but also knew we EITHER didn’t have a way to get OR we didn’t yet know how to do when it came to landing humans on Mars.

The list wasn’t short, and every item on it was crazy hard … there were things like “landing heavy payloads on the surface” or “maintain astronaut health and sanity during a nine month ride to and from Mars” (the wording here is obviously mine … the actual entries were much more professionally stated).

Well, there is a new list. As with the last topic, I am still working my way through this one, so I am a little early but it felt important to get this out there where smart people can think about this stuff.

This one is broader than the “Tall Poles” (32 major topics altogether) in that it attempts to summarize all of the current gaps between what we need from “civil space”.

· Just a word here. I see “civil space gaps” as meaning that NASA’s assessment is that not only does it (NASA) does not have a needed capability, but also that the US civil ecosystem (that means FFRDCs, companies, or anyone else) doesn’t have the capability at the level needed.

The added breadth of topics means that it isn’t all about populating Mars. Added to that are things categories like: “Protecting Earth from Destructive Impacts”, or “Emplace and Maintain large, stable, space platforms and observatories”.

There are 32 major categories in all. Here is a link to the document.

My One Thing: An Update: The R&D Dashboard

I told you earlier in the year that what mattered in your support for a national approach to science and research was “doing something rather than talking about it”. I also shared that I joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

One of the things AAAS recently offered was the R&D Dashboard. It is a depiction of all US Government research and development appropriation and spending. It offers a graphic that shows, by topic AND agency, changes to that spending relative to prior years and includes depictions of what the Office of the President proposed, what the House offered as appropriations, what the Senate offered as appropriations, and what was eventually passed as law.

Shown above is just the NASA – related page from the AAAS dashboard tool, but it is easy to use and quite informative and has pages for Defense, Energy, NSF, NIH, Agricultural, and other agencies as well.

Here is the link to the tool. Hint: it is useful to help you target your advocacy (and your outrage) to the right place.

So that is it for the week.

In the interest of putting this out before the weekend starts (so you can have a slow, relaxing Friday-before-the-long-weekend afternoon), I am going to end here even though my fingers are burning with another topic (Congressionally required reports about Space).

Please relax this weekend. Truly relax. Do what you love and do it with those you love if you can. Work will be there when you get back, but the moments you could have spent on yourself will be lost in time. So, do the right thing and prioritize the right things.

Stay safe and sane.

J

Lets Start With A Mystery Neutrino (because, why not?)

There is a particle, a fundamental building block of the Universe, called a neutrino. Neutrinos have no electrical charge (unlike the protons and electrons you studied in high school) and they have a VERY low mass (unlike photons which are “particles/waves of light” and have a mass of exactly zero).

We know about these particles, and scientists study them in something called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Neutrinos “get energy” from whatever it is that created them. Think of it a little bit like the debris produced by an explosion – the more powerful the explosion, the more energy the neutrino has. And we know just how much, the maximum, energy a neutrino can have. We “knew” it would be impossible for a neutrino to have more than than “maximum” amount of energy.

Well, we USED to know that, because scientists recently detected a neutrino that had over 100,000 times more energy than the strongest one that had been imagined.

• · And that is the cool thing about science sometimes … you are pretty sure about something until you aren’t anymore. But (and here’s the important part) you don’t stop and say, “Oh, NOW I know the truth,” but instead you become “pretty sure” about the new thing and then keep doing science to learn more.

[Back to our story] Scientists detected this amazingly energetic particle and immediately asked the question, “What in the world could have been a big enough explosion to cause this much energy in a neutrino?”

Which Brings Us to Black Holes

As with everything else that is weird in the Universe, the immediate suspect has to be Black Holes. You would imagine that the candidate black holes for something so extreme would be gigantic things like the ones that sit at the centers of many galaxies. We are pretty sure that as black holes die, they end up exploding. So far, so good.

BUT black holes die because they leak something called Hawking Radiation which a type of radiation. Leaking this stuff makes them hotter somehow, and once they get hot enough, they finally explode. BUT (fun fact) the larger a black hole is, the colder it is and the longer it takes it to leak enough Hawking Radiation to explode.

And I mean it takes a REALLY long time. So, unless the black hole is truly tiny, it would easily take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^67) years for it to leak enough to explode. And since the universe itself is nowhere close to that old (only 14,000,000,000,000 years), there’s no way for a “standard sized” black hole to have ever gotten to the point of exploding yet.

You can see the problem here, I am sure. If only black holes can create such an energetic neutrino AND it would take longer than the universe has existed for standard black holes to create a particle that we have observed, then, where did that thing come from?

Hawking To The Rescue

It turns out that Stephen Hawking’s theories, the same ones that taught us how black holes evaporate, predicted an answer for us.

That answer involves one of the coolest-named things ever to (maybe) exist … a Quasi-extremal Primordial Black Hole. Note that this name alone makes up for the general tendency of astrophysicists to be terrible at coming up with names for nearly everything they discover.

A Quasiextremal Primordial Black Hole is a black hole that formed not from dying stars (which tend to be large) but from the clumps of matter that existed back when the universe was first formed. Because they formed so early and because they formed so quickly in a universe that still hadn’t expanded and had very little “actual matter” in it, these are very small black holes (probably more like the size of an asteroid rather the size of a sun) they would be much hotter than your run-of-the-mill black hole. Therefore, they would “evaporate off” the Hawking Radiation much more quickly and would have time to explode during the short (14 billion year) life of our Universe.

And it is just such an explosion that could create a neutrino as energetic as those recently observed!!!! If this reasoning is correct, we have not only found evidence to explain the highly energetic neutrino, we have found evidence of these Quasiextremal Primordial Black Holes.

Now you will admit that the neutrino part is a fine bit of mystery solving, but here is an even bigger deal with relative to that weird sort of black hole. That is because there is a huge unknown in the universe around the idea of ‘dark matter’. The mystery is basically “where is all of the matter and energy that we think exists but which we cannot see?”

Steven Hawking’s work imagined the possibility that some very special, very small black holes might develop in the early universe. Such black holes would have the strange effect of “hiding” matter and energy that would have otherwise be visible in today’s universe. He predicted that IF such small black holes did exist, the evidence would be the otherwise-unexplainable high energy neutrinos that we seem to be seeing recently.

So maybe, just maybe, we could starting along a path that will answer some of our questions about that mysterious dark matter. How about THAT!!!???!!!

Here is a link to the story, a link to some information about Stephen Hawking (there is also a movie that is pretty decent), and a short, fun video about ‘normal neutrinos’.

Nikki Minaj, A Soviet Congratulations, Mad Mike, and the National Institute of Physics

In a recent interview with YAP (Yet Another Podcaster), the rap star, Nikki Minaj stated that the Apollo Moon landings never happened and, of course, this was taken up as a national story.

I continue to be stunned that this (disbelief in the landings) is a thing. But in a response to this I’ve never heard before, a former astronaut pointed out that when it happened (which it did) even the Soviets, a government of totalitarian liars with whom we were, literally, in a race to the Moon, called us up to say congratulations on getting there. I hadn’t heard that response before, and I point it out because it seems that these days, people trust wild sources, so maybe the old Soviet Union still has some street cred in some sectors.

In case you are of a more rational mindset and would like your own little arsenal on how to respond when the next brain-challenged rap star asks how you could believe that we “actually landed on the Moon”, here is a current list of helpful rebuttals from the National Institute of Physics.

I give space here to this obvious bit of nonsense with the goal of calling your attention to why I think Nikki Minaj is a great example of two conditions, one of which (at least) she has surely contracted. I will start with the generous one.

Ultracrepidarianism is the phenomenon that occurs when a “high performer” (that is the ‘generosity’ I am offering here, and, wow, is it hard) in one area wrongly believes their competence extends to other areas and leads them to errors of judgement or belief.

• This is a fun thing to look for in meetings you attend as it shows up more than you’d think and is a good reason to invite all the (actual) experts to the meeting rather than just those claiming to be.

The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability in a particular area lack the cognitive ability to recognize their own errors, leading them to believe they know far more than they do. This one was demonstrated (yet again) to be a truly dangerous condition by the late “Mad” Mike Hughes who, in his attempt to prove that the Earth was flat and that gravity was negotiable, impacted the (non-flat) Earth at high speed (fatally) in his homemade rocket while riding in the aforementioned rocket in order to ‘prove’ his theory about the shape of the planet. Here is the link to that sad story.

This one (Dunning Kruger) has a truly interesting flip side though. That happens when someone with true high-level expertise assumes that others find their area just as easy as they find it. This leads them to underestimate the difficulty of what they routinely do.

• You can look for this one as well. You can identify it easily when some brilliant person is explaining something to you and says, “You probably remember this from your introductory courses in quantum dynamics” or when some athlete you know does something incredible and says, “just do it sort of like that”.

(Policy Corner): A New Superpower

It is still early days in the process of passing, but the next NASA Authorization Bill was recently approved unanimously by the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee and sent along to the full House for a vote. I think there are a few lines in there that are truly awesome.

• · A quick and important note: Remember … an Authorization Bill essentially tells an agency what Congress believes the agency should be doing, offers a definition of the scope (bounds) of its work and lays out its rules of operation. And while such a bill, if it passes, DOES become the law of the land and must be obeyed, it does not provide funding for anything so much as lays the framework within which that eventual funding must be spent. Still, because it becomes law, any new rules it includes CAN confer new powers (called authorities) that the agency can use when it eventually gets funded. These are can occasionally be actually interesting to see (I promise) because they enable agencies to act in completely new ways or interact with other agencies or even the commercial sector in completely new ways.

For those of you (I am guessing maybe three, tops) who are interested in a summary of the proposed bill, here is the summary published by the committee.

But the summary doesn’t mention the thing I found interesting and am going to term a potential new NASA superpower. That can be found in the approved text of the bill in the newly created “Section 810: NASA Public-Private Talent Program”.

In this section, NASA is granted a new authority, an “assignment authority” which enables NASA to, to quote the bill,

• · “with the agreement of a private sector entity and the consent of an employee of the Administration or of such entity, arrange for the temporary assignment of such employee of the Administration to such private sector entity, or of such employee of such entity to the Administration, as the case may be.”

Translated into normal language, NASA can allow its employees to serve for a (renewable) period of up to two years at other agencies or private sector employers (and vice versa for those outside the agency to serve terms as part of NASA).

Think about that for a moment. Not only is this is a whole ‘nother level of ‘tech transfer’ in which it is the technologist or scientist, not just the technology or science project, is enabled to be utilized as a catalyst to multiply NASA’s effects on US Space goals!

Stated generally, by virtue of this new authority, NASA has “reduced the permeability of its own organizational walls.” It has created a potentially vibrant way for its best ideas to find their way into the nation and for its employees to experience the reality of problems, challenges, and capabilities that exist outside its own walls.

Will this amount to anything? Certainly not if NASA doesn’t use it and maybe not if the agency doesn’t work and strategize to focus and maximize its use. But it could be a boon for the agency, the nation, and NASA’s employees.

Check it out for yourself at this link to the text of the proposed bill (search on “Section 810”)

(Leadership Corner): A Question

Lastly, this week the NASA administrator reportedly offered in an email that NASA would restore NASA’s Core Competencies.

I think this is a fine idea…truly I do, and there will be something of a rush to identify those core competencies. Each center and facility will work to offer their list of those competencies, those special skills that it brings (and has historically brought) forward to support the agency’s mission.

This is well and good. But I think that before those lists can be developed there are some fundamental questions that must be answered. Each is a form of a question that is no different from what every organizational leader should think about every day.

That general form is: What is the purpose of my organizational unit?

The answer to that question tells a unit leader why the unit should exist in the immediate and strategic future. Absent an answer to that question, any list of core competencies will be, at best, a list of desires, and, at worst, a backward looking recantation of what used to be important.

So, to generalize, wherever you are in an organization, that question is one that produces a valuable touchstone answer for every leader. When strategic questions arise (like “what are your core competencies”, even when dull administrative action items arise, your first mental stop must be to that touchstone: “Why do we exist and what purpose do we serve?” Your answer in each case should rest firmly on the foundational question of purpose. My only hint for answering this the purpose question is that the answer is never (EVER) “we do everything”.

It is Congress’ (and Jared’s) job to answer that question for the agency, and the Authorization Bill mentioned above takes a step toward that. But below that level (at NASA) there are its Centers and its HQ. The purposes of those Center entities are the questions at hand right now. The questions are not “how do we do it” questions … they are “what is it our job to deliver” questions. They are questions of purpose, not method, and will guide the answers to the question on competencies.

The answers matter. They matter because they begin to provide the clarity and touchstone-level stability that is desperately needed by employees and leaders alike if they are to be about the work of solving the world’s hardest problems in pursuit of Aeronautic Innovation, Sustainable Space Exploration, Scientific Discovery, and Advanced Technology Development.

So, regardless of where you lead from, one of the best things you can have is a simple written version of the following that will be a reminder and comfort to your folks (and yourself):

• · However it is stated, THIS is why we exist, our purpose, within this organization.

• · Because of that purpose, we have and/or cultivate these core competencies and skills and have or have access to these types of assets.

Having this simple (it’s a page, not a book) bit of information creates an island of stability within an organization. If you are extremely lucky (no one is) the boss might tell you the answer to the first one. More likely, you might show it to the boss, and she may refine or correct our purpose statement, but at least you will have it. But you must have some form of of the first one to do the second part about competencies.

ADDENDUM: I’ve already gotten questions about this one, so here are some more specific examples of what I mean by “the question”:

• Over the next 5-10 years, what does/will it mean to be to be “a headquarters” and what is the function and value of such an entity?

• Over the next 5-10 years, what does it mean to be “a NASA science center” (or “research center” or “exploration systems development center” or “aeronautics center”, or “space operations center”, etc) and what is the function and value of such an entity.

• Over the next 5-10 years what does it mean (within the context of your larger organization) to be a “project management directorate”, an “engineering division”, a “flight facility”, a “proposal office”, a “mission assurance directorate”, or “or a whatever other generic name your organization is currently called, and what is the function and value of such an entity?

Having this, even if it is flawed, will begin to calm the waters (and people and actions and doubt) that surround you.

That’s it for the week.

There is, no doubt, a great deal of churn right now for you, no matter where you sit in within the nation’s space ecosystem. A great deal remains unsettled and uncertain. But a direction is emerging, and that is a good thing. You are reading this because you have an interest in that direction and capability to help achieve it. Trust that this is true.

So, take care of yourself; don’t try to do everything. Instead do that great thing that you do.

It’s enough for now. I promise.

Have a great weekend and week to come.

J

Let’s just start with something amazing. This is a picture of the moon you don’t get to see much. Yes. That is our Moon, but the surface probably looks odd … no “man in the moon” none of the big craters you see when you look up there at night.

That’s because what you see in the image above is the ‘Far side’ of the Moon (see how I resisted referencing the “Dark Side” of the Moon and any reference at all to Pink Floyd or the always-relevant songs “Money” and “Us and Them” which pretty much sums so much up right now? I am particularly proud of my new ability to resist such things and not get drawn off into tangents! But, not a tangent, mind you, for the hardcore among you here is a link to the first ever recording of “Money” that Roger Waters made…he was in his garage at the time.)

“But, how?”, you surely ask. How did we get such an image? What satellite gives us this picture? Why, that would be DSCOVR, probably the only satellite that will, in all likelihood, cease operation because of its name.

• · DSCOVR stands for “Deep Space Climate Observatory”. Surely you can see the immense challenge with that name these days. That “C-word” there in the middle is the reason why things die nowadays.

DSCOVR is an interesting satellite because it sits permanently between the Earth and the Sun. It’s camera, the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera, EPIC (get it…what an acronym!), points at only one thing…Earth…which, because of the satellites position between our planet and the sun, is always brightly lit. The moon, of course, swings around the Earth, so sometimes you get shots like the one above.

Here’s a fun thing: At the EPIC website (of course it has it’s own website), you can check out the latest images of Earth and can even zoom in on portions of it with the handy “zoom” feature on the left hand side. And that is just the visible light work DSCOVR has provided in its lifetime. In addition to that, the satellite fulfilled a truly important role in providing early (about 45 minute) warnings about incoming solar storms (that can, when large, damage electronics or even elements of the electrical grid that provides you power, in case you need a personal reason to care) Here is more info on that topic from just a few days ago just to ensure your understanding that solar storms aren’t rare).

Here’s a less fun thing: At least in part because of that nasty middle name, DSCOVR has been on and off the “turn this thing off” list over the years. Currently is to be turned off before the end of this fiscal year, probably around August. To be fair, the satellite (still quite functional) has been replaced by the Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) satellite) which will perform all of the space weather, solar flare warning stuff. But that whole thing about looking back at Earth … yeah, none of that.

Nothing to See Here … (but heat)

This isn’t complicated, and it really isn’t even up for dispute, but, yet again, the planet measures much hotter than it used to. Just this week, after all of last year’s data has been ingested from actual thermometers in actual places all around the actual planet, those data turn out to indicate (without a lot of difficulty in the math, mind you) that things are getting hotter.

As in recent years, the heating is concentrated at the Earth’s North and South Polar regions. Stunningly for some folks, this means that ice in those areas continues to melt. Just for completeness, ice does that when it gets warmer (the things you actually have to type these days!).

This website contains a videos that show how the temperature of the Earth has changed over the course of the last 145 years (1880 to 2025). And, in a bold move that is the exact same bold move it always makes with its science data, NASA has a link on the site that will allow users (believers and doubters alike) to download all of the data AND all of the software used to create the images just in case those doubts inspire you to prove it to yourself.

Lastly, I will throw out the idea that given the way things roll lately, if you like the image above and “would hate to see anything happen to it” because of what it so clearly says, you might want to use the “Download” button to get a copy of the video from the linked SVS website.

Sadly, it seems we humans can “forget” true things if false things are shouted at us enough times. So you might want a copy to remind yourself of this just in case you suddenly struggle to find or remember this video and what its data clearly show.

The Rollout … (an impressive sight no matter what)

As I was typing the final version of this posting, someone sent me this image. There are articles about it in all the space trade journals. Here is one. Here is another. There will surely be more of these in mainstream press in the hours and days to come. So, I won’t try to add many words, as there will be plenty of them.

I will just offer that this is worth a few seconds of just staring. It is ok to be amazed by amazing things. Allow yourself that from time to time. It is a gift to yourself that you will feel good about when you realize that people, actual people, can do truly awesome things.

Budgetary Moving Parts … (are at least moving in the right direction)

…no cool picture here, just budget stuff…

Most news outlets that watch such things are now consistently reporting more and more detail about the Congressional “correction” of many parts of what the Executive Office had proposed for the nations space and science budgets. For NASA the end result is probably going to be about 6 billion MORE than what had been requested and about 400 million LESS than it got for fiscal year 2025.

All of NASA’s major directorates (Aeronautics, Exploration Systems, Science, Space Operations, and Technology) end up in very close neighborhood of where they were in the prior year.

But under the hood of those numbers, there are some things worth noticing. Let’s look at a few of those items because there are some give-and-take moves that are worth a moment or two.

Science: SMD would receive about 7.25 billion dollars instead of the proposed 3.9 billion. In addition, most of the programs and projects slated for termination will be written into law. Mars Sample Return is the big outlier here and will receive about 10 million dollars for “planning”.

An interesting SMD nugget: There is also another change for SMD that could be significant. That is that the appropriation moves responsibility for funding the Commercial Launch Payload Services (CLPS) program SMD to ESDMD. That is, in spite of receiving about the same funding as it got in the previous year, SMD is relieved of duty for funding the program to do CLPS. There are some inside SMD that would say “good riddance” because the science value of CLPS payload wasn’t the greatest in comparison to other existing SMD priorities. But other people would say that the value of CLPS was in demonstrating that actual science could be done in different, more risk-tolerant ways, and that this fact alone warranted the cost of the program. Regardless, that will be gone from SMD – BOTH the burden of paying for the program, the excuse to pursue higher risk paths to science. Honestly, my own guess is that no small number of people inside of SMD are quietly cheering this change.

Technology: STMD will be getting less than last year but far more, almost double, what had been proposed by the Executive Branch. Coming in at about $925 million, the appropriation represents a $200 million reduction from last year.

An interesting STMD nugget: As with Science, some of STMD’s current budget commitment will also be transferred to Exploration Systems Development. This time it is the work on Nuclear Thermal propulsion and Nuclear Electric Propulsion. This, is perhaps significant since the work will still have to get done, but STMD won’t actually have to bear the burden of doing it and can focus on things that are even further out on the “wish we had THAT technology” list.

Aeronautics: Aeronautics will be appropriated pretty much what it got in 2025, and this is in spite of the Executive Branch’s proposal that its funding be cut by about 33%. So, ARMD will be receiving about $935 million.

An interesting ARMD nugget: ARMD is directed, within its funding level, to support the Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration project. That is NASA’s version of a hybrid electric aircraft and is aimed at lowering emissions and fuel usage for airplanes.

ESDMD and Space Operations: You might have noticed a pattern above wherein a couple of other directorates got their hoped-for budgets but transferred requirements to someone else – to ESDMD, the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. It is oversimplifying to simply say that “ESDMD is Artemis”, but it kinda is. Between ESDMD and Space Operations (which funds and manages the ISS), the two will receive about $9.3 billion.

An interesting nugget from Exploration Systems Development and Space Operations: But remember, ESDMD now has to also work on nuclear propulsion technologies as well as implement CLPS. On top of that, the goal for ESDMD and Artemis is to shorten the schedule and launch earlier than had been planned.

Beyond that, there are a few others things you can pick up by scanning the numbers. Congress restores the STEM program to last year’s levels, requires Space Operations to ensure a commercial alternative to ISS before bringing it down, AND requires NASA to continue consideration of the gigantic SLS rocket until Congress itself says its OK to switch to some other rocket.

It is also true that, in the same appropriation, Congress restores (and increases) National Science Foundation funding to a total of $8.8 billion dollars (a $200 million dollar increase).

So, in many ways, the funding levels as well as the requirements remain pretty much the same as last year. The problem, of course, is that 3000 out of 17000 employees are now gone as a result of personnel changes driven by the administration. And while it is true that some of those people are now part of NASA’s contract ecosystem, some really key people are not. I expect there will come a day when the Agency will have an “oh crap” moment on realizing that “the person who knew/did/understood that ‘thing’ is no longer here. But I also expect they will figure that out too.

Leadership Corner

Sure, “Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast”, but What Eats Culture?

A New Framework for Assessing Performance Surrounding Risk

Multiple news sources have reported on an email sent to NASA employees recently which directs a change in the way employees’ performances are to be assessed and rewarded. In addition to requiring the usual stuff like competence and achieving objectives, the framework the new administrator has put forward includes a “recalibrated risk framework”. Specifically, it states that assessments must include how the employee performs in the area of “accepting risks worth taking”.

So, put that aside for a moment and let’s briefly consider another long-alleged aspect of NASA – that the agency has, since the days of Apollo, has a cultural resistance to taking risk.

There are two parts to this.

The first is “resistance to take risk”. If you look at the period after Apollo, it is not hard to argue that it was at least rational to take less risk in its assigned mission. (That part, “assigned mission” is also important – NASA doesn’t pick its strategic goals; it is assigned them by the Executive and Legislative branches.) What I mean here is that, after Apollo where the job was “as a matter of National priority, demonstrate to Russia and the world that our way of technology and way of life is superior by winning the race to the Moon”, the “national priority part” was kinda gone from NASA’s mandate. For evidence of this, see NASA’s budget after Apollo was done.

What remained was a mandate that was more on the order of “keep doing amazing things but be good stewards of the citizens’ tax dollars we give you”. With this sort of direction, it isn’t crazy to imagine the agency being less willing to put lives at stake, less willing to have outright failures, and more inclined to take its it’s achievements in steps rather than audacious leaps.

I’m not saying that is the way it should have been – just that it isn’t crazy if it was. Put another way, there is, I think, a big difference in how the nation and the political leaders would react nowadays to a situation where a major, billion dollar NASA mission just failed and resulted in a total loss when compared to the mere 12 month delay that followed the total loss of the Apollo 1 test crew. The “tolerance for risk tolerance” is just different now. That is certainly true when the risk involves human safety, but it is also true when the risk is “Um, boss, this billion dollar thing might not work but will be really cool if it does.”

Over time, and this is often the way organizations, particularly government organizations, work. Those in charge are leery of being the final signature on something that didn’t work (so they get leery of something that might not work, so they add reviews). The resulting press attention, congressional attention, and management attention, from a failure will certainly result in no end of grief regardless of how carefully the risk of failure was considered or mitigated. And since organizations are eventually led by people who are selected by the current leadership, those characteristics (self-preservation, project-perservation, and organizational-perservation, by risk avoidance) are all self-selected into the organization OVER TIME (that is key…remember that). Those characteristics get “baked into the recipe”.
The become “woven into the fabric”.

That is what culture is (that is the second part I mentioned). Culture is the way we act without thinking, the gentle current that we don’t even notice, the characteristics and processes and manner of things that are so comfortably a part of how we do things that we don’t even notice when we do them. Culture IS the weave.

And that is why people say, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” What they mean is that those quiet subconscious things that are part of how we do what we do every day are far more powerful than some new ‘strategic initiative’ or ‘new vision’.

So Does Culture Really Always Win?

But saying that doesn’t mean that is the end of things and there is nothing left to be said on the topic of culture. Thinking that would be like saying: “Culture is the apex predator” or “Culture is the first cause of all actions” or “Culture conquers all things.” And that isn’t true.

That is because cultures DO change BUT they don’t change over the short term. Cultures change over time and under pressure from incentives.

Let’s pull that out because there is a lot there: Cultures change over time and under pressure of from incentives.

That statement has a lot of implications. Not only does it mean that if we incentivize certain things (whether we mean to or not!) over long periods (like NASA did with increased risk aversion after Apollo was done), those things, those behaviors, become instilled to the point that they become ‘natural’ and, therefore, become part of our culture. But incentives can also be “negative” (we call those punishments) and can be used to cause our organizational population to avoid (or become less comfortable with) certain kinds of actions OVER LONG PERIODS OF TIME. That is just “two sides of the same coin”.

That “long periods of time” is just one of the problems, of course, because you can get all kinds of unintended consequences with incentives when people “figure out how to play the game”. Such things get worse over long periods as things “drift” away from the intended effect. So, as every economist can tell you, “Incentives are hard”.

• · This isn’t just applicable to NASA, by the way, and I won’t go on and on, but the same thing is true for a society or any other organizational unit.

• Simply put: You get what you incentivize … you just probably can’t predict everything your incentive will incentivize.

• The fact that you don’t like what you got in terms of behaviors of large groups of individuals probably has its origin in some incentive or disincentive that led rational people, over time, to act in the ways they are acting. For “bad cultural outcomes” you can sometimes explore this by 1) assuming people rational (rather than evil) and 2) asking “why would they do that?” (in terms of incentives or disincentives). Ask that a few times about an observed behavior and it won’t be long until you arrive at an incentive of some sort. Here is a decent article on this that I found right before pushing “publish” on this.

Back To The New Performance Evaluation Framework

So, remember where we started. Jared Isaacman has proposed that NASA’s employees (and presumably its program and project managers) be incentivized (via their performance evaluations) to “accept risks worth taking”. Now, admittedly that is not a great example of a precise bit of direction. It leaves a lot of room for judgement (and error), but it is direction. I think that the point of this is not some cabalistic attempt to “get rid of people”.

Instead, I think it is an attempt to start putting in place the types of incentives/disincentives that could help, over time, to introduce a different attitude about risk. I think that is a worthwhile effort in light of my view about “culture”, but most of all I think the whole topic is just worth thinking about.

But really, what I am proposing here is beyond this one instance. I am asserting that that a better picture of “Culture Eating Strategy for Breakfast” might include something else. Properly pictured, it would ADDITIONALLY include the idea that “Incentives Eat Culture for Dinner”. Sure, it’s a meal that takes longer, but I am pretty sure about this.

And for those wondering: Yes, I, a strategist at heart, believe that the creation of carefully considered incentives is actually one example of “Practicing Strategy”. Therefore, what I really believe that Culture and Strategy eat each other, but just on different timescales.

PS for this piece:

• This is a bit of “inside baseball” but, if I am right about the point of this new guidance from NASA HQ, then there are at least two contract – related things that must also be addressed relative to risk. These are the Source Evaluation Boards (SEB), their processes and conduct, which award NASA’s contracted work, and the Science Office of Mission Assessments (SOMA) and its processes and contracts which perform the evaluations of science mission proposals.

• So long as these two entities (the second one includes contracts and contractors who would not be covered by the Isaacman performance guidance for civil servants) are risk averse in their processes, the potential for creating a cultural change is very limited since so much of the agency’s “risk-able” work happens via contracts or mission proposals.

That is it for this week.

You are back. Don’t start the year with a sprint and pretend you can keep that up for a full year. Instead, after you get through what you MUST do immediately, look at the most important things to be done and how that can be accomplished.

Doing this means thinking:

• thinking about how you spend your time versus how you want or need to spend your time,

• thinking about how you can delegate some of that to someone for whom it will be a DESIRED growth opportunity,

• thinking about ways to limit interruptions since bigger blocks of uninterrupted time are more valuable than time filled with interruptions,

• thinking about a few things that simply don’t actually need to be done (by anyone) and finding a way to let those things just stop.

In other words, don’t just DO something … stop and think.

Stay safe and sane, and help someone near you do the same.

J

Some new year housekeeping stuff:

• · Substack seems to have added a feature that I have tried to adopt/enable, so hopefully it will be useful for mobile users who would rather listen than read. If you look at the articles on a mobile device, you should see a little “play” button up near the top right of the screen. That button will read the article so you can just listen to it, if that is your thing.
  I wish I had recorded myself trying to decide on the voice that would read things. I expect it would have been hilarious in the level of ineptitude and uncertainty it revealed. The voice is, of course, a generated one, as I am nowhere near ready for what it would take to do it myself (I know my penchant for run-on sentences, tangents, and such, so feel actual pity for the AI that has to do it). I spent a lot of time listening to the options for voices. To be fair, the ones I liked most were Victoria (a “British female voice with a direct, clear tone”) and Casey (a “younger voice with a bright clear tone”). But both of those felt like me reaching into the realm of “appropriation”, so I picked Oliver (a “male voice with a direct, neutral tone”). So, many thanks to Oliver.

• · Because my last posting got so many more reads than usual (hundreds more than usual), and because I had urged readers to “DO one thing”, From time to time I will try to add a sentence or two to the end some postings to describe what, if anything, I actually managed to DO. This time, for instance, I joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science, so I will describe that process and the freebies/benefits they give on joining.

• · There is possible good news on NASA’s budget. As things now stand, Congress looks likely to restore most of the spending cuts proposed in the Presidential Budget Request. This would happen as part of a “mini-bus” bill so would be unlikely to be vetoed since it would be needed to prevent another shutdown and would be mixed in with other things that people in power actually care about. That would be a positive thing, particularly for Science, but I will offer that, even if it ends up holding, it would be smart to think of it as a respite rather than a ‘victory’. I think it would be smart for the entirety of the science research community to develop better muscles related to defending itself. Here’s a recent news article about the budget progress.

Fly Me Through The Universe

I can think of no better place to start a new year than by flying through the Universe courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope. Launched on Christmas Day, 2021 with the outrageous tweet “Merry Christmas! We got you a new telescope”, JWST has been “insanely great” (ref: Steve Jobs).

NASA’s partners at the European Space Agency put together this amazing video. It is a “fly – through” of some of JWST’s most iconic images so far. Set up like a series of jaw dropping zooms (don’t you wish your Iphone could do that?!?) it is a blissful 45 minutes of stunning nebulae, shocking galactic zooms, and unbelievable star fields. Honestly, some of them seem to start with a blank sky but by the end you are staring into the most detailed images of stars, dust clouds, galaxies, and heavens-only-knows-what-else.

Here is the link. As a suggestion, show this to a child, a teacher, a parent, or a friend, and when you do, just let them know that it was science that got them this. Remind them that the feeling of wonder they have when they see it is just a tiny part of the greatness that science gives us all. Bonus points for sending it to your Congressional Representative and saying “more of this, please”.

Getting to the High Key Position from a High Altitude

Geez, there is a lot going on in this one, so maybe brace up. Suppose you were for some reason at a ‘high altitude’. Imagine that for a moment and then imagine being higher still. You are really up there. Oh yeah, imagine you have no propulsion in whatever it is you are ‘flying’ in. You are gliding.

But now, for whatever reason, you have some sort of emergency. Who knows what that could be (maybe it’s because you are gliding at high altitude!). Whatever your reason, you might want to get into a ‘high key position’ to, you know, ensure your best chance at landing.

What is a ‘high key position’? It is a point in space, but it is a special one. It is a point above, but a little bit offset from, the place (like an airport, hopefully) where you might be able to land. The magic about a high key position is that such a point would allow a pilot to make large 360 degree turns, sort of like spiraling down, in such a way that she could always keep the landing site in view while slowing down during those turns. That is an important thing if you are in the aforementioned ‘propulsion-less’ state, because, at some point, you will have to stop spiraling down and start lining up on that landing site. Seeing it the whole time will help a lot with that.

OK. You are doing great. I promise. But now suppose, you, up there above the clouds, don’t know how to get from your ‘high altitude’ to the ‘high key position’. That could be a problem.

Fortunately, Ebay has got you covered. Yeah. Ebay. Imagine my shock (and your relief) when I found a link to an Ebay page (only 80 dollars, mind you) that offers for sale old NASA technical documents, including one titled “Problems involved in an Emergency Method of Guiding a Gliding Vehicle from High Altitude to a High Key Position”.

I have so many questions. The first one is “Really?”. But after that, they get better.

Can you do that, just sell old NASA technical documents? It seems you can, so if you happen to know of any old libraries being cleaned out, maybe there is some money in it for you.

Do the coffee stains on the cover reduce the asking price or do they somehow increase it? My guess is that the buyer can dream about the chaos that must have reigned in some office on some government issue desk where this document surely sat for ages. So, maybe this is a selling point.

Most importantly, for you as you are trying to glide down from ‘really high’: Does this just describe the “problems” or does it describe the solution? I mean, there you are desperately trying to download this thing so you can land your whatever-it-is. It seems the least you could get is the actual answer on how to get to the high key point. There are also a couple of bonus gifts for acting now, as you can plainly see by clicking on the link. You get a copy of another exciting report, “Modulated Entry” which, sadly, includes no coffee stains, AND you also get a real barnburner of a find: “Experimental Smoke and Electromagnetic Analog Study of Induced Flow Field About a Model Rotor in Steady Flight Within Ground Effect”.

Honestly, it was the mention of ‘smoke’ that really got me going excited about that document. It actually has coffee stains, too – a real plus. Don’t miss your chance.

New Life Forms Discovered (in the wrong place)

We’ve known for a long time that if you try to spray insecticide on bugs, any that survive MAY evolve (or “adapt” if “evolve” is scary for you) immunity to the bug spray. Well, it turns out that the same thing can happen with microscopic life forms of all sorts.

But where would we humans be trying REALLY super hard to kill bacteria? Well, hospitals, of course, but also in NASA’s clean rooms. This is particularly true if we are using those clean rooms to go to other planets. That is because not only does dirt and dust have the potential to muck up the satellites and rovers. Any extra bacteria that come along could be really confusing when we start looking for life on Mars (find “Life on Mars” here, by the way, courtesy of David Bowie). That’s because we might end up confused … did the “new” life we discover come there as a hitchhiker on the planetary lander, or is it a native to the planet? Inquiring minds want to know these things.

So, now you can guess the problem. NASA recently discovered that “despite constant scrubbing, harsh chemicals, and ‘nutrient scarcity’”, microbial life has managed to survive inside some of its clean rooms that were used for past Mars lander systems. Papers published in the journal “Microbiome” identified the organisms as surviving NASA’s “Planetary Protection Program” safeguards.

• · As a note, yes, this is confusing. When some of us think about “planetary protection” we are imagining that the big goal is protecting our planet from bad things like asteroid impacts. But the official NASA program doing that is called “Planetary Defense”. “Planetary protection” is when we protect other planets from the stuff we might bring there. But given all the “great” stuff we humans have done to our own planet, what is unclear to me at present is how humans will actually ever get approved to go to any other planet.

At this link, you can read about all of this, the discovery of the evolved bacteria, the resulting shutdown and re-re-re-cleaning of the clean rooms, the ongoing assessment of the bacteria, and whether or not they could actually survive a space trip to Mars (hint: probably). You can also read a little bit about a new test facility being built to study this problem at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia (which is a member of the Artemis Accords).

