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NASA Asks For Employee Questions For Bridenstine Town Hall

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 17, 2018
NASA Asks For Employee Questions For Bridenstine Town Hall

Keith’s note: NASA has developed a bunch of pre-prepared questions to be asked of NASA Administrator Bridenstine. NASA Employees were allowed to submit questions at http://nasa.gov/townhall. Then everyone had a chance to see them all and upvote their favorites. Oddly, a lot of these questions would certainly put Bridenstine on the spot if they were asked.
Tune in to the NASA Town Hall With Jim Bridenstine at 11:00 am EDT on NASA TV to see which of these questions get asked – and which ones are actually spontaneous. You have your user guide to see which is which. I am told that the top questions will be asked.
Reader note: “The top two questions (one about full-cost accounting, and one angling “diversity” toward accommodations for disabilities) have 70 more votes than the next top question, which is strange because neither of those questions were even ON the list at 4:25pm EDT yesterday. See attached … the sudden viral nature of those two new “top questions” seems very strange indeed.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

10 responses to “NASA Asks For Employee Questions For Bridenstine Town Hall”

  1. Mike Dexter says:
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    Shocking…they didn’t ask the questions people voted on…
    Whoever the host was did an awful job, he kept trying to reinterpret submitted questions into his own words. Just read the questions as submitted! Geez.

  2. Skinny_Lu says:
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    Very impressed with Administrator Bridenstine. The first question, he hit it out the park. How are you qualified for this job? He was a Naval Aviