SLS Charts From Broken NASA NAC Telecon
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Keith’s note: The NAC Human Exploration and Operations Committee is meeting today. After an hour the telcon has no functional audio so no one really knows what Bill Gerstenmaier is saying. But he posted these charts. Not sure why we need this deep space habitat, whether there is still a #JourneyToMars or a pivot to #BackToThe Moon. Why NASA is chronically unable to do a simple telecon is just baffling. I did them from a cold tent at Everest Base camp at 17,600 feet in 2009 over a BGAN satphone many times a day.
So, EML space lab and DST “home port”. Are we looking at the program now? Anyone get any feeling that this has been submitted to the politicians for approval?
Rome, and NASA, are burning and no one cares… five launches in seven years for SLS and this is space exploration?
“Why NASA is chronically unable to do a simple telecon is just baffling.”
On the Cassini project, we’ve done almost all of the planning and operations through teleconferences and email. When this part of the mission really got started, around 2000, there was a very steep learning curve.
I noticed that an important factor was how much time people spend on the phone as opposed to attending a meeting in person. The people who were always attending in person didn’t realize that, no, they can’t face towards the screen and away from the microphone. No, they shouldn’t point to things on the screen with a stick or laser pointer. The people who typically called in picked this up pretty quickly, and it showed when they made in-person presentations. Things like making sure your line is muted are also something people seem to need experience to learn.
But don’t see any excuse for things like poorly placed microphones, shabby connections, and some institutions insistence on using home-grown rather than commercial video conferencing software. I hope they’ve mostly gotten over this.
The most reliable teleconferencing system we used was a medical CME program over 30 years ago. The presenter sent a set of 35mm slides in advance and gave the talk over a phone with a speaker. The only tech failure was rarely when a slide would stick on the carosel. Teleconferencing has improved somewhat in recent years but there are still frequent problems. It probably works best when there is no conference room and everyone calls in from their desks.
Example of why need ***good*** equipment (not cheap) and the know-how. OK to skimp on the video but audio has to be top quality, ask any videographer and they will tell you nobody complains about poor video but poor audio will be loss of business (as we argue here). From my experience (I’ve done some but not much), not many people know how to provide live video with good audio (exception broadcast stations with massive infrastructure), kind of like not many people can do orbital mechanics and the Rocket Equation (but sure can provide lots of opinions about the space program).
From my own experience, I agree. Good audio is much more important than good video. You can have a viable teleconference by putting the presentations online or emailing them out before the meeting, and then having an audio-only teleconference. Video and live sharing of the speaker’s screen are nice, but they aren’t crucial. And trying to get them right can actually be a distraction and waste of time. I really don’t understand why this is so hard; it’s all pretty obvious after you’ve been on a few dozen telecons, and lots of the people involved have that much experience.
When will work begin on the engines to be used after the SSMEs are used up? When I see that commitment, I’ll believe in the commitment to SLS.
As far as I know, that’s already underway (i.e. funded).
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