More Dust Problems … (this time, including lightning)

I ran across while looking into the previous thing.

Most NASA folks will tell you that one of the worst parts about landing on the moon is the dust. I have talked about it here before: it is tiny, razor sharp, and electrically charged (static-filled, so it sticks to virtually everything). It is a nightmare for people, suits, rovers, and electronics.

Well, guess what else has dust? Yeah. Mars.

Mars dust makes an interesting trade in characteristics. Because there IS a faint atmosphere, there is a bit of a breeze from to time, and while this whips up dust storms, it also causes the dust to be a little less sharp as a result of ‘weathering’. BUT, it turns out that what you gain by it not being sharp, you might lose because when the dust particles rub on each other in all those storms, it builds up even more static. So, the dust storms on Mars come with their very own lightning.

Here is that article. I am telling you, living on Mars sounds like more fun every single day. Maybe there is some hope in the idea that our own Planetary Protection Program would refuse to let humans go there and save Mars the trouble of having to recover from a human visit.

Leadership Corner

If you have survived into 2026, you have done something. It doesn’t matter how you did it. You did it, and that is a good thing.

Maybe you changed roles or even changed employers. Maybe you stuck it out. Maybe you retired, resigned, or retooled. It doesn’t matter. You are here now, wherever that is, and by virtue of that fact, you are in a new leadership role.

• · Let’s say that many of your former peers are gone, and you stayed. So, people are looking to you for guidance, technical expertise, or even “just” corporate memory.

• · Perhaps you left and now you are “the new guy”, arriving at some new gig after having spent years in some amazing role for some legendary employer. So, people might be looking for you to bring some of that ‘magic’ to the new organization.

• · Maybe you are taking a break from work, trying out that “life thing” you wanted to do, meeting new people, doing new things.

• · Maybe you are taking some training, learning some new stuff.

• · Maybe you think you are “done” (there is a test for this … take a deep breath. If that worked, you are not done. It doesn’t have to be ‘work’, but the good you can do in the world is not yet at an end if you manage to take that breath).

In each of these cases you will have at least one skill to figure out how to do. How to communicate what you learned from the last thing you were doing … how to give advice.

You don’t have to be in a role with the word “advisor” in the title to give advice to the people around you or the leaders above you. In fact, very few people have the title “advisor”. It is a tough role, by the way. Generally, you want to do it with a modicum of humility (no one likes to hear someone start every sentence with “Back in my day…” or “Back when I was working at the cool place…”). It is better to offer a gentler start like, “One of the things I have seen work is …”. Usually, I think, just remembering the word “humility” is a great start.

Advising a superior (a boss) is a particular challenge and after times of organizational upheaval, you may find yourself needing to do that even if you didn’t plan to or have an “advisory” title. Honestly it is fraught with all sorts of potential challenges. Here are few thoughts on how to advise the boss if that is what is required.

· Make yourself a student of the “ecosystem” the boss lives in. This means understanding the pressures (budget, requirements, time, politics, and others) and tensions that the boss has to deal with. Consider ALL of those things as you offer guidance. What may make total sense from purely budget perspective may be ludicrous once politics or time availability get thrown into the mix. So, see the world as your boss sees it to the best of your ability.

· Defer to the boss. Say this often. Say, “From where I sit, it looks like xxxxx would be best, but I defer to you and welcome any guidance or correction.” This sounds like sucking up, but it will serve you well. Your boss will tell you when to stop saying it and it will mean that they see you as credible enough to listen to in that area. But start with it.

· Do not … ever … presume, take, or claim credit if the boss follows your advice and it ends up working. If the boss wants you to have any of the credit, they will pass it along, but if you take it, you deprive the boss of part of the “currency” of his or her ecosystem. After all, it was the boss, not you, who actually decided what advice to follow.

· Always offer to take the blame if your boss takes your advice and it doesn’t work out. Same as before, if your boss doesn’t want you to take some of the blame for the problem, they will shield you from it, but never ever cast a bad light on the boss.

· Beyond that, it is what you would think. When advising the boss, say what you think should be done, why you think it, and briefly offer the options you considered as the one or two next best options and why they are inferior even if they might be possible.

Over in The Organizing Thought, I plan to write more on how to advise senior leaders. It is truly an art, and whether you have the role, are trying to “just offer thoughts when asked” or are “trying to manage up”, you must think of Advising as a skill all its own.

My ONE THING

As I mentioned at the top of this, my “one thing” this time (I guess in addition to this missive) is that I joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From all I can tell, AAAS is one of the largest, most active, and most effective organizations engaged in arguing for, lobbying for, and working for increased funding, recognition, and respect for science and engineering.

I joined for about 80 dollars, got access to the journal “Science”, instantly got notifications of petitions, events, classes, news, outreach, and lobbying activities that I could participate in at my choosing. I even got a T-shirt that i plan to give away at some point.

On the very day l joined I learned about an event at which my own Congressional Representative was having an open forum event, so I signed up for it and asked her to commit to energetic support in resisting cuts to science and research activities (she said she was a fan already and would do her best).

Am I advocating for others to join AAAS? Not really, just that you do one thing this year to support science and science related stuff. For me, it was nice to find a way to hook with an organization that would steer me in the right direction and already knew what it was doing and how I could help. For those interested in joining, though, here is the link to their home page.

That’s it for now. Please have an awesome weekend. Remember, you don’t have to do the whole year’s work all in a day or a week or a month. It will be there for you, so take your time and do great things in their own time.

Stay safe and sane, and try to find (and do) your ONE THING.

J

I’ve been reading over the holidays. It is my usual end of year thing where I try to finish the books I had listed for myself at the start of each year. Somehow, I have managed it, and as of December 30^th when I am writing this, I have only a few pages left in my final book, “Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy”. I try to have a nice mix of fiction and non-fiction but always try to finish the year with anthologies of various sorts.

The previous book I just finished was one I hadn’t had on my list. It fell into my lap from the list of books my book club will be reading next year, but it has blown me away. I don’t think the intent of this book was to be about the current challenges experienced by the US science establishment, but that is where my mind went, and I just haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. So, as a substack closeout for the year, I thought I would put a couple of thoughts out there that were inspired by specific quotes from the book.

To get all the details out of the way, the book is titled: “The Silence of the Choir”, authored by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and translated from the original French by Alison Andersen. For what it’s worth, I thought it was a powerful read, and in my head I have it as about a 4-ish out of 5-ish.

And while I know this is totally out of context of the novel (and thus doesn’t give away any plot), I will share four quotes that sent my head spinning. It is certainly fair to say that the quotes are in no conceivable way intended to address anything about science and the current war that is being waged on it. In some ways, this is as much an exploration of how lost my own mind can get when faced with a well-crafted sentence or two.

So, here are the quotes. I will relate them first, all credit to the author and translator, and then will share how my head raged after reading them. As my former coworkers well know, I read with pen in hand and am constantly interrupting myself by writing in the margins or on scraps of paper when I find something irresistible. These four were completely irresistible and interrupted my thinking for hours when I came across each of them. They are shown here in the order that they appear in the book.

• Quote 1: Page 159: “You can fool anyone except your enemy. Hatred strips a soul bare and reveals it.”

• Quote 2: Page 259: “For the human mind, rejecting others is the simplest thing there is. All it takes is turning off the mind. The opposite, trying to understand, always takes too much effort. In this sense, intellectual laziness is the mother of all deadly sins. The source of hatred is less in the heart than in the mind that abandons its sole reason for existing – thinking.”

• Quote 3: Page 297: “The irreproachable world is never blinder than when it becomes indignant. Its indignation functions as action. For that world, that’s enough. Those people don’t care much about acting if they’ve voiced their moral indignation. So let them condemn, and we will go on acting.”

• Quote 4: Page 301: “The community needed scapegoats to prevent the onset of complexity.”

How does this relate to science and the science community? Admittedly it is a twisty path. Why would anyone other than me care about the path? To be fair, I have no idea, but, like the rest of what is written on this substack, this is less about having some plan so much as it is about what comes out of my fingers whether I want it to or not.

So here we go.

First, some background, and note that, as usual, all of this is opinion.

The Threat TO Science

Without going on and on about it (because I think it would be very hard to argue against the assertion), there is a significant campaign against “science” in the United States. You might have a preferred term for the campaign; I have heard “war”, “backlash”, “offensive”, “argument”, “retrenchment”, and a whole host of others. In my mind, use whatever one you want because I think the term matters less than the effect.

Those effects are multiple. At one level, there is less funding for science. My own area of concern is around those things related to “space science” by which I mean science done from space or in order to learn about space. For me such science includes studies of the Earth as a planet, the solar system – its star (our Sun), planets, and other bodies in and passing through the solar neighborhood, and then all the rest of the Universe, its origins, all that it contains, and how all of that stuff works.

But that is just “space stuff”. The field of biology with its subareas of human health, virology, immunology, and others, could tell its own sad story of sudden, “inexplicable” attack and abandonment. But biology, like space, would have to take its place in a long line of offended parties alongside subjects like psychology, data science, economics, and many others. In fact, even if you go back to the classical categories of “Natural Sciences” (like physics), “Formal Sciences” (like mathematics), “Social Sciences” (like anthropology), and “Applied Sciences” (like engineering), you would find it easy to see that many of their sub-categories are experiencing outright assault.

Now, “assault” is a hard word to throw around, but I am doing it here. As I do it, I want to distinguish what is going on now with what I will call “budgetary conservatism”. Sometimes you don’t have the money to do what you’d like to do. That isn’t “an attack”. That is just “not being able to afford something”. What I am asserting here is that there is a difference between saying “we only had so many trillion dollars and we had to draw an difficult line given all the priorities” and saying “even if we had the money we are going to stop wasting our time on all this ‘searching for new knowledge’ nonsense”.

What we are seeing now is that second thing. That second thing is so unthinkable to some, that I am going to put a truly fine point on it, for there must be no means of hiding from what is, I think, simply true.

We are literally seeing the most technologically advanced, most scientifically capable civilization ever on the face of the planet look at its current capacity for fundamental scientific and technical achievement and say, “Yeah, we think we have too much of that knowledge and technology stuff … because we think that stuff is pretty bad. So, we are going to rethink how much of it we do in the future, AND we are going to maybe just roll back some of the stuff we learned, put it back into “Reality’s Box of Secrets”, and act like we don’t actually know it and be happy to benefit from it no longer.”

It might make you nuts to think that that is where we are right now, but that is literally where we are. I think hiding from that blunt statement of it is worse than actually confronting it. My assertion is that there isn’t actually much of an argument about this so much as it is simply and demonstrably true in a whole list of scientific and technological fields.

As a pragmatist, I find it important to try to see the reality of where I am rather than where I wish I was. So I am not planning to fume and fuss so much here as to attempt to describe what I am seeing and place it into some construct that I can halfway call ‘explainable’. I am the sort that needs a way to see this a thing that wasn’t just ‘random’, a thing that flowed from something that someone, somewhere, saw as sensible. That feat was beyond me until I read this book.

So now you know what was in my head as I read “The Silence of the Choir”, a book originally published in French in 2017 and which has absolutely nothing to do with space science.

The Quotes As Illuminations

So, let’s look at those quotes. I will take them in the order that I used in making my own version of sense of them rather than in the order they appeared the book.

Quote 4: The need to prevent the onset of complexity.

If I am truly honest, I hate complexity. Oh, how I wish things were simple. But as it is, I can scarcely get to the grocery store without some awful detail popping up that has to be dealt with. Maybe the car needs gas, or I need a raincoat, or I have to go downstairs to see whether or not we need more Diet Mountain Dew. It is, as Rosann Roseanna Danna used to say, “always something”.

But this extends beyond simple daily chores. Just like everyone else, I don’t want to see people starve or whales die or storms destroy people’s homes. I don’t want to see wars or sickness or pestilence or poverty, and I wish mightily that there was some button I could push to just make these things go away, some simple act that I could take that would just make it all stop for the world at large AND for me personally (note that “AND” as it will become very important in just a moment).

Well, guess what?!?! There is no answer, no magic pill or button. Why? Because things actually ARE complicated. Somehow or other, it turns out that if I have to think about the “whole world”, the whales and the storms and the poverty and the pestilence and the starving ARE all related. And, wouldn’t you know it, it doesn’t stop there. If you keep digging, the Sun is involved as are forests and phytoplankton and even how the planet got here in the first place. It is all a big, interrelated mess where all the buttons are linked together in a tangle of wires so complicated no one knows which one to push.

So, “the whole world” feels like a lost cause.

But what about “me personally” and the people right around me … my community?

If I am honest again, most of us aren’t experiencing any of this stuff. By simple random luck, I and most of my nation are spared the nearly all of the widespread awfulness listed above. I’ve never seen a whale die of anything at all. Sure, I have been “poor” but that is by my country’s standards and doesn’t hold a candle to true impoverishment on a global scale. I suspect that if a true pestilence or plague of insects reared its head in my country, DDT would be back on the menu for most crop dusters within hours. And as much as we might complain about disaster responses, even storms are met with volunteer and government relief efforts that, while they can’t heal everything, stabilize things pretty solidly and pretty quickly.

So, the “me, personally” doesn’t experience all of that complexity unless I go looking for it. And when it pops up because the roads I drive on might be more flooded than they used to be or someone catches measles or there’s a new kind of bug eating the flowers in my garden, I can treat those things as individual problems.

It turns out that the simple fact of my residing in a country that hasn’t had much in the way of existential threat in more than a century, a nation of comparatively unbelievable wealth and health, means that these things can probably be solved FOR ME, and that I and my immediate community can ignore the complexity.

This is awesome! The quote from the book reminds me of how much I, just like everyone else, would LOVE it if things weren’t complex. In fact, we humans will make a lot of effort, maybe even do things that are a little bit unsavory, if we could JUST HAVE A LITTLE BIT OF PEACE AND QUIET for once.

So, the first quote didn’t teach me that things aren’t (or even shouldn’t be) complex; it reminded me just how desperately people, normal people, wish things weren’t complex.

Quote 2: The ease of not thinking and how much it screws things up if someone else is.

As the full quote makes clear, your mind, the conscious part anyway, has one single function – to think. But, geez, that thinking stuff is miserable duty. As you can see above, as soon as you start doing that everything gets screwed up.

Worse yet, if you (or someone else) does enough of that, they will soon start doing more and more of it because things…reality…goes on and on. They will come up with a “system”, a way to “optimize” thinking. They will start classifying all that thinking, grouping the thoughts together into categories (called “sciences” maybe) and exploring every nit, every detail.

God Almighty! we will get no rest once these people get going.

Sure, there might be some occasional use for all this thinking, but you turn your back for a decade or two, and these clowns will start telling you that your back hurts because your knee is out of whack or that some rainstorm in the Amazon happened because you turned on your gas stove. They will go on and on about “dark matter” and at the same time they’re talking about it, they will tell you to your face they have no idea what it is. They will tell you about diseases that no one ever even heard of before and how now we all need to get shots for it. They will tell you that, thank goodness, they proved we don’t live in a computer simulation (WTF?). And when your heating bill goes through the roof, they will tell you it is too hot outside and getting hotter all the time.

And all of this is because of all the damned thinking they are doing!

So maybe you, a completely reasonable person, respond with something like this:

“Well, you know what, Mr and Mrs Science Person? I don’t want to hear about your thinking. Why don’t you just freaking stop thinking so much and start living a life like the rest of us. And furthermore, I don’t really want my money, my tax money, to help you do that thinking anymore since all it ever turns into is stuff neither one of us can do anything about anytime soon. So, you go study your frogs and your plankton and your sunspots and your DNA strands and your “habitable worlds” on your own time and your own dime while I go rotate my tires, help my kids with their homework, and crank up the A/C when August gets here.”

So the second quote reminds me that, given how much I hate complexity and how hard (and how expensive) it is to do all the thinking it takes to uncover all this complexity, it is a heck of a lot easier to NOT think such things at an individual level and maybe even at a community level. And, it isn’t just “easier”, it is downright easy – “simplistic” as the quote says. It is trivial to just let go of it unless something, someone in power, makes the effort to drag me back into supporting this nasty thing called “thinking”.

Quote 1: the people who hate something reveal themselves clearly in their hate of the thing they hate.

So, here is the real mystery. I can totally get why the seemingly infinite level of detail, the high costs, the unending interconnected complexity, and the way that every 9 out of 10 “scientific discoveries” feel like some new awful thing to have to deal with, would make me want to just “not do science”.

But, given that 1 out of every 10 discoveries turns into a treatment for some kind of cancer, the magic of GPS, the wonder of a working computer that fits in your pocket, fresh food all year around, or energy from the sun for free, how in the world would anyone in charge of a nation not want even more of that great stuff in the future?

Well, listen. They will tell you. They ARE telling you.

As simply as I can make it, the future is, literally, not the goal. It just isn’t. The goal is the past. And it is not even the past that really was, not the one that has been analyzed by all the “historians” (kind of like “scientists” really, those people, always telling us that stuff was “more complicated” that we remember). No, the past they want is the one where it wasn’t so freaking complicated, the one where everyone was “on the same side” (yes, I know, just listen) … the one where we all had some concept of what it meant to be “loyal” to an ideal or whoever was in charge.

Let me put this another way.

The problem we have right now is no different than the problem Galileo had. It was all happiness and joy when he came up with his telescope and could see what was going on across the valley where the enemy hung out. But once he could actually SHOW that the Earth wasn’t the center of things, his thinking began to contradict one of the underpinnings of the power center of the day. Copernicus and Kepler had the same problem. And the problem wasn’t that they “thought” the Earth revolved around the Sun. No, it was far worse than that; by their thinking, refined and formalized and systematized, and the data they collected, they PROVED it. And in proving it they disproved the then-current interpretation of a Bible verse, Joshua 10:13 (research that on your own).

Over and over again, this awful thing happens. But wait…WHAT awful thing?

This … science demonstrates that it simply has no loyalty at all to the powerful ruler, to the rich, to the military authority, to the economic fad of the day, to the holy desire, to intuition, or even to “basic common sense”. By insisting on the incessant pursuit of provable truth (note, not even “truth” but the “incessant pursuit” of it), science (rational, ordered thought about the way reality works) is literally at odds with anything whose very existence depends on “loyalty and belief” over “demonstrably predictive theory”.

In the world of power (go read your copy of Greene’s “48 Laws” if you have questions about this … Law #9 is the one you are looking for), it is NEVER proof that you need. What you need is the might of the moment -- the strength of the power base and the action that strength enables. Lord knows you don’t want their adherence to your message to be mixed up by data and theories and models, let alone “proof”.

