Dava Newman – New Deputy Administrator at NASA
Keith’s note: Dava Newman from MIT will be the next Deputy Administrator at NASA – if confirmed.
P.S. She’s cool.
– MIT bio
– Dava Newman – Aerospace Engineer/Sailor, PBS
– Shrink-wrapping Spacesuits. MIT
New Deputy Administrator at NASA, same Congress and Administration. Probably not much will change.
Maybe she can keep the barbarians at the gate. đŸ˜‰
Congress will change in January. The Administration 2 years later.
I’m not sure I can see any candidates from either party who will change NASA priorities or resources, at least not for the better.
same lake duck administration, too.
though a nomination opens up the agency to all sorts of questions from congress about ARM, commercial crew, Orion/SLS from the various detractors/fanboys. it will be interesting to see how much of the hearing becomes an attack on the president’s “vision for NASA” over the past 6 years.
COTS and Commercial Crew have happened during an INCREDIBLY difficult political climate. The right people can make a difference under any circumstances. I hope Dava is that kind of person.
I agree. Given the degree of opposition, which would not even let the Administration divest itself of Constellation, the preservation of Commercial Crew and ISS is a major accomplishment.
As if our increasingly disfunctional Senate could approve anyone – 25% of embassies have no ambassadors!
Because it’s become more important in Congress to posture for power than to work together to run the country.
Her pressure suits may make a good underwear for armoured spacesuits on Mars. The main suit would need to protect the astronaut against sharp rocks but not the pressure difference.
It is more likely that the extra weight of an armored suit will result in more casualties than a tough outer garment for the skinsuit. A robotic and powered armor might not have that problem, but will add maintenance time. Remember that ISS has only 0.5 crew-months per month right now for research, because ISS maintenance takes 5.5 crew-months per month. Adding this cost for every suit may be a deal-breaker, especially for Mars’ settlers.
Even tough outer garments need only be worn when a settler moves away from the base. This would especially be the case if the bases are put inside the lava tube caves already found on both Mars and the Moon. Factoring in the operational capabilities of a settlement concept *must* take these necessities into consideration
That’s be a good idea, but, if I remember from a talk she gave, Newman’s version isn’t capable of withstanding the pressure difference of Mars’ near vacuum. It’d need an additional active pressure system. Other researchers are working on electrically activated materials.
The good thing about separating the “armour” from the pressure suit is that the armour layer can be overlapping plates, making joints much simpler. It also means you can have “indoor vacuum” suits, where an unpressurised structure (garage/cave) provides protection, allowing you to work with a less cumbersome suit. And customise the level of “armour” to the job. Dirty/abrasion outdoor surface, radiation/micrometeorite open space, semi-protected vehicle, etc.
Flexible joints in an armor suit won’t by itself solve mobility problems if the inner suit is pressurized, because the inner suit will still take a lot of effort to bend. However an armor suit would make flexible mechanical pressure suits like the Bio-Suit much more feasible since the Bio-Suit just has to provide pressure, not protection.
Bio-Suits could also work in an unpressurized structure like you are describing.
In that second paragraph, I was using “pressure suit” as a generic term, but was referring to skin-suits (like Bio-Suit). “A suit that provides pressure”, rather than “a suit that is pressurised”. Confusing, sorry.
Only drawback with Bio-Suits is the low pressure. Certainly feasible as they already work with low pressure spacesuits on the U.S. side of ISS, but it requires pre-breathing oxygen and/or camping out in the airlock overnight at lower pressure. However spacewalks on ISS don’t occur that often, but on the Moon or Mars I would think EVA’s will be an almost daily occurrence so it will be a bit of a hassle. Maybe they could have both – full pressure “step-in” spacesuits for shorter EVA’s like going outside to retrieve something or to adjust an experiment. But if they were going to be doing a full day of work outside they would camp out overnight then in the morning get into their Bio-Suit, then go out to the “garage” (I like that term) and put on their armor suit. Then hit the garage door opener and head out in their rover vehicle.
so that is why there was that flurry of “new” stories about her suit which hasn’t seemed to change or advanced since the last round of press coverage. a trail balloon of her standing in the community before the nomination. will she be willing to give up her suit project for the large role the Deputy Admin plays?
You are just being goofy. Seriously. You are also alleging unethical behavior on the part of some rather honest people.
what unethical behavior? I am just saying there was a flurry of new articles on her suit though none of them really made it seem like the design had advanced the concept or gotten larger community buyin that this was the way to go for future missions. it wasn’t a slight on her just seemed odd why the articles since she still seemed to be struggling for funding/buyin/breakthroughs. must be a timely coincidence that now she is put up for nomination that is all.
“Seems” “Odd”? You are just making this up. Call the White House – and all of the publications who wrote articles – and ask them if there was any coordination. You are implying that someone engaged in unethical behavior in the process of nominating a person for a presidential appointment. Knock it off.
administrations do trial balloons/leaks of potential options all the time for candidates no one claims they are unethical. like i said then it must be a timely coincidence .
You are utterly wrong. There was no trial ballooning in the news media about the MIT suits or Dava Newman. You are done posting your conspiracy theories. Got it?
The role of the Deputy should be to manage the agency, do the “down and in”, while the Administrator should do the “up and out”. No real credentials here for the Deputy job, business as usual I guess.
On one hand I am a little shocked, she does not have the political background that most deputy administrators of the past have had. However, I have had the pleasure of conversing with Dana at several technical meetings and conferences over the past decade and I am heartened at the possibility of her being the next deputy. For the most part she is apolitical and can make friends on both sides of the isle, she has a passion for STEM and educating young American’s and most important, I think she could be a voice of technical reason in a NASA that has in my perspective been aimless and technically divided for the past 6 to 8 years.
Yes. She seems to be a good choice to put some new energy into reaching out beyond NASA’s usual suspects while also having actual engineering and science skills.
it appears she just has job experience at the university bureaucracy level. I think the big government, slow moving congress, and a lame duck president will make her move back to MIT. I wish her luck.
I am concerned about the effect of the job on Dava. She is intelligent, competent, a great teacher and a great researcher and really easy to work with. She also has a history of getting things done. The top NASA jobs, especially under the current leadership, doesn’t seem to be interested in getting too much accomplished. In a subservient role maybe she won’t get too much of the blame.
I hope she’s not a “kiss-up” to politicians as past and present administrators have and are being. We need someone who’s logical and more motivated, concerned about NASA and the dismal future its headed.
You mean someone who will tell the House Appropriations Subcommittee to stop micromanaging NASA?
Someone who has the “guts” to stand up and say what is true and stop the “panhandling” being done, presently in Washington. NASA’s operating without any priorities to govern its future and has lost focus on its mission.
Again I ask, what candidate on the Republican side other than Newt Gingrich has proposed any increased role for NASA? And remember that he was laughed at for it – in the Republican primary. GW Bush was verbally supportive of Constellation – once, Then he failed to provide funding for it. I am at least hopeful that a Republican president would have sufficient confidence in Congress to cancel SLS/Orion without a major fight. But even that is uncertain.
Indeed. And none of them ‘believed’ in evolution, either.
Did he propose an increase for NASA. He talked about a moon base/colony, but did he mean through NASA, or by diverting NASA’s funding?
The COTS and Commercial Crew Development projects are due to finish in the next president’s first term. Further delivers of cargo and people will presumably be charged to the Operation’s budget. Hence the development people can be given new tasks.
As the USA is still in a recession I suspect that there will be a repeat of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009. This act provided the initial seed money for CCDev. Money from a new act could be used to develop things like transfer stages, spacestations, habitats and landers. If people start now there is about 2 years to write proposals and prepare costings. Dava Newman will need such information to steer the proposals past 2 Presidents and Congress.
Normal budget processes are more likely than another massive stimulus. At least Frank Wolf is retiring.
Either way costings will need preparing.
‘Starvation budgets’ are a direct result of the Church of Austerity that swept the world half a decade ago. Have a look at Kansas or many European countries…it didn’t work. It’s simply a right-wing cloak around the longstanding policy of shrinking government at any cost.
If the Senate does flip you will see much more of the same. And by the way, the working stiffs like me and lots of folks here will struggle with 1985 salaries in 2015.
The chance that NASA will ever see anything like leadership is nearly zero. The Democrats cannot do it because they can’t get the funding, and the Republicans will only go far enough to secure jobs.
Our country is in a big f**ked up mess no matter what side you vote.
Oh. And throw in $100,000 loans for kids getting out of college.
Yet when I try to explain why NASA needs to focus on practical research and development that creates jobs and exports and improves our lives and our environment, I get nowhere.
I hope she supports the development of new breakthroughs in propulsion technologies. http://youtu.be/6zh9abFF3ZE