That science–driven set of knowledge and the pursuit of even more of it is poison to anyone whose goal is turn back time or to wield unquestionable authority. Note here that it is only those who insist on blind loyalty to their authority who will see science as a mortal enemy. Others may find its discoveries uncomfortable in that it necessitates a revectoring, maybe even an about-face. But for those who insist, by fiat alone, on never having been wrong about anything ever, science is the kiss of death.

Science never apologizes, never stops doubting the status quo, never kneels, never kisses the ring, never blushes at dispensing with what came before, and certainly never owes homage or favor.

And here is where the quote reveals something: This very list of “nevers” and the fact that these “nevers” are so clearly hated reveals the nature of the current power center of the United States. For this power center (the term I am using for “the administration and its advisory elements”), science is a hateful beast that, just like a mirror, reveals “in negative” the fundamental desire and nature of those whose hands now rest on the reigns of power in this country.

That desire, simply stated, is for there to be no questions, no data, and no proof, of things because if those things are gone, the claims of the powerful can stand unquestioned — even if they change directions completely from one day to the next.

So, that, friends, is why there is conflict between the current president and science. It is because science won’t stop asking questions, exploring, collecting data, and reporting what it finds to be the next step toward the truth of how reality works. And in doing all that, science fails to be loyal to the most recent pronouncement, proclamation, or claim, that is believed to be useful in the retention of power and influence.

Quote 3: How exquisite and power expressions of outrage don’t mean anything when compared to action.

There is a magnificent joke about a professor who has a chalkboard filled with equations when a student asks, “How did you get from step 3 to step 4 in your proof?”. The professor responds by saying, “Oh, that is obvious,” but then trails off and begins to think silently while the class waits. Hours go by as he ponders the question, scribbling notes and referring to ancient tomes and textbooks. Finally, he looks up to the class and states, “I was right. It is obvious,” and dismisses the class while erasing the unmodified chalkboard.

For the professor, “it’s obvious” was a statement of exquisite truth far preferable to writing a few more steps on the chalkboard. But it changed nothing at all.

Quote 3 makes clear the ineffectiveness of this approach. One character, a fairly reprehensible man, responds to his friend’s comment. His friend has just told him that people are condemning him, saying all manner of things, exposing his weaknesses, his many flaws, and his errors. But the response to that, the quote, makes a precise point: for many people, the “perfect and perfectly correct” rebuttal is enough, and they stop there, proud of their formulation of the truth as they see it. But for this guy, the reprehensible guy, that crap doesn’t matter so long as those rebutters don’t actually do anything. Action is what he does – he acts. They talk very precisely. He acts.

Fast forward to a scene I recently saw in a video clip from the national capital of a major world power. During a meeting the president of that nation was meeting with the newly elected mayor of New York City. A reporter asked the mayor if he still thought the president was a “Nazi”. Before the mayor could answer, the president interrupted and told the mayor, “Just agree to it. It’s easier. It doesn’t matter.”

Wait. What?!?

What was said there is this: “It’s just words (even that one!). They won’t do anything. They think and they argue and they write their papers and use their big words. But they don’t do anything. We, me and my people, we are the ones who do things, and that is what matters, so let them talk.”

So, if you can literally encourage someone to label and think of you as a “Nazi” because “it’s just easier”, you are certainly not worried about nerd types coming around with charts, graphs, and formulas, that you and your friends don’t (and certainly don’t want) to understand. You can ignore them too because those people will just talk.

Do that ignoring thing for a very short while and you will become very good at it. Soon, demonstrably provable facts are utterly meaningless to you, theorems, measurements, and proofs no longer even concern you. At that point, you truly do not care at all about someone who comes armed with that stuff if they aren’t going to do anything about it. From where you sit, all “those people” ever plan to do is to state their refutation or derision elegantly and then turn around and walk away huffing with pride in the perfection and elegance of their formula. They won’t act. You will. So, screw them.

That is where science is right now. It talks. It doesn’t “do”. It doesn’t act. And in not acting, it sits watching, horrified and brilliantly articulating how it feels to have its oxygen cut off.

No “hockey stick temperature chart” is going to show someone the “error of their ways” on climate change. A race to the moon is far more interesting. After all, there is glory involved because someone gets to “win”.

No “deeper understanding of the Sun” matters at all so long as I have enough data centers and votes from the local board to build more.

Uranus is great, but only because it is a middle school joke because of its name. Mars? That would be cool if we can mine stuff to make ourselves rich.

Habitable worlds? Well, whatever you built to detect it will probably be really useful for spying, but, for goodness sake, don’t come telling me you’ve found another civilization or we will have to start planning the invasion and how we will convert them to our religion so long as they look enough like us to be considered ‘human’.

In other words, “think your thoughts, but we know you won’t act; you will just preach about it, so get in your little corner and stay there and be happy we didn’t take all the money”.

Acting … the only way to do something

I am going to wimp out right here, and, rather than make up a bunch of stuff and pretend it isn’t just a rewording of something, I am going to show you the result (shown below) that my AI of choice says when I ask it: “what are effective ways to act as an advocate for science research”. Honestly, I could not do better than this other than the addition of the final item under “Individual Action” which is shown in italics.

Here is the response I got (the bolding is from the AI as is the regular font, but the italics are my comments/additions):

Effective ways to advocate for science research involve communicating the value of science in relatable, personal terms to the public and policymakers, building relationships with elected officials, and working through established advocacy organizations. The key is clear messaging and consistent engagement.

Individual Actions

• Communicate your passion and the “so what”: Explain your research in plain, non-technical language and focus on how it benefits society (e.g., health advancements, economic growth, environmental stewardship). Use personal stories and analogies to make the information memorable and emotionally resonant.

• Contact your representatives: Regularly call or email your federal, state, and local elected officials and their staff. Clearly state your “ask” (e.g., support for a specific bill or funding program) and explain why it matters to their constituents (you and your community).

• Meet with policymakers: Schedule brief meetings with representatives or their local district staff, either in-district or in Washington D.C.. Many scientific societies organize “Hill Days” to facilitate this.

• Write for the public: Publish op-eds or letters to the editor in local newspapers to reach a broader audience.

• Engage on social media: Use platforms like X (formerly Twitter) or Facebook to share factual content, follow and tag policymakers, and correct misinformation in real-time.

• Participate in local events: Attend town halls or other community gatherings to ask questions and share your perspective.

• Speak at schools as much as you can. If you have to prioritize, choose high schools where you can talk to people who will soon be voters but who may also soon completely forget the wonder that science brings to life. But don’t forget late middle school where you will truly have to work to get them to care in the slightest because to do so would not be cool. That is great practice for politicians, but the middle schoolers are capable of better questions. Lastly, remember that if you can’t explain your science topic to BOTH of these groups in ways they understand, then you are not doing it right (or maybe don’t yet understand it yourself).

Collaborative Efforts

• Join a professional society or advocacy group: Organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Union of Concerned Scientists, or the Science Coalition.

• Collaborate with your institution: Work with your institution’s government affairs or media relations office, which can help coordinate meetings and craft effective messaging.

• Host a lab tour or event: Invite elected officials and their staff to your lab or institution to see firsthand how research funds are used and the jobs they support.

• Build coalitions: Partner with other scientists, community organizations, and industry leaders to create a stronger, unified voice for science.

Core Principles for Success

• Be a trusted resource: Aim to be a reliable, nonpartisan source of evidence-based information for policymakers and the public.

• Be persistent and patient: Advocacy is a long-term commitment and building relationships takes time.

• Acknowledge uncertainty: Be honest about the limits of current knowledge to maintain credibility and trust.

• Know your audience: Tailor your message to the audience’s background and interests, focusing on shared values rather than jargon to ensure clear messaging and consistent engagement.

It is really unlikely that, as a reader of this substack, you are someone who doesn’t care about space or science or research. But if you aren’t doing any of the items listed above, then you are falling into the trap identified by Quote 3, way up at the top of this post.

Simply put, you have to find a way.

Pontificating is not enough. Proving things is not enough. Discovering new knowledge is not enough. Great charts, elegant formulas, and precise graphs are not enough.

Nothing but action is enough.

I get it. I truly do. You are busy. You have a life. You might even be a government employee and be worried about how to engage in some of this stuff. The answer to that last one is “You are a citizen, so act like one. Be yourself, not your job. Take your badge off and go do something from the list while speaking for yourself and not even naming the organization you work for. And tell your friends and family, regardless of who they work for, to do the same thing.”

Do something. This year … in 2026. Do one thing. One.

Prove the reprehensible guy wrong.

That’s it.

Stay sane. Have an awesome, AWESOME, new year. I wish you every good and great thing.

Every single one of you, every reader, is a thrill and blessing to me, so thank you for the amazing gift of your time and attention.

All the best.

J

This is a very different kind of post and, if I am honest, may only be of interest to those with very tight ties to NASA. No cool space stuff but instead just my own analysis of a speech which is available to watch here

It is the sort of thing that I would have provided (and often did provide) to my own people during a time of change. I watched the HQ introductory speech by new Administrator, Jared Isaacman. While I watched, I typed the phrases he used (shown below in bold text) that I found significant. When I was done, I went back and, shown here in italics, inserted my own comments about what was going through my head when I heard the phrases and why I thought what was said was meaningful and why.

As always, such things as this are fraught with the chance for error. Any error of actual transcription AND interpretation are mine. In all cases I defer to the words and even the intent of the speaker. That said, this is what I thought it meant … what was said and what was unsaid.

When you do these sorts of things, you listen and watch, and you remember that the first parts, the prepared comments, reflect just that … prepared comments, while the Q&A response are more free form. Both parts tell you different stuff and both are useful for insight into the new leader.

—-Begin——

Leads with ‘honor to work here’ and tip of hat to the president who nominated him.

The “honor part” was honest and heartfelt. The smile on his face, the eye to eye engagement with the gathered crowd, and the free and easy body language communicated at least as much as the words. The “tip of the hat part” is a recently learned skill, and that showed as well where the cadence and kinesthetics changed. There was a later slip (referring to the National Space Strategy as “our” before quickly correcting it to “The President’s”) that was of the same vein ... a very minor but quick verbal correction for which body language overcorrected. The administration will tolerate a few such slips…a few. But the newness of having to perform such dances shows easily on someone who has lived life as the “billionaire CEO in charge”, so it is not surprising to see a few slips. Assuming Artemis II goes well, you will want observe how well, easily, and often, he is able to reflect all glory to the President. I say this not in criticism since that is the right thing. Law 1 of the 48 Laws of Power (Greene), after all, is “Never Outshine The Master”..

We should do what no other org or nation could do.

This phrase is repeated, in this form and in a few others, over and over and over. He really thinks it, really believes it. It may be as fundamental to his view of what the agency is as anything else he said. That is the role of NASA, in his view … to do those things no one else CAN. A later comment makes it clear that if others CAN with NASA help then it is NASA’s job to give them the help.

Nice images of people welcoming him.

Nice touch. Most administrators do something like this, but think about the style of this one and what it says. When Nelson (and others) did it, it was him on a stage … set apart, even elevated by the podium. Here he is walking in the front door – more of an equal thing (and not doing that stupid crap Elon Musk did where he walks in with props and a stupid smile). My sense is that this is as much a “wanting a flatter, more accessible administrator-ship and wanting to belong, to be accepted as part of the “smartest agency club” crowd as anything else. The other goal, of course, is to show the leaders (those at HQ) accepting him. Everyone can’t be there, so this is just the way you do it. It is almost prehistoric but that is what we humans do … the leaders welcome the incoming ‘big boss’ and that helps convince the soldiers that the new regime has begin and it is time to line up.

Love the background image of aligned nasa, moon, mars.

Just sayin’…. I think that is a great image. Nice conceptual design … speaks volumes. Starts with Earth and then NASA provides the “alignment” on which Moon, Mars, and (background) universe become accessible and known.

Honored…greatest scientific and engineering minds in the world.

Again… “honored”. Pretty sure this is real. But note the early nod to science and those who do it. The order MAY have been premeditated. Hard to tell, but the two together acknowledges his view of the agency and makes it clear he sees it as principally a “doing” organization rather than an “administering” organization. This will show up over and over.

I grew up thinking / dreaming about this.

You don’t lie about stuff like this. This is real and it will carry him a decent distance because it is real. He will “get a pass” for some errors because of this as does everyone else in the agency who lets this show in the way they do their job. He probably doesn’t realize yet what an asset this is and it speaks to a humility you wouldn’t find on day one of some administrators. Not calling out names here but you can probably imagine examples both ways. Some came in without that humility but acquired it. Some came without it and left without it and were largely forgettable.

NASA Inspired the world with images from telescopes , probes and astronauts.

There, “inspired”. I doubt anyone told him to use that word. Anyone outside the agency would read right over it, but anyone inside the agency would linger on it and be thankful it was there. And when he follows it with “images from telescopes and probes” … that is a detail that reveals the truth of the “inspired” comment. I just don’t think he is being anything but straight up right here, and it will serve him well. Those inside the agencies see their own inspirational telescope images in their mind’s eye. And, of course, he is inspired by the NASA astronauts – so much so he followed them first into space, and then to his new office. The order things are mentioned in is interesting. I doubt it is really just ‘trying to make friends with the scientists so much as just being real. Time will tell if that is true, I guess, but if it is true it may mean that he really does have a soft spot for science in spite of the current administration’s apparent devaluation of it

References to national space policy/strategy and that is our marching orders.

This was his first slipup right here (if I am remembering right, it was here, but this was the topic) and it was in referring to “our” instead of “The President’s” National Space Policy. Seems tiny, but there are protocol people in the White House who watch this stuff like hawks, and this president will act quickly if he feels slighted. So the quick pivot to the notion of marching orders was vital. This agency’s JOB is to implement that strategy/policy. Period. I don’t believe that there is a real tension inside of this man over this, but I think the “honored” stuff, the fascination with “almost impossible engineering”, “inspirational science”, and the entrepreneur’s drive to optimize processes, is more powerful for him than having to dance the right dance steps on the head of a political pin. This will be a thing to watch for a number of reasons. I think it is his clear desire to engage his workforce candidly, and not just the leaders. But he will have to watch this. He cannot have errors like this when he is on a national stage. He leads on behalf of and serves at the pleasure of the President. In spite of any other desire, that creates a distance between him and everyone else.

Agency Direction

Everything before this was context and personal statements. Here is the transition to ‘what are we going to do’.

We will lead in peaceful exploration and focus on objectives given in the National Space Policy….

Really vital…a reaffirmation of NASA as a purely civilian agency only engaged in peaceful activity. Note that there was argument about this – about how closely aligned civilian and military/intelligence space activities should be in this country. My understanding from a number of people was that this was something Jared was a part of and that the whole “peaceful” was important to him (he was not the only one) but it seem important that that is what he wanted to lead versus other models. The word “lead” sets up the competition with China later but not ‘just’ China. You can lead by being first but you can also lead by leading others who are first with you. When it comes to China, ‘being first’ matters. But the other way, catalyzing and enabling our close allies to explore things with us (even for us), is fine.
That second phrase “focus on the objectives in the NSP”, there is no fuzz on that. We are going to pursue those objectives, those goals. If you can’t relate it to those things, then there are very hard questions about why we are doing it. Honestly, an outsider like Jared should have an easier time aligning to that since he should have fewer ‘sacred objects’ … to protect. This will be an interesting thing. My guess is that BOTH as a successful entrepreneur AND as a member of a very demanding administration, he will not deviate much from stated objectives in order to support the agency’s “long time pet projects” or “honored history”. I think he will honor such things, but will not continue them.

Economic and national security goals.

Even the order here is important. Read it like this (in light of the last comment about peaceful exploration): Yes, we will of course share everything we know with our sister agencies and departments, but (as you can plainly read in both NASA’s founding language and in its annual appropriations, the point of the agency leans heavily on economic justifications. He comes back to this later … “create a space economy”…innovation and progress there is a feather he can hand to the administration to decorate the nation’s (and the president’s) hat. It is a powerful goal and is probably more significant, in the long term, than who puts that first boot on the moon. Jared knows that.

Pull forward Artemis goals.

Don’t just ‘do Artemis’...pull it forward. That is an engineering task, a risk assessment task, but also an administrative/management task. He will need help from within the agency on that last part since doing so will involve skillful manipulation of the agency bureaucracy and processes that he does not yet know. Look for someone, a powerful insider, to be tagged with that job pretty soon.

Work with partners to ensure they are aligned with our objectives and deliver the stuff we need.

This sounds like an “apple pie” sort of statement, a thing you just say because it is expected, but there is real complexity here. “Partners” here is an important word and is multi-faceted with both meaning and problem areas. It clearly refers to a pretty broad swath of entities. First and foremost, and because of the “delivery of stuff we need” part, it refers to “large prime contractors”. This is a thing NASA always does – refer to its large prime contractors as partners in an attempt to communicate the “we are all on one team” concept. This is needed, honestly, since (and this comes up indirectly during question time later) NASA is not large enough to compel its large primes to view it as a priority in comparison to other agencies and programs they support. But the term “partners” also applies to other things. It means “international partners” and these are more truly “partners” in the sense that the partnership is between more autonomous agents that could choose, even after agreeing to partner, to do other things. Finding and keeping alignment with them is more than just dragging out a contract document and swinging it around. Academic partners are also clearly intended here and these are more like the international partners in some ways in that they have a high level of freedom to want to do things that are outside of NASA’s top priorities (science-y things spring to mind here as more interesting for academic institutions than exploration might be). NASA is in a position of influential (rather than authoritative) power on this. And even that is offset a bit by the academic institutions being very able and very willing to go directly to their congressional representatives to advocate for pressure on NASA to do something that might be appealing even though it could be outside of the tight goals of the administration. So, Jared is very right in assuming that this “alignment of partners” is a key part of his job, but he may not be quite assessing just how challenging it can be.

Accelerate investment in next generation technology especially nuclear surface power and propulsion.

This (nuclear power and propulsion) has been a drumbeat for not only Isaacman but also for the administration and OSTP and everyone else. There are a lot of reasons for it. From a purely NASA perspective, power is fundamental to creating a “next level” of exploration. As early as the 1960s there were serious efforts, but they have always been ended early. NASA’s first strategic plan even included references to it but it has never been achieved operationally. The effort requires more than NASA, however, and dividing that problem up is vital. NASA can do the space application part – packaging a small nuclear power system into a launchable, landable, operational surface power unit that can survive in space/lunar environments, and using the power generated to create thrust. But the creation of the actual module would take many times the meager budget likely to be appropriated for the entirety of STMD. Other partners are obviously Dept of Energy but you could also imagine DoD and a few others. Jared knows this (because he has been briefed on it multiple times in addition to whatever else he may have just known as a space enthusiast) but actually focusing on these as true priorities means eliminating many other technology activities. The problem of course is that those other things (human health, planetary atmosphere entry / re-entry, just to name a couple that are really NASA-specific) are also needed. The game will be to leverage emergent industry interest in some of those things (ISRU would be an example) in a way that allows NASA to focus on its self-identified priorities.

A bigger question that he doesn’t go into is “why is this a NATIONAL priority?” Yes it enables far more credible lunar and Martian exploration goals as well as outer planet science, but those, I would argue, are NASA goals rather than “National Priorities”. One answer is because once you put a nuclear power system on the moon, you can legitimately tell other nations to stay away from it. Putting such a system on the south pole of the moon is nearly equivalent to creating a keep out zone there that would probably have to be honored geopolitically and would thereby ‘secure the high ground’ in a way that would not be out of the letter of the Outer Space Treaty.

Launch the space economy … we cannot keep depend on government funding for space infrastructure.

This, honestly, is about ISS. The “space economy” is already huge. Considering satellites, launch, data services, and all the rest, it is more than 600 BILLION dollars. Even in the US, the majority of the money spent on “space” comes from sources other than the government. The problem, from a NASA perspective, is that ISS costs between 1/5^th to 1/4^th of its budget every year. The goal is to do what was done with the retirement of the space shuttle (which was costing on a similar scale) – convince / create / catalyze enough interest in space station – enabled research that NASA becomes a relatively minor source of ongoing support (as has happened with SpaceX and others when it comes to launching stuff).

New and better space stations can help unleash pharma, industry and academia….and others. NASA must be a force multiplier.

This continues the previous comment and is the mantra NASA has used for years. But it feels more like a mantra, a wish list, a “throw some stuff on the wall to see what sticks” to me at this point. I just don’t know if it is really true that the pharmaceutical industry is pining away for an ongoing in-space lab. I know there have been studies, “what if” sorts of things, but the few I have read never close the business case without someone else footing the bill for ongoing operations.

When it comes to Science, we are hungry for science data…reduce time to science and maximize dollars for science. In science there is not a “one size fits all”….. We will have bespoke things, small things and things in between. We have to accept risk appropriately and we have to, especially in areas related to Earth Observations, leverage powerful industry capability without sacrificing data continuity.

This shifted from exploration to science and the focus right off the bat on the idea of “we want the data” was significant. The other way to say that same thing is, “if we could have the data without having to do the mission, we would take that deal because our job in science is the learning of new knowledge not the creation of the thing that takes the measurements that lead to the knowledge.” This cannot be a surprise to anyone even if they don’t like it (much of the science population will not, I expect). But given the next sentence out of his mouth (the part about it not being ‘one size fits all’ and ‘some things will still be bespoke’), I think what this means is that this administrator will press hard that, in Science, the FIRST question, the first hurdle, will be “what would it take for someone other than us to build this mission/instrument?”.

Leading with that question is different than first asking “why can’t someone else do it and sell us the data?” which sort of presumes an answer. His comments reflect the total expectation that some things (the ‘bespoke’ ones) will be so special, so niche, so unprofitable to anything but pure knowledge acquisition, that only the NASA ecosystem would ever have an interest. I truly think that this administrator, more than any in decades, represents someone who holds, as a starting position, “If you try hard enough, you could figure out a way to get some commercial entity to do this so we won’t have to.” This is going to be especially true in anything related to Earth Observation where his default when it comes to science measurements will be “industry could and should do that, so what will it take for them to do it just as good as we could and then give us the data?”

We will lend our expertise to enable industry to take what we have done and operationalize or expand it.

And this is probably how he hopes to uniquely contribute something new to make this happen. If NASA’s response to that initial question is “Industry can’t do XX because only we know how to build that instrument or ensure continuity with prior measurements.”, the response will likely be, “Can we teach them to do those things?” or “Can we build a prototype and give it to them?” or some such derivative. I honestly think that he believes that if he can instill this kind of thinking into the agency’s science corps, he will see himself as having done the agency a great service. He may not be wrong in that.

Successful proposals for in-house work in science will, in my view, lead with the guidance that is implied in his statements here. They will begin with a statement of need (as always has been the case) but will jump immediately to “here is what it would take for NASA to enable industry to provide this in the form of “science data as a service”. Then the proposer would describe the likely non-NASA market for such data would be that might lead to commercial use.

As he describes later during the Q&A, he sees that there is a continuum of likelihood for this process leading to increased reliance on industry for such things At one end, he believes that (in decreasing order of likelihood) Earth Science, Heliophysics, Planetary Science, Biological and Physical Science, and Astrophysics, will be benefited by this approach.

I will note here that this tiny bit of his talk is worth a lot more focus than I can give here. If I were a part of this community, I would spend a lot of time working through this very thoughtfully.

Some will be ‘same old way’ some will be new but the key for us will be “if we don’t do it no one else will…..”

This is an acknowledgement that he will listen, that he will not prejudge. With a statement like “some of this will be the same as the past” he is deliberately avoiding the statements of some leaders who came in with the message “you are broken and I am here to fix you”. Instead the message is very much, “I am here to help you focus on priorities and help you be more creative in adhering to them.”

Our adversary is impressive.

I will just say here that it has been a long time … literally 50 years or more … since NASA has been directed to think about any nation in terms of it being an “adversary”. No administrator since Thomas O. Paine (served as administrator from 1968 – 1970) would have even had cause to refer an “adversary”). But there it is. That is the nature of things now. Just as in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo eras, there is now a grittier, harder edge to the agency’s goals. There has been, for many years, for decades, the luxury of feeling that the not-quite-exclusive-but-certainly-primary purpose of NASA was the expansion of the knowledge and reach of humankind on behalf of “all humanity”. But, as in the past, there are now two teams, and NASA is playing for our side, not the other. This part of the message could, honestly, have been the dominant one. I, for one, don’t think the agency could have ingested that message well. It just isn’t in its DNA to see the world that way. But it is a drumbeat that will continue and will strengthen over time.

Budget is a challenge. We can’t spend our way out of everything. I will always advocate for the agency.

This is simply a statement of the form “I don’t control the budget and I know that whatever we get is less than you would like and we are just going to have to work with that even while we work to make our value to the nation clear.

I don’t know everything. But I know we can’t do everything the old way. We have to minimize bureaucratic drag and the things that slow us down. We have to flatten our organizational structure, and accelerate decision velocity, and push decisions down to lower levels. As we do this we have to recognize and reward the people who are doing the work of the agency successfully.

If you want to know what the new administrator’s plans for the agency’s organization is, look right here. The “old way” here is not so much about engineering or science so much as it is about management. Here he is telling you, in very plain language, that he will look to reduce some of the middle layers of management, the offices that support “the agency” versus those who support “the programs and projects”. If he hasn’t figured it out yet, it means that he will be changing NPR 7120 which is the document that describes how various roles, responsibilities, and authorities, are allocated and exercised. This isn’t a new idea, but it will be truly interesting to see how someone with a completely “government outsider” perspective approaches it. It is easy to imagine two approaches, one of which is to carefully dissect the current process and attempt an optimization. The other is to eliminate whole levels (and organizational structures) of management, oversight, and support function, realigning the people into direct program-specific roles and leaving the documentation for later. I truly have no idea which will be taken but will offer that the first way has seldom yielded transformational results.

NASA has to be one of the hardest places to work but that is because we will be doing only the hardest things.

I’m not quite sure what to think about this. It may be that it is a bit of a warning that the hiring practices (more focus on Silicon Valley style technical interviews) or even the informal work expectations (hours per week) will change. I personally think that is not the case and that this is really a very gentle way of saying “change is hard and I plan to tax your tolerance of it, so buckle up”.

Will walk around and talk and learn from everyone….want to hear what is broken but I also what to hear what works.

Many, many leaders say this. I think this one means it. If nothing else, it shows you his intended style, though I think that is completely obvious from just watching him.

You see NASA logos everywhere – all over the world…..Nasa has the enthusiastic interest of the public, our partners, and has bipartisan support. We have the space policy. We can bring billions with us. The Apollo era is past…it’s people are gone. So it is up to you.

Personally I loved this wrap up. Loved the soft power reference of worldwide NASA logos. Especially now this seems an incredible accomplishment given all the chaos that is going on. It is a great way of reminding the workforce that they are not “alone” because they have fans and supporters and that they operate on the biggest of world stages. But at the same time, it points out the obvious truth … the Apollo era is gone and so are the people who did it. We can’t rely on past glory for our glory now, and we can’t call the old giants and ask for their advice anymore because they are mostly gone and, besides, the world is different now. The goal is still world-changing, but the world has changed, so let’s go do amazing things.

Like I said, I liked it the “Apollo era is gone”. There is something powerful about pointing out that you just stormed a beach and the boat that brought you here is gone. It’s you now.

We will return to the moon to stay.

He closed with this statement, simply and clearly. This is a man with marching orders. I don’t think he is a table pounding kind of guy, but I think he is clear on what is required of him.

Questions;

First 60 days?

Learn a lot. Lots to read. But it is the space policy…return to moon, artemis II success, that guides us and is right on us.

Insight into current hiring freeze will be lifted?

No insight yet, but recognize we may need to hire after we figure out how things map to priorities.

How do you see us using AI?

We have to figure out how to work it into what we do … at least could work with our rules.

I agree with that. My first exercise with AI was to feed it all the existing publicly available NASA Directives and ask “where do these rules contradict or conflict with each other?” The resulting list was enormous.

In terms of new technology will it be hands-on in-house or out house?

Both. And that has always been the case…our job is to do the ‘near impossible’ then hand off to others.

When you say we are to be a force multiplier for science, are we still going to do all science or is it just just moon to mars? Will we still be doing broader science that isn’t intended to be “applied” such as astrophysics?

Of course we will do that…Our charter still stands. We are here to answer the fundamental questions of human existence, and we will always be working on the mysteries of existence and the universe.

This was a beautiful answer because not only was it correct (my view) it was from his heart AND referenced the statutory origins of the agency itself.

something about chicken and air fryers (have to admit I didn’t follow this question)?

we have to lean forward

What about infrastructure…administrative and process infrastructure? Do you see those as reasonable investment areas as we try to improve things. I am talking here about the systems we use to run the agency itself, not to do the missioins.

Yes…we have to use our minds to fix those as well….all should try to do their jobs better on both the administrative side as well as the technical side. Surely nasa can do this.

Can you tell us about any planned reorganizations that will come from “Project Athena”. Do you plan to implement something specific from that plan and can you tell us what it is?

Those were my thoughts as I went through the process. But now I am here, and while I think those were the right principles, it is always better to do one data-informed reorg than to drag everyone through a one-at-a-time affair. The best use of whatever you have read about Athena is to know that I think flat orgs are better. I like fast decision velocity. I like to push responsibility down. This isn’t really ‘reorg’ so much as rethinking how the organization works.

What do you prioritize in the next 18 months.

A lot of decisions are already fixed in time we will have to do .

I want to have as many options as possible that will help our timeframe. We should be feeling the pressure to deliver. Our partners should also feel that.

Any thoughts on the 10 centers and getting to one nasa.

Yes..i have thoughts but I need to see how things actually work….want to be well informed. Want all contributors across the agency to ‘buckle up’ cleanly to the mission objectives and requirements. My first job is to learn.

Loss of telework has hurt things…any thoughts on addressing?

I get that. My experience is that when you are trying to do big things is easier ‘in the room’

Would you go on a space mission?

Not crossed my mind...that would be a distraction.

Many projects are delayed for poor contractor performance…what to do?

We should have the tools to hold accountable. They work for us, not the other way. We matter and have a voice that can influence behavior. We will use all tools and will apply pressure when needed.

What about Aeronautics? It is often forgotten. Does that remain a priority?

My background makes me passionate there…I won’t let it get lost. It is a tool for inspiration. We will take advantage of any opportunity to make people look up and be inspired. More xplanes would be great and we should make clear the linage between our work to airframes and propulsion

Infrastructure …. Will we be shrinking/ retiring buildings?

Eager to get more info on this….worst outcome is investing in stuff we don’t need leaving the rest impoverished or not built. Will truly have to look into this….we HAVE to get out of what we don’t need. Need holistic view…so we can concentrate our firepower on what we need.

How do you get faster / cheaper without adding safety risk?

This is a lot of work…not easy. Human spaceflight is special….will never take a risk we don’t need to. The flagship missions in science are an example of where we can take a little more risk and maybe that allows us to do more missions overall. That is what I want … I want more of them, more missions, and to do that we maybe can take risk. CLPS is like this…we can be eyes wide open on risk. Not one size fits all.

How does jpl fit into nasas plans?

JPL is a great science center and has unique planetary lander capability…we need to increase the science dollar value. What knobs can we turn to get more? JPL should help us with that.

Just a quick (hopefully not too controversial) note here. JPL is actually different from the other nine centers in that if it were to successfully offer concrete thoughts on how it could reduce its own costs, that would have a different / more direct impact on its own livelihood than it would for a “civil servant center”. Some, in fact, have argued that JPL has made something of a strategic practice of underselling the cost of some of its missions and then revealing higher costs as time wears on (and getting fees on the overruns). The other side of that is that JPL’s “Dare Mighty Things” makes it clear that they are doing things that have never been done before so no small amount of guesswork is involved in estimating the costs so end up needing to hurl money at the problems in order to invent their way out of unexpected challenges. While I don’t take a side on this particular aspect of things, cost saving strategies probably have to be incentivized at all centers, but I suspect successful incentives may vary.

How can we provide suggestions to you to get things going forward?

There should be some sort of Inbox for suggestions. I want to have those inputs. I plan to get out and talk. When I come to visit, please, no red carpet…no ‘show’… I just want to see what works/what doesn’t. I don’t want to visit and just see the “leadership level”. I want to meet the people who do the work.

What about the loss of personnel thru DRP, so do you see us hiring new people?

We are going to have to have best and brightest so we will have to adjust where we need to. Can see a world where we need to hire in key areas.

Do you see a use for blockchain technology at NASA?.

There “can be utility” but no specifics given.

What about promoting interest in space travel across America and internationally?

Was easier in 60s since now many competitors, but we will be more impressive than everyone else if we do what is truly hard. I would like to see high quality of content of our communications and outreach….we have done quantity but we have to have quality. That said, we also have to be continuous in terms of content.

What have you changed your mind about as you have prepared?

I am more energized than I originally was by administration’s whole of govt support for our mission.

How about working with other agencies…to leverage shared capabilities. Is that part of our job?

Yes. The new National space policy covers more than just NASA….OSTP has top level picture so they should help ensure we can be a good partner to many agencies…..we have to look at the commonalities. Need to lean into such relationships and contribute our part.

What is your message to every new mission team…what is the north star?

Work urgently…never delay what can be solved today. we have the best mission, the support of the administration, the will, the ability to do great things, so don’t wait. Be in a hurry.

Can you talk a little bit about how you see the importance of science and specifically earth science?

There is, believe it or not, bipartisan support for ES (for different reasons for different people). Some of the specific reasons are agriculture, fire, flood, but we have to get to the data as cheaply and quickly as possible…..we can do existing or commercial constellations or any other architecture or asset, and we use them to supplement what we do. For ISS…we need to make the most of it while we have it…Companies are planning them. and that is cool. We have to be better outreaching and helping the orbital economy break thru to space station usage.

It is fair to note here that there was no use of the term “climate”.

What advice to early career people who are up for risks and maintain mission assurance?

Take smart risk. There is probably not one giant single answer…probably a “lot of littles”….When you are new, you have to learn to present things in the right way to leaders and leaders have to be willing to hear something new. A lot of littles.

This is a really important answer, and it is important that there are two parts and two groups that EACH have to hear it. Specifically, new/early career people will likely hear “leaders have to hear something new” but should ALSO note that they have a responsibility to learn how to communicate in the language of the organization. Leaders will hear the part about “new people learning how to say things the right way” but should ALSO note that they have the responsibility to learn to hear new messages. So, both are important and it is great that he calls this out.

I really like the phrase “a lot of littles”. I bet this is a pet phrase for him and is worth noting and thinking about.

—-End of my attempt at transcribing phrases and interpreting things—-

My sense is that NASA got the kind of leader it generally loves…a passionate, enthusiastic, energetic, smart guy, who is honored to be there and whose first goal is to learn as much as possible while leaning into doing hard things in support of a hard mission. He came off as approachable, thoughtful, and honest. There is a lot to be said for each of those, and I think NASA should be broadly expressing its relief at having such a leader. Note here that NASA probably did not get a “manager”…not a NASA one anyway. What I mean by that is that Jared has never once been a manager in government at all. As such, the bureaucracy will seem like sorcery to him. He will not be expert in its various knobs and levers and strings. Mastering that would be a full time job for which a precious few could accomplish while providing visionary, strategic leadership. My sense is that he will not (and should not) attempt both and should focus instead on the leadership and strategy while leaving the administration within that strategic structure to his deputy and Associate Administrator.

Congratulations. You are all now through the “fall” part of the waterfall.

Welcome to the new river.

Have a great week.

J

Tension is basically the force exerted along the length of something. It is easy to think of as the result of pulling. When you pull on a rope, you are applying a “pulling force” to it – the rope is experiencing tension, and this is true whether or not your pulling results in anything moving. It is the pull, the force, that creates the tension.

I assure you, just in case you somehow haven’t noticed, there are many sorts of tension around you most days. So, let’s talk about some interesting but very different kinds of “tensions”.

Tension About Space Billboards

I am writing this part last, but stumbled across it just as I was about to push “publish” and couldn’t resist including it. I knew part of the topic and even witnessed one event that is part of the story, so was attracted to it. The article cited is a very thorough in its coverage of “space billboards”.

Briefly, in 1993 a guy named Mike Lawson had the idea that we could put billboards in space. The idea was pretty straightforward: launch a satellite that would unfurl a huge sheet of Mylar (looks like the shiny side of aluminum foil), and use lights and colored materials to create a company logo on it. It would have looked (from Earth) about the same size that the full moon looks on a clear night. In an interview, he told a newspaper that he thought he could create a reasonable representation of “the McDonald’s Golden Arches” that would orbit the earth several times a day.

Around that time, there were other mission ideas that were similar to this that had an ‘advertising component’. In fact, I watched (in person from the launch site) as a rocket called Consetoga launched and failed catastrophically (video here of that). Early in its planning cycle there was to be an advertising link to the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, “The Last Action Hero”. Considering the failure, maybe it was good the deal fell apart (as did the rocket).

But as is detailed in this article, the idea of space billboards, while technically feasible, generated some tension. Simply put, people around the world, hated the idea of billboards messing up their view of the night sky. Scientists were horrified (even Carl Sagan declared the idea “abominable”) and soon the UN and many nations passed resolutions and laws banning the idea.

In a final (admittedly creative) attempt to save his plan, Lawson attempted to sell his idea as an “environmental venture” that would highlight the need to protect the Earth and its near-space environment. That, needless to say, did NOT overcome the tension between Mike and those opposed to the idea of space-based advertising, and the idea seemed to die … for a while.

Here’s the article about Mike and his attempts to put up that first space billboard.

Legislative - Executive Tension in the Issacman Affair

I am putting this one in here just because it seems wrong not to mention it. As you know, the US President nominates agency and departmental leaders and Congress (the Senate) confirms (or not) those nominees. The ‘tension’ between these two parts of our government are a “check and balance” that is intended to create something akin to stability and transparency in such things.

Of concern here is the NASA administrator role. Jared Isaacman was nominated, then withdrawn from nomination, and then renominated to lead NASA. This was odd, but there is a lot of that these days, so I won’t comment on that aspect of things.

Mr. Isaacman was ‘re-interviewed’ for the job this week by the Senate Committee that oversees NASA. During his testimony and the question and answer period that followed, I detected, vanishingly small differences between his first testimony and his most recent round. In fact, it is my sense that he varied not at all, and I further think that this should be a reassurance to those across the NASA ecosystem. The fluttering and arm-waving around “Project Athena” document notwithstanding, I think the man is being thoughtful, rational, and responsible, in his attempt to collect his thoughts into a plan for his new position, has no hidden agenda to rip the agency to shreds, and, at a minimum, comes into the role with a deep respect and admiration for the agency he will lead.

Realistically, he continues to lack a deep understanding of the insider politics that are always a part of such jobs (hopefully he either learns this quickly or has a deputy who will complement him in this area). He has not been shy about wanting to eliminate levels of “management and oversight”, particularly at NASA HQ and within NASA’s major projects. He also seems to intend to focus tightly on key priorities and attempt to keep them from being diluted by the (often politically driven) tendency to “spread things around”. And he is not going to “go to war on science” so much as attempt to favor small over large science missions and ensure that the science that is done is truly “enduringly unique” to NASA’s capability. As such, he will surely attempt to utilize commercial capability more in science (and in all areas) and will want to see effective tech transfer out of NASA for those things which he doesn’t see as “NASA Hard” or “enduringly and uniquely NASA roles or capabilities”.

Privately, every staffer I have talked to indicates that (aside from some lingering concern that he simply struggles to stomach the costs associated with SLS that stresses the Alabama delegation) there isn’t a single Senator with apolitical objections to him having the role. He will most certainly be approved and probably prior to the end of the calendar year, and there is no meaningful opposition to him within the Senate.

Hubble Tension

This one is really “not your usual tension”. It turns out that there is a “Hubble Tension” and it got more tense recently, and it will take a bit of explanation.

Before the complicated science, physics, and math, parts maybe it is enough to know that when we look at things far away from us in the Universe, they all appear to be doing the same thing: they are all whizzing AWAY from us really fast and at a speed that seem to be related to how far away we are from whatever thing we are looking at.

That speed, the rate at which everything seems to be separating from everything else, can be calculated. Doing that calculation involves a number that is called the “Hubble Constant”.

Basically, if you know the distance between two things in the universe, you can use the known distance along with a number, the Hubble Constant, to calculate how quickly they are separating from each other. So, it’s not hard to do the math.

Let’s try an example.

Suppose you have two objects that are a little over three light years apart from each other. For your reference, that distance would be about one megaparsec in astronomical terms. The “exact figure” is about 3.26 million light years.

All we need now is the “Hubble Constant”.

Well, lucky us. We humans have been studying that for over a century, ever since Edwin Hubble realized the Universe was expanding. By studying all sorts of bright things in the sky (some things like supernovae are really useful for this), we have figured out the value of the Hubble Constant. The really cool thing is that after nearly a century of studying with all kinds of telescopes (even the Hubble Space Telescope), no matter where we looked or what we looked at, we always came up with the same number.

We learned that the Hubble Constant is equal to about 73 kilometers per second PER megaparsec. That sounds awful, I know, but I KNOW you can do this. It just means that for every megaparsec of distance between two things, they are separating at a rate of about 73 kilometers per second. That works out to about 163,000 miles per hour.

And, just to pause here, how beautiful is that? Isn’t it just amazing to think that scientists have discovered this incredible cool formula that seems true EVERYWHERE in the universe!!! That is the kind of thing scientists dream of…a formula that explains how reality itself works. Hooray…a secret of the Universe unlocked!!

So, in our problem, our two objects are 1 megaparsec apart, so we multiply by the Hubble Constant and we learn that they are flying apart at a rate of 73 kilometers per second (or 163,000 miles per hour). WE DID IT!!!!

But now, the “Hubble Tension” part

Remember how I said that the really neat thing was that no matter what two objects we looked at, we saw that the Hubble Constant was the same? Yeah. Well, that USED TO BE true. It was true for decades, in fact, and we looked at stars and galaxies and everything else we could see with every telescope we could imagine and it always worked.

But then we used some other tools to look (because even when scientists think they have figured something out, they never stop looking, never stop testing to see whether they are really, truly right).

One of the tools we used was called the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). ACT was an amazing thing all by itself. For one thing it was in the Atacama Desert, the driest place on our planet.

Because of its unique geology and climate, it has even been used as a testing ground for the exploration of Mars. You can learn more about the desert and see pictures of it here, but all that dryness makes it great for ground based telescopes like ACT. So, even though the ACT was recently retired from service, some of its last measurements provided confirmation of something pretty interesting.

ACT (as well as other telescopes that “listen” instead of “look”) can sense the background radiation of the universe itself. That is sort of like the leftover heat, the radio echoes from the Big Bang … the warm cinders in the fireplace, so to speak. This background radiation provides another way to measure the expansion rate of the universe.

It showed that if we use the background radiation of the universe to calculate the Hubble Constant you get a different result than if you measure it by looking at individual stars. Specifically, instead of 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec, you get a Hubble Constant of about 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec.

So, if THIS number is right, then our example would end up with a different answer. Our stars would be moving apart at a rate of 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec (150,000 miles per hour).

That difference in the speed at which all things in the universe are flying apart (and therefore making the universe expand) IS the Hubble Tension. It is a tension between what we thought we knew and what we now calculate now based on new information.

Here is a great website with great images and a brief video from a real scientist about all this. It is worth the two minutes it takes to watch it.

The Point Of All This

But here is the point: Sometimes you think you know something. You have measured and measured and are sure you have it right. But then something comes along to challenge that. That difference is a kind of “tension” and even though it is disappointing, the tension itself is good, because it makes us try harder to learn what is needed to get to the right answer. The Hubble Tension that is in this recent science news is an example of that.

Tension When You Are Leading

Every leader experiences tension, and it comes from many, many directions. We often experience these things in terms of “opposing forces”. Examples of that are easy to imagine:

• · The boss wants “more for less” while the people we lead are experiencing burnout and complaining about the workload.

• · Work is crazy busy while you are supposed to care for yourself and a family.

• · Your “number one” priority demands all your resources, but the other ones are important as well, and you can’t just make progress on one at a time.

• · You have to meet schedule on a project, BUT you also have to come in on budget.

• · You team has to move from one building to another, so suddenly you have to decide which lab gets the “good room” and which lab gets the “less good” room.

• · All the meetings you are in feel like arguments between those who “want the new thing” and those who “just want to leave it alone since it is working fine”.

• · Two of your key partner organizations both want to meet to discuss recent developments and how to move forward, but you and your team are pressed for time and attention.

• · You have two proposals for a particular opportunity, but there is only enough resources for one of them to be put forward by your organization.

Each of these things is an example of organizational tension. Some of the tension comes from forces internal to your team, some from above or below your leadership position, and some from external entities.

And all of it feels like it is pulling on you. It feels like you, personally, and your team are being ripped to shreds. So, you, good leader that you are, shackle yourself to all these things and tense yourself to try to hold things “in the middle”. You breathe when you can, but mostly you try to counterbalance all those forces to “hold things together.

Become A Student of Organizational Tension

There is a better way to deal with this than by shackling yourself at the center of a tension diagram and trying to hold everything steady by your own strength. As the leader, it is not your job to be drawn and quartered each morning as you step into the office.

So, let’s think about this a little differently.

Tension Lenses and Fibers

All of those tensions I described above are indeed “tensions”, but they are not the same. Let’s look at them through a few different lenses.

First, just think in broad categories, and it’s easy to see there are different types of tension. Just using the examples above, we can see that there are at least budgetary, personal, professional, risk, opportunity, morale, time/attention, and many other kinds of tensions in there.

With another lens, let’s call this one a time lens, we can see that there are short term tensions (will be resolved one way or the other pretty soon) as well as some that are medium or even longer term tensions that will be with you for a while.

Still another lens lets you see that some are internal, and some are external. Within the internal bucket, some are internal to your organization, and some are literally within you, yourself. The external ones affecting your organization might come from above or below you while other external tensions are from peer entities inside or outside of your organization.

One final lens (there are many more we could tease out) might be the “causal” lens that might let us see the “root cause” of the tension that is being applied to us from a particular source. Such causes of all these things will vary wildly, but you can easily imagine things like [ personal (i.e. arising from an individual actor) or organizational (arising from an organizational actor) ], fear / self-preservation, a desire for influence, a commitment to technical excellence, a desire for advancement, a desire for change (or stability), a mistaken understanding of the impact of some aspect of the current situation, impatience, or any host of other things.

The point is, all those “ropes” that are tied to you and being pulled on by all those stakeholders, those ropes are made up of fibers made of different stuff. They aren’t all the same at all.

So, as a leader observing or experiencing tension, the first thing to do as a leader the first thing you have to do is to see what those ropes are made of. And this isn’t something you just do in a room by yourself during your annual strategic planning session. You want to make this a habit.

If you are really serious about it, you will do this constantly. What does THAT look like?:

• · If you are in a big meeting (maybe it’s your superiors and your peers, maybe it’s your internal team, maybe it’s your partner group), you will be attuned to the subtle rise in the level of tension in the room and will immediately visualize it as the ropes on which some participants (maybe including you) are yanking. Do that, and you will start to see the meeting differently and will start to think about what kinds of fibers those ropes are made of.

• · If you get a sudden request from the boss or the customer or a partner for something that has always been a sore point between you or which is easily identifiable as a “hard ask”, you quickly identify the tension as a rope and begin to think about the fibers that comprise your (and the other party’s) part of that rope.

To put it bluntly, before you are going to be able to work with this stuff, you have to know what the ‘stuff’ is and become adept at recognizing tension in a way that can be made productive rather than simply exhausting or aggravating.

Appreciating Tension

If you think that seeing tension is tough, this next thing is even tougher. You have to appreciate it. You have to maybe even be thankful for it.

What measure of nuttiness allows me to even suggest that?

Simply this: ALL of these tensions come as a result of someone (or some organization) actually caring about you (or your organization). Stated another way, tension is an indication of the opposite of indifference. No one pulls on a rope unless they somehow want something from the thing on the other end. You can’t buy that. It is an absolute asset. I even contend that to be true EVEN if the “caring” is in the form of jealousy or opposition. Yes, even those who want what you have and who use that as their mechanism to apply tension on you are highlighting your value by virtue of that tension.

So, tension is literally a part of being a successful and thriving organization or team. If everyone around you is utterly indifferent to your organization – if they simply do not care about you at all, you will live in a tension-free environment. Absent that, you will experience tension. It is as simple as that.

Now you might hear that and even “get it” or “understand it” or maybe write it down on a PostIt note and stick it on the edge of your computer monitor, but the real mark of appreciating tension as a leader is when you learn to use it.

The Tension Map and Using Tension

At this point, those of you with any sort of technical bent will probably have already thought of my next suggestion. All of this information about the tensions you are experiencing should be put into some integrated form so you can think about it. For me, this takes the form of a fairly simple map.

And as much as I dislike diagrams that place the diagram’s creator at the “center of the universe”, this one probably needs to put you, your position, or your org somewhere in the middle. Radiating out from that are lines which represent tensions that are (or could reasonably be expected to be) exerted on that central point.

You can get as complicated as you want with these maps with colors showing your understanding of the ‘strength of the force’ of each one. You might use tags or labels or extra lines to show the various fibers, time components, or whatever else you have seen fit to include. But these can also be very simple: I have been in meetings in which, on sensing an unexpected or complicated tension, I have quickly sketched such a map on the back of a notepad to help me understand what was going on. The point is that you have to put this into a context that lets you think about it sufficiently. That can be a simple “one and done” thing like my meeting-specific map, or it might be something more enduring that would be useful to include in something more strategic.

But the map is just the first step to using tension to help you do … what?

Now, Don’t Just Do Something … Stop and THINK!!!

Your goal in all of this is to get out of the mode of having to be the constant and sole focus of all the tension. By this, I don’t mean, “getting another job” or “getting out of leadership”. Nor do I mean we are going to bulk you up so you can stand firm in the face of all of those competing forces. The goal instead is to allow you to see that, as a leader, you have to be more adept at managing all of those tensions such that the net effect of all those forces results in your organization being in a stable, balanced place that aligns with your strategy.

Think about it like this. Suppose you think your organization is the right size in terms of staffing. But other entities have different views. One thinks you need to shrink (maybe your own leadership) while another (maybe your customers) want you to grow. You can approach this problem by fighting an energetic two front war on this one issue OR you can connect those two tensions together and then apply your own effort only so much as required to keep them in equilibrium over the current status quo (your desired outcome).

See how that is different? By thinking about the true natures of both of those opposing forces, you can let the do the most of the work of holding you where you are. The same would be true if you thought you needed to grow or shrink if either of those was part of your strategy.

Admittedly, this gets complicated very quickly as we think about the many lines on your diagram, but the thinking is the same. Rather than allowing all those ropes to be tied to you, your goal is to link them to together such that they are relatively aligned in ways that help your organization move, Ouija Board style, toward its goals.

As bluntly as I can state it, your goal is this: rather than fight against each individual tension, you must set the tensions against (or aligned with) each other such that the net result will tend to produce outcomes aligned with your strategic goals.

I am going to stop here, because this has (as usual) become much longer than I imagined.

For what it’s worth, I welcome questions on the nuances or the specifics you might be experiencing. Many of you are people with whom I already have a relationship that would allow us to talk about this kind of stuff, so if this strikes a chord and you want to talk about it next time, I am up for it. Maybe you want “an additional perspective” as you think through some of this for your own organization or team. I am up for that too.

I promise to come back to the whole ‘tension’ thing and address more specifics about how to delicately manage and even utilize competing tensions to advance your strategic goals and release yourself from constantly fighting against each one. This article will be the basis of those future writings. Those additional writings will appear over in The Organizing Thought (where this part on Tension In Leadership also appears)

Closeout

So, a long post right before a weekend. Sorry about that.

Have a great weekend. There are good reasons to have a great weekend. Of course, it is the weekend, but it is also the a time when most of you will take time off of work to be with friends and family. That is really important, so take that time and enjoy all of it.

Stay safe and sane, and do something wonderful for someone else if it is in your power to do so. Nothing will reward and strengthen you more than that.

J

Painting the Sistine Chapel or some other very high profile thing would easily count as a “high pressure” paint job.

But, to get really nerdy here, it would not be a “high pressure paint” paint job. What even IS “high pressure paint”, anyway? Why would you use it?

For the first time in history, there is an answer to that. NASA has invented “Fast Response Pressure Sensitive Paint”.

Confusingly, there is also another name: “Unsteady Pressure Sensitive Paint” or uPSP. I like that last one, but I also like that articles referring to this at NASA and elsewhere tend to use both. That means that there is still a technical argument going on about the best ways to use this new stuff. Such arguments happen when there are lots of people convinced that you have a cool new thing. The corollary here is that when you have invented something no one cares about or can figure out how to use, no one worries about the name. This product does not have that problem!

uPSP is paint that can change its appearance or other characteristics in real time (i.e. “instantly”) in response to the pressure that is applied to the surface to which it is applied. Let’s think about that a minute. With uPSP you could paint something and “see” how it was being stressed, bent, warped, pulled, squeezed, stretched, compressed, or any other thing that applied pressure to its various parts — in real time!

This might sound truly nerdy (and it IS), but this is amazing. This particular thing was funded by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) and came out of Ames Research Center (ARC). uPSP provides a way of seeing the pressures that result on the body of an aerodynamic body that under the forces caused by high speed flight. So, some shape in a wind tunnel … how would it experience the forces of increasing speed through low speed, high speed, supersonic, and hypersonic, flight? Each of these flight regimes have different effects on a flying shape, so it is important to know those differences and those effects.

You could install “pressure gauges” in a lot of places, but still there is some finite number of spots you are monitoring, and maybe you are missing that vital spot where pressures spike in some way. If only there was a paint that “changed color” at every possible point.

That is what uPSP does and it is a perfect example of how NASA’s work to tackle huge problems of its own can become beneficial to a variety of industries and other agencies. NASA did the work to improve on the design of high speed and supersonic flight structures. But with the other parts of NASA concerned about the challenges of hypersonic re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and the nation working on hypersonic systems for national defense, it is easy to see how uPSP would be a benefit to researchers in many aerospace fields. But I am betting this stuff finds its way into many uses in many industries.

Here is an article about uPSP and another one that includes a cool video that lets you see the changing pressures on a model of the Space Launch System (SLS).

Opinion: Space Isn’t “Contested”; It Is “Conflicted”

I will probably come back over and over to this topic and this specific title. That is because I disagree with the current “official position” that “space is a contested environment”. I believe that language to be too gentle on what is actually happening, every single day, in space. The truth is that among major space powers, the US, China, and Russia, there is conflict. And even though it has not yet erupted into a “shooting war”, the actions that are being taken are akin to the initial skirmishes that happen in any terrestrial conflict.

As examples (and these are JUST the unclassified examples),

• · There are acknowledged capabilities and activities conducted to assess confuse, threaten, and interfere with other nations’ space assets by China.

• · There are acknowledged capabilities and activities conducted to assess confuse, threaten, and interfere with other nations’ space assets by Russia.

• · There are acknowledged capabilities and activities conducted by the US to assess, confuse, threaten, and interfere, with other nations’ space assets by the US.

Note here that I am not suggesting that this is the wrong thing. But you don’t survive or win a conflict or a street fight by calling it by a polite name. The Cold War wasn’t the “Cold Conflict”. World War II wasn’t the “World Argument”. This is not a contest. It isn’t a ‘race’. It is a fight, or very soon will be. I truly wish that the immediate future of all of Earth’s space programs was a guaranteed peaceful affair. But right now that simply isn’t the case. Right now, the primary players are gearing up for conflict.

Here are a couple of articles that brought that rant-let to mind.

First, the US Space Force’s think tanks have (finally) started to become public about the notion that “of course, the Space Force will have soldiers in space”. In other words, there will be “Space Guardians” … military astronauts that are in space for military reasons.

Here is another Space Force article on the general topic of space conflict.

And make sure you understand that I am not disagreeing with the rationale. I am just pointing out the change. Also note that I see this as a big positive for NASA since NASA is the world’s premier knowledge center for anything related to what astronauts need to thrive.

But this is why, as a strategist, you pay attention to things like “The Mitchell Institute” and other “think tanks”. These organizations are where ideas get “floated”, but don’t be fooled into thinking that they originated these ideas. Think tanks exist to float and frame ideas that visionaries and strategists create.

The third article I stumbled onto describes how US allies have become increasingly vocal about the need for “allied ‘control’ of space”. That word, “control” is different from the former Space Force aspiration which was “operation without regret in space”. The nuance is that while we used to imagine ourselves to be content with being able to ‘do whatever we want in space’, we now think that the real goal is ‘being able to control whatever happens there’. I am not disagreeing, but I am pointing out that such a change is more than a little step and is not a step you take if you are “in a contest”.

An “Own Goal” Or a Deterrence Attempt???

In the same vein as those previous articles is a news article that comes courtesy of the efforts of Scott Tiley a normal guy who is curious about “space stuff”.

Scott is a “citizen scientist”. That means he is a smart person who just happens to be interested in something. In his case it seems to be an interest in “what is up there”. You can learn more about Scott here, but his resume is impressive to the point that he is credited with finding a spacecraft that NASA had somehow lost (the IMAGE satellite). He is also credited with locating the ZUMA spacecraft, a secret US military satellite that was thought to be lost as a result of a SpaceX failure. Background on NASA’s confirmation that his work resulted in the location of the IMAGE satellite can be found here. [corrected “conformation” to “confirmation”]

Scott’s latest adventure comes from the night he was doing his citizen science thing and listening to satellites and discovered / realized that an entire network of Space Force satellites not only existed but had been sending information back and forth using readily accessible and detectable frequencies.

As a result of his work, downlink communications frequencies of nearly 200 “secretive” US spy / communications satellites (the constellation is called “Starshield” and is a military version of SpaceX’s “Starlink” constellation) were revealed. In addition, some theorized that the transmissions of these satellites could pose a threat to other civil and commercial satellites. [corrected “locations” to “downlink communications frequencies” and “secret” to “secretive” to align with the press article referenced.]

Even if they don’t represent such a threat, they do represent the fact that, just like on any old – school battlefield, the elements and assets of the armies are gathering.

My friends, take it from me: armies and their assets don’t gather for a sporting event or for a contest. They gather for a conflict. And as much as I would like to argue the opposite view, a conflict is what they are gathering for today.

• · Note that it COULD totally be the case that the Starshield “discovery” could have been intended. That is, it has all the earmarks of being something that was “allowed to be exposed in the name of deterrence”. The way this works is that you secrety create some cool new capability and then do something to ensure that your adversary will know about it. This can have the effect of deterring an adversary, making them pause and ask “what else don’t we know about?”. Of course it could also have been just a stupid “own goal” case of a silly mistake that revealed something that had been hoped to remain a secret.

TQC, A PodCast Interview

Just as a quick closeout. You never know what will happen as a result of what you do. In my case, I am talking about my practice of handing out NASA pins when I am in a foreign country and see someone wearing a NASA shirt or logo. As recounted in an earlier post, I gave a pin to man in Bergen, Norway. He was happy with it, but that wasn’t the end of the story.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a message from him (Christian) where he asked if I would be a guest on a podcast he hosts. The podcast is called TQC. I agreed. The result was a nearly 3 hour long conversation that started with NASA and space stuff (the first hour) but then turned to topics including international travel, Norwegian food, favorite book lists, and our current video game exploits. For anyone interested, here is the link to Christian’s podcast. I am sure he would appreciate the Youtube views.

And, of course, THANKS to my kind interviewer. It was a blast.

Stay sane and safe, folks. You are probably past the worst of it at this point even though significant uncertainty remains for most of you working in civil space.

J

Gaaaah. Well, that was awful.

For those of you who write anything at all (even code), figuring out where to start something is miserable duty. This feels sort of like that for me given all that has gone on (and not gone on) in recent weeks.

Let’s recap with some things that were either too interesting or too obnoxiously big to ignore. I will leave it to you to figure out which is which.

Jared Isaacman, Version 2.0.

The new (old?) nominee for head of NASA is (was? still is?) Jared Isaacman. One thing you can say for sure here is that Jared did not change his tune as a result of all of this. In fact, the backchannel chatter on him among those with political savvy and insight is exactly how MUCH he didn’t change, didn’t criticize, didn’t let all of the gyrations affect him or even change his message in the slightest. He didn’t blame, didn’t complain, didn’t demand, didn’t apologize, didn’t do anything but say how honored he had been to have originally been nominated, how disappointed he was to be dropped, and how honored he was to be renominated.

My sense is that the surprise among political insiders that he didn’t behave like an idiot says more about the political insiders than it does about Jared.

The end result is that he comes out looking like a pretty honorable guy who just wants to be a part of NASA and who has a plan for what he hopes he can do while he leads. That plan, much-rumored but little-seen, is called “Athena” and is his own creation. It is notable, at least in my view, that Athena is the Goddess of Wisdom which I think is a telling thing to aspire to. Wisdom, you will note, doesn’t get much airplay these days, so it will be nice to see someone attempt it.

Some quick True or False items related to Jared and Athena:

• · Duffy tried to get some parts of NASA to get moved into DoT. (True, but literally no one thought that was anything other than stupid.)

• · Athena talks about a significant reorganization of NASA’s HQ and management functions and structures. (True. The attempt will be to flatten all organizations significantly with less “independent review” organizations and oversight levels and more explicit consolidation of functions into mission directorates or Centers.)

• · Several others were again considered for the NASA job, including former military officers. (True, but the discussion and rejection around these among powerful stakeholders was seen as a powerful statement that NASA remains a civil agency will ties to the military while being distinctly separate.)

• · Smaller centers and outlying / component facilities will experience the most pressure to change structurally. (True. In some cases (probably like Armstrong which is very focused on aviation activities already) there will likely be an attempt to create ‘bulk’ by consolidating/focusing related activities there. In other cases, like Wallops or the Armstrong Facility in Ohio, there will likely be more of a focus on empowering state, commercial, or other government partners to assume/use/pay for more of the functions currently performed there. Other centers, notably the science and research centers will see change driven by new frameworks that drive what is truly the catalyzing/enabling job of NASA in a more capable space ecosystem.)

• · There will be more (and more diversely structured) small science missions and fewer (or no) “flagship missions”. (True. This will be the biggest impact at the centers which figure prominently in NASA Science. This one is multi-faceted and affects what you would expect (science instruments, which will be increasingly expected to truly revolutionary rather than evolutionary; science research, which will be called on to merge NASA’s “exquisite data” with data from commercial sources in order to create new knowledge and more advanced models) and some you might not (project management will be required to adapt to very different models of supplier oversight/insight, partner participation, and dynamically defined success criteria). The centers most affected by this will be Goddard and JPL but also the science activities at Langley and Ames.)

• · The big worry about Jared is that he is not an engineer and will struggle to lead such a technical agency. (False. The worry is that he does not have the level of insider/political knowledge to steer an agency that depends so much on bipartisan support.)

Solar and Space Physics Report of the National Academies

A summary report from the National Academies was released to describe the importance of research into solar physics. I will point out that the report is very brief (35 pages much of which is pictures) and very readable. More importantly, I will also point out that its release aligns with a multinational effort to consider the “critical infrastructure vulnerabilities” that exist in many nations (allied as well as not). What I mean is this: among major powers (US, China, EU, Russia, India) there has been a significant “behind closed doors” discussion of the level of shared/ worldwide vulnerability to extreme space weather events.

This (the vulnerability) matters because of the incredibly destabilizing results that such events could cause … things like unintended conflict resulting from sensors being offline or blinded, major blackouts of defense or catastrophe mitigation systems. No one wants that, so there is a multinational effort among key science organizations explain to their respective governments 1) the importance of understanding/modeling space weather effects and 2) the importance of collaborative approaches. Honestly, that level of collaboration among “adversaries” is one of the truly encouraging things that I am able to observe these days.

Here’s the report. Again, it is very readable. Share it with your elected representatives (and assure them you care about it AND then remind them they have a staffer who can understand it).

Hypersonic History of the X-43

While NASA and the aviation industry are pushing hard for quieter supersonic travel, it is hypersonics that really matter these days, and hypersonics matter a lot. They matter mostly because of national defense. Russia and China both have active weapons/missile systems that fly and maneuver at hypersonic speeds. Such missiles could be the death knell for some of the ways power has been projected around the globe for many decades (think aircraft carriers). But hypersonic capability could also change the game on things like missile defense and nuclear deterrence.

Admittedly these are not “civilian space” problems. But the technical challenges associated with hypersonic flight look an awful lot like the problems you face when you come screaming into a planetary atmosphere from outer space. So, there is a nice overlap that allows both civilian and defense organizations to collaborate. As I was thinking those happy thoughts and was refreshing my memory on hypersonic capability, this article popped up on my screen as I was surfing around – a history of a project called X-43.

X-43 was an experimental vehicle (you can tell by the “X”, by the way). It’s primary accomplishment was in proving something could be done, something that had never been done before; it proved that a “scramjet” was possible. That is, it proved that if you got going fast enough, the air that got crammed into your engine by the very fact of your speed could be used as the oxidizer to burn fuel to make you go even faster. Stated another way, X-43 created a jet engine that used no moving parts. In doing so, it paved the way for hypersonic flight.

Unfortunately, even though various elements of the Department of Defense continued developing that technology for a bit longer, it was Russia and China that seemed to retain focus on it long enough to bring it to operational use in missiles. Now, we are playing catch up, which is truly a bummer.

Still, X-43 and its successors paved the way in terms of some of the propulsion technology needed for hypersonic flight to become a reality.

Here’s the article that inspired all this.

A Faster Trip to Uranus

The planet Uranus has been identified as having high scientific study value in recent publications by the National Academy of Sciences. Some of the reasons are obvious: there has never been an up-close study of the planet, it has a ton of icy moons that could have oceans of some form or another, and “orbits on its side” such that its north pole points generally toward the Sun. Each of these just screams “I have secrets so come explore me”.

The problem, of course, is distance. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft made a flyby 40 years ago, it took 9 years just to get there. If we used a Falcon Heavy to go there, it would take at least 13 years to make the same trip. But new calculations show that a properly configured SpaceX Starship could make the run in about 6 ½ years.

Here’s an article about all that, but even though I am almost ashamed to say it, the science isn’t really the reason I am interested in this story. I am not even sure that the article is really interested in the science of the story. I am interested because twice in the last 4 months I have been in conversations with people who work in “think tank-y” kinds of places who pointed out in an “oh by the way” sort of way that the atmosphere of Uranus is believed to be the richest source of Helium-3 (one of the rarest and most valuable things around) in the solar system and, further, that “all you have to do is get there, scoop it up with a scramjet – style scoop, and then wait for it to get back.” They go on to point out that, travel time aside, that is a lot easier than mining the stuff from lunar regolith.

And now I see this article about getting there quicker for reasons of science. Interesting.

Superpowers

One of my most frequent bits of leadership mentoring / coaching advice is “Do a detail in another organization related to your own because when you get back to your normal job, you will find that you have superpowers.”

I can pontificate on and on about that (and have many times, sometimes to incredulous eye rolls) and about how the new perspectives you gain and/or the latent but untested abilities you end up using in the new role really ARE the equivalent of acquiring a completely new leadership talent.

But what are “leadership superpowers”? “Perspective” is one them, but more examples would really help. Absent a good list, the whole term “superpower” just seems too ethereal to even attain. For some people, if you start talking about “superpowers” in a normal work setting, it quickly becomes an annoyance. Try advocating “superpowers” to a US Army Colonel, and you will quickly see what I mean. (Colonel Ashton, I am thinking of you here!) Most are not up for such imaginings and just want the checklist of things to ‘fix’.

And yet.

I have always thought that if I just had a good list of what I meant by “superpowers” I would be able to make term more meaningful. The problem is that most people I know are humble enough to believe that the thing that they are just plain AWESOME at doing without thinking isn’t really a “superpower”; it’s just a thing they can do. My thought was that if I could find them collected together, it would make it clear that each one is amazing and special and even powerful in a leadership setting. No one would (or could) ever master all of them, but just knowing that these are things worth having would make the “superpower” concept far easier to grasp.

So, imagine my happiness when I (finally) read a book given to me by my friend Sharon. She was actually MY coach once upon a time. Earlier this year we met for lunch just to catch up on things, and she gave me a copy of a book written by her employer, Dr. Marta Wilson.

The book is called LEAP, and it is a very accessible leadership book I certainly recommend for anyone looking for a quick-read book for their Leader Library. One of the early themes is the idea that leaders should aspire not just to “goodness” or even “greatness” but to “soar”. The book is far less about formulaic approaches to leadership and far more about the many facets that come together in what we all think of as ‘great leaders’.

And, get this, there is a WHOLE CHAPTER on “Superpowers” that says all the things I wish I had thought say to Col Ashton. But best of all, on page 162 and 163, there is an awesome list of examples of “superpowers”. It isn’t exhaustive, of course; there are about 50 altogether, but just reading the list is a great exercise in appreciating how that little thing you are good at doing can be transformational if you embrace it.

At the risk of being shouted at by Dr. Wilson for copying, the examples are as diverse as: “Being Humble”, “Organizing Chaos”, “Finding Win-Wins”, “Seeing Performance Gaps”, and “Being a Good Diplomat”. When you look at all 50, two things will become immediately obvious: 1) all of them are really leadership superpowers, 2) you either have or might be able to develop some of them, and 3) no one is born knowing how to do all of them.

But this is the kind of list I am talking about when I say you get new superpowers by engaging in a detail. When you get out of your comfort zone, you will see new things that will require you to exercise new muscles. One or two of those new muscles could turn into one of the superpowers listed by Dr. Wilson in her book “LEAP”.

Thanks again to Sharon for the book and to Dr. Wilson for writing it.

A Closing Thought

With the end of the shutdown, the new relative certainty about the new NASA administrator, his plans for the agency (outlined in Athena), and (for the most part) the end of the threat of general/broad RIFs across the agency due to the bipartisan congressional hue and cry about their possibility within NASA, I assert that centers are now “at the bottom of the waterfall”. There is still a churning chaos for some (those not at an “Exploration Center”) but this will resolve pretty quickly, I think, and are more akin to ‘churning’ than to ‘falling’.

The job now is to see, as realistically (as in “not wishfully”) as you can 1) what the new administrator wants from each center and mission directorate, 2) what skills and capabilities are truly left at the centers and what has been lost, 3) what current product lines and capabilities at the centers are transformational or “enduringly unique to NASA” within the US commercial / defense space ecosystem.

Knowing these three, the task is to align on them as rapidly as possible. Major organizational units should be aligned on the priorities in terms of both capability and organizational structure. Individuals leaders, regardless of level, should begin to add those themes to their “leadership calculus” and position their teams within that framework. Individuals should apply the same calculus to their leadership of their own work and watch their immediate leaders for examples of good (or bad) leadership during a time of change. My plan is to offer some thoughts on all of that over the weekend.

A last “closing thought” that is paraphrased from Epictetus about whom, trust me, I could go on and on: The clear-eyed recognition and acceptance of a new reality is not “passive” but is instead the first step to improving your situation. That is the job right now.

Stay sharp. Stay sane. Stay safe.

Welcome back.

J

Perspective. It is truly tough when the numbers are really really big (or small).

About a year from now, the Voyager 1 spacecraft will do something amazing and the something is very much one of those perspective-shocking things. This particularly amazing thing doesn’t depend on its sensors (which at this point detect cosmic radiation and particles) or its antenna (which still manages the trick of fine-pointing itself to send messages back to Earth) or even its power source (a radioactive battery that provides electricity from the heat of decaying Plutonium-238). You can learn about Voyager’s systems in this great video. If you watch it, be sure to see the “computer boards” where you can actually see the installed transistors and capacitors plugged into the boards.

But the accomplishment next year will depend only on Issac Newton and his 2^nd Law of Motion (and the resulting formula for momentum) since that is all that is needed at this point for Voyager 1 to become the first Earth-made object to travel a distance of one light-day.

We talk all the time about how many light years this star or that black hole is from Earth. Science fiction movies show “warp speed” that achieves interstellar travel at the flip of a big red switch. But a light year is how far light can travel in a year, and that is about 6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles. And in spite of the (yet again) confusing name “light year”, it takes a LOT more than a year to go that far.

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977. In 2026, about 49 years later, it will have traveled a single light day – the distance light travels in a day. That is about 16 billion (16,000,000,000) miles.

And just because you really have to mention it, in only about 17,900 years, Isaac Newton’s momentum equations will see to it that Voyager 1 makes to that “one light year” distance. As astonishing as that is (am taking bets on whether or not anything will manage to beat it there … I am a pretty firm ‘no’, by the way, but if we manage it, I think the first goal would be to catch Voyager, bring it back, and put it in the Smithsonian), it won’t likely encounter anything specific at that distance from Earth. After all, the closest star, Proxima Centauri, we know of to Earth is a little over 4 light years away.

So much empty!!!!

Banned Items

Imagine for a moment you were given a free trip to the International Space Station (ISS). But you don’t get the regular ticket. Instead, you get the deluxe ticket.

You will get to hang out in the luxury suite that no one ever talks about. It’s the one with the normal bed, the full – wall window so you can watch the beautiful scenery float by you, the artificial gravity, the fun “space playground” the size of a small gym where you can fly around effortlessly and do what you imagine would be cool things – like playing “gravity - free tag” with your friends. Fun stuff.

What would you pack -- what sorts of supplies?

Well, not being a fan of Tang or freeze dried ice cream, you might want some snacks. So, maybe some soda, a couple boxes of your favorite cookies, some bagels for breakfast. Those evenings in front of that giant window would be made a whole lot more amazing with a bit of wine, don’t you think? Surely if there are “island drinks” there ought to be “space drinks”! You might bring an old-fashioned pen and paper to jot down the insightful thoughts that come to mind as you sip your drink and stare out into eternity. And a little research into the station will tell you that since it (bluntly) stinks (hasn’t had a good cleaning in nearly 30 years, after all), maybe a scented candle would be a good last minute item.

Yeah ... no … as in, none of that. All of that is banned.

Why?

Fire doesn’t work the way you think in space (video here on that). Flames don’t rise or take the same shape and can even just float around nearly invisibly until something terrible happens. So, no matches, flames, candles, lighters, not even incense sticks.

Next off the list is soda. Caffeine isn’t the problem. Sugar (or my favorite …whatever stuff is in Diet Mountain Dew) is also not the problem. This time it’s the bubbles. Just like with flames, the lack of gravity makes stuff really messed up, so they don’t rise or even distribute themselves throughout the liquid. Instead the collect into larger bubbles and generally make a mess. So, no carbonated drinks.

What about a big chocolate chip cookie as a nighttime snack or that breakfast bagel? Nope. No breads, cookies, or other stuff that can generate crumbs. Not only do crumbs result in the equivalent of “airborne food particles”, they make for (wait for it) a crummy performance of the air filtering system. So, none of that either.

You can’t even write home about any of this using your plain old ballpoint pen. Not only won’t it work (gravity is required to make the ink in normal pens work), the ink represents a spill hazard that no one wants or needs. Pencils? In spite of the famous trope that NASA spent a gazillion dollars on pen development while Soviets used pencils, the fact is that the pencils create the same kind of debris as the bread. This is in the form of graphite dust, eraser fragments, and bits of wood. So, the truth is that no one uses pencils. You are back to using the Ipad.

Well, thank goodness for the liquor, right? Not only do you get up there without your suitcase of supplies, you also find out that the whole “luxury suite” isn’t real. A stiff drink is certainly in order at this point. Except … again, no. Alcohol in any normal form is a no-no. No cologne or hand sanitizer (thus the smell). Even though there are no open flames (see rule one, above) there is plenty of electrical equipment around, so ethanol alcohol (the kind in drinks) vapors are bad news. There was even an instance when a case of wine was sent up to the station, but it was part of an experiment into whether wine aged differently in space. So, no popping of corks was allowed in space.

Here’s the article that inspired this bit … Five Things Banned On ISS.

Addendum 1: Exceptions for Vodka: Apparently, for Cosmonauts at least, “some rules are for me and some rules are for thee”. It is widely reported that cognac and vodka are not only taken to ISS by the Russian crew members, but also even shipped there officially to help the cosmonauts “keep in tone” and “neutralize tension”. Here is one of many articles you can find on that. And for what it is worth, while I am not very much of a drinker at all, I have never seen vodka consumption on the order of magnitude that I witnessed it during collaboration with our (then) Russian and Ukrainian partners (yeah, wild, right?) during the development of one of the original Commercial Resupply of Station (CRS) rockets. No details beyond that, but wow. That is to say, I have no doubt the reports are true.

Addendum 2: Rocket Man – “burning out his fuse up here alone”. The other thing that sparked this piece was me noticing someone singing along to the Elton John song “Rocket Man” and (as seems inevitable) watching them “lip – mumble” through the part of the lyrics that no one actually seems to know. I KNOW you know the song …. “I think its gonna be a long long time” and “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids” … you probably know every other line in the song (the recently newly - released “reimagined official video by Elton John” link is here ). The song is frequently played over the intercoms in many launch control centers and is a strong feature (along with Space Oddity and several others) in every post launch party for successful launches. But it is really about imagining the loneliness and deprivation astronauts have to go through, so that line is key. Now you know.

Admitting We Were Wrong … (about the Moon’s southern craters)

You probably won’t find ten people in your whole life who are truly adept at admitting when they were wrong about something. You will certainly not find ten of them who possess political power since all evidence seems to suggest that the two features are never found in combination.

Scientists tend to be a bit better since the “process of science” tends to require adjustment to the reality of, well, reality. Still, it feels rare to see a headline that starts off with “We were wrong about … “. I think that is a great thing.

This particular error was about how the largest and oldest lunar crater was formed. This particular crater is at the lunar South Pole, and its origin story dates back to when the Moon itself was first formed. At that time, with the lunar surface still pretty much a molten magma goop, it was thought that an asteroid slammed into the Moon from the southern direction, creating the aforementioned crater (and, by the way, scattering some pretty interesting and maybe-useful materials around the crater’s edge).

But more recent analysis has determined that we were wrong. Now it seems that the asteroid impact occurred from the “lunar north” direction. Modeling this impact changes where these “interesting materials” are located and how they are distributed around the South Pole Basin.

So, hooray for being able to admit when we were wrong without freaking out!

There is much more detail to this story, and some of it even involves a material called KREEP which stands for Potassium, Rare Earth Elements and Phosphorus. This is the ‘asteroid splatter’ that may turn out to be useful and perhaps valuable for both science and exploration purposes. Here is the link for the story and also another link which offers a slightly different take.

A Thing I’m Working On

Tigers

Imagine that you found yourself wandering around in a jungle – days away from any hope of civilization or rescue. You know that the jungle contains tigers – real ones. You have whatever knowledge you have about tigers, but in all likelihood, you are no actual expert. You basically know that, at best, if one finds you it will probably maul, kill, or eat you. Regardless of whatever else is in the jungle, you know that tigers are the kings of this particular one, and that your survival and “thrive-al” depend on you not having a bad encounter with a tiger.

As you wander around, you find a book – “The 48 Laws of Tigers”. It is a detailed accounting of the top things to know about how tigers behave, hunt, react to things, stalk prey, plan, and generally act.

The question is, “what do you do with this book”? Do you read it, adapt your behavior to its “rules” where you can, and learn from it? Do you throw it away since you are not a tiger and proud of it?

I contend that such a book is useful.

Sure, you are not a tiger. There may be rules in it like “when you are attacking a humanoid, bite the back of the neck with your fangs”. So that rule may not be particularly useful to your hunting skills even though it may encourage you to watch your back.

But another rule might be “hunt things that are away from the light”, and that one might help you figure out when to travel and what to take with you, so it would inform you and change your behavior to protect yourself from likely attack. It also might be helpful if you are really hungry and need to do some hunting yourself.

Still another rule might be “only drink from moving water sources since the water is likely to be safer”. This one sounds useful no matter what, and you should maybe adopt this one as a permanent thing regardless of tigers or your intention to become one.

What does THIS have to do with anything remotely associated with anything?

One of the greatest books ever written about power and the exercise of power is called “The 48 Laws of Power”. It is simply phenomenal, and I recommend it to every leader I mentor and to anyone aspiring to be a senior leader in an organization.

But for many it is a shocking read; some of its laws are the “tiger – equivalent” of “when hunting humanoids bite the back of the neck”. So, the reaction of some readers is to say, “I would never do that. I am enlightened in my leadership style and my use of power, so I would be sure to give each person a warm pat on the back rather than bite them.” In fact there is a tendency to reject the book as “too Machiavellian” to serve as a guide for leadership.

This is the wrong lesson. That book explains how power works in its purest forms. It describes the purest, most irresistible exercise of power by those who hold it and who, frankly, don’t care about anything but power. But the book isn’t about Stalin or <name your personal least-favorite-power-mad leader-here>. Instead it is about about actual leaders – some of whom may be bad, some decidedly “in-between”, and many of whom are pretty great leaders but are just having a terrible day and are lashing out at ‘the system’ or ‘the bad result’ or ‘the unexpected surprise’ or maybe even at you with power that is inherently theirs. As such, it is, first and foremost, a manual for how to understand the lightning bolts you may see around you as you rise to levels where organizational power is exercised.

In the book you will find things that you, personally, could never embrace regardless of the potential benefit to you or your organization. You will find other things that will be really good to know in terms of the way that a “challenging but powerful” leader above you might act. And you will find other things that make you think, “Wow, I never thought of that before and that is something I need to incorporate into my own style as I lead in an environment where power is real and is exercised.”

If you are a leader and you want to understand the environment you are in, read this book. There are other books that are useful and even “important”, but there is not a substitute for “The 48 Laws of Power”.

Over on The Organizing Thought my plan is to work through the book over the course of the next few months, hit some of the Laws and describe them in the light I have used above. I think it will be interesting reading. I will try to put short excerpts here for those who are “interested in such topics but not interested enough” to subscribe to something as dry as The Organizing Thought (I get it).

Closing Thoughts

There is much going on and at the same time there is the “hurry up and wait” of the latest shutdown.

In the “going on” discoveries, technological advances, international competition, and even the emerging form of space aggression and weaponization, all march steadily onward. In the shutdown, government agencies and departments lack the ability to do their work, develop new concepts and contractors, or even keep current contracts going. The hope for getting out of this hangs on things that are hard to think about like the political pressure that might or might not result from the nation’s needy not getting food assistance or people seeing health insurance bills double or triple or the inaccessibility of national park treasures.

I was in downtown DC yesterday with “people supposedly in the know” who said that the key dates that might drive a decision will happen at the first of each month (when food assistance is due and our military gets a paycheck) and at the middle of the month (when our military gets the second paycheck), as well as at Thanksgiving (when it starts to look reprehensible to everyone and some like to visit National Parks and travel by air). After a breath they also mentioned that there are some (unnamed powerful people in the Executive Branch) who would see it as a strange sort of achievement to have overseen the “longest ever shutdown”.

So, go figure.

In the middle of all of that is the renewed search for a new NASA administrator (Issacman remains an interviewee as does General (Ret) Joseph Guastella, among others. Regardless of the result, there will be an effect when the new leader is chosen.

With all that going on, I still contend that this will pass. The greater, longer game is the one that matters, and there is MUCH to be gained from NOT trying to control what you cannot control.

On that score, the most important thing to remember is this: While the future is there for anyone to change, most of humanity seems to spend its efforts trying to change the past.

Do not be a part of that crowd.

Look forward and commit yourself to greatness there.

I know you can do it.

J

In 2008, humans did something for the first time in all of history. We detected an asteroid that hit the Earth BEFORE it hit the Earth … again … 2008 was the FIRST time we ever did that.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Now let this sink in. Every DAY somewhere between 40 and 100 TONS of stuff hit our planet from outer space, and it was not until 2008 that we ever knew that something was gong to whack us before it actually whacked us! I can’t be the only person who finds that stunning (and a little bit horrific) … tens of tons of space stuff raining down on us every day?

Admittedly most of all those impacts are very small things, things probably best characterized as particles or even ‘dust’. So, it’s not like we are getting slammed by dinosaur killers every five minutes and just not noticing it. Still, a hundred tons here or there everyday and soon it starts to add up, right?

That in itself is mind boggling.

Things Are Better Now

When I started digging into this, I was horrified, of course, that our success at detecting anything at all is so recent, but you will be happy to know that things are much better now than in the old days. Yes, prior to 2008, we had never had an inkling that anything was going to strike us from space until it hit us. That constant surprise is what led to videos like these … totally random, by-chance, video captures of the sky being lit up and people acting like they would in some apocalyptic movie (since, what else is one going to do but to stand agape and hope that your camera is on?).

So, with all that potentially horrifying video awfulness a possibility, how much better are we now? Well, since 2008, we have detected a total of five meteor strikes in advance of their impacts.

Yeah. Five. Five times.

Is that good? Is it bad?

I bet you can guess, but let’s look into it.

A Glance at the Data

Check out this cool chart (courtesy of ESA).

This chart gives us fair amount of information (and for what it’s worth it correlates fairly well to information from other sources. My references were here and here.)

I am not sure how well Substack lets you zoom in on stuff, but I will dig into a little bit of it just to make it a little bit real.

• · About once every two weeks, Earth gets hit by an asteroid that is about 1 meter in diameter. These impacts seldom make it to the ground in the form of anything other than fine dust, but they release an amount of energy in our atmosphere approximately equivalent to that release by the atomic bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima. There are about 50 million such asteroids thought to be zooming around in “near Earth” space. Not all of those will hit the Earth, of course, but out of that total we have detected about five thousand of them … less than a tenth of a percent.

• · Moving on up the scale, about once every 5 or so years, Earth gets hit by an asteroid that is about 5 or 6 meters in diameter. For reference, the second strike in the video I linked to above, “The Chelyabinsk Meteor” is an example of that one. Not only do bits and pieces of this strike the ground, the explosive force generated from their entry (see the video) wreaks havoc on ground structures in the vicinity. The energy released from this (and remember, most of it didn’t even hit the ground) was about the same as 25 of those previously mentioned atomic bombs. Oh, and 1500 people were injured. Digging into this, I learned that the “injury numbers” did not include the instances of sunburn (you read me right … sunburn) that people got when they were exposed to the light it generated. Of the five or so million of these sized asteroids that we think are in “near Earth” vicinity, we have detected about 0.5 percent (just being clear here: one half of one percent) of them.

• · Just a step up from those, you get to something in the 10 – 30 meter range. These are a little smaller than the monstrous thing that hit Tunguska, Russia (hey, you got a lot of land, that means you get hit more, I guess). These swing into us at an average of about once every 10 to 100 years. At the upper end of this size, chunks absolutely hit the ground but the damage comes again from the explosion, because now we are talking megatons … a thousand times more force than the Hiroshima bomb. Injuries in Tunguska were rare because of the low population density of what is (almost literally) the middle of nowhere, but people who saw it from twenty miles away were “thrown into the air and/or knocked unconscious” by the shockwave. Fun times in Tunguska back in 1908 (remember that thing about it being about once in every hundred or so years….do the math on the years since 1908 and it could be fun times indeed…). Fortunately there aren’t as many asteroids of this size buzzing around up there in “near earth” space , and although you have to interpolate on the chart, a decent guess is that there’s only about 50 thousand of this size of which we have probably detected about 10 percent. Yay!

I will stop there, since once asteroid strikes get bigger than that, you start having to think about things that are unthinkable. Fortunately though, the really big ones that can turn our reality into an extinction event are pretty well detected (about 90% of them) and none of them seem to be on a collision course. So far.

The Recent Called Strike

So what brought all this on? It was this image.

The image above records the sightings, fourteen in all, of “2022 EB5”, an asteroid that had been detected by Krisztian Sarneczky, a Hungarian astronomer working at the Piszkésteto observatory.

Now, I do have to point out that the name Krisztian originally gave this rock was “Sar2593”, so even with having had two tries at it, the entire astronomical community once again failed miserably to come up with something with even the remotest chance of going viral. “Iceland Killer 007” would have been my attempt.

But to be fair to the astronomers, all this renaming happened VERY quickly. On observing this beast and giving it the original name (one can only assume excitement diminished his willingness to spend time on something like this), the scientist calculated the chances it would hit Earth at only 1%. But over the next few minutes, he looked at the asteroid again. And again. And again. Ten times, he looked.

(one imagines a guy sitting in a room staring again and again into a telescope in disbelief)

But it wasn’t just “looking”.

Each time he looked, he also recalculated the odds the rock would hit Earth. By the 10^th observation, the odds sat firmly at 100%, so he messaged his friend group. That is to say, he notified the Planetary Defense folks at ESA.

An hour had passed — one hour since the very first sighting of a rock about to hit the Earth.

The friend group promptly took their own observations, confirmed the existence of the rock, took the vital step of REQUESTING that it be renamed to something better and more catchy than “Sar2593”, reprimanded Krisztian for his shoddy and unimaginative naming algorithm, calculated the odds of impact, and agreed with him on the certainty of Earth impact … 100% likely.

Impact happened less than an hour after ESA being notified.

Yeah … less than two hours from seeing it for the first time, it hit.

That, friends, is the state of things. As cool as it is that we have sighted things that are about to hit us from space; as awesome as it is that we have done this a total of 5 times now in human history, as reassuring as it is that have detected about 10 percent of those rocks capable of causing hydrogen bomb-level damage anywhere on Earth, and as heartwarming as it is to know that if someone sees one and gives a bad name they will be reprimanded and the name updated, it seems to me, in spite of all that goodness, that some improvement might be in order.

Here is the original article that got me going on all this, by the way.

Now some pontification.

Perhaps, and maybe I am going way out on a limb here, just maybe, one way of improving on something like this would be to, oh, I don’t know, NOT turn it off because of a “government shutdown”.

Call me silly, but if we can get surprised by a rock hurtling in from space, something that might give us only a few hours of warning before releasing the energy of (at best) a small earthquake, and (very possibly) a hydrogen bomb, something that might even be named so badly that no one (not even someone on TikTok) could make it rhyme with anything in in any language, then MAYBE we ought to have whoever is working on that … you know … actually working on that … rather than sitting at home waiting for a Senate vote. And not just the naming part, but the looking part and the technology part and the modeling part, and all the other parts too.

It would be great to be joking here. I am not.

I write all of this because I am truly still interested in all of the amazing things that NASA and the whole of the space sector does every day (unless they are furloughed or cut or DERP-ed, or whatever). It really is amazing stuff.

But it is more than amazing. It matters.

And while it is sometimes hard for them to tell that story organizationally, it is not hard to sit here for an hour and tell the story another way … to talk about Krisztian and his telescope, to talk about detection percentages and explosions, to talk about flashes so bright they leave people with sunburn at night, and to fully expect that someone will understand that science matters; technology matters; space matters.

And if you forget that for too long … well, maybe ask your nearest dinosaur how that turns out.

It is Friday and I hope all of you have a great weekend. In a year that began with a “fork in the road”, many of you remain in the midst of yet another twist in the road. But stay strong and if you see someone struggling in your “friend group”, help them out…a simple email, text, or DM, can mean a lot more than you can imagine it would. A phone call or (gasp) face to face visit … well, that would probably help you both in ways you would struggle to even describe.

No matter what, remember: This passes.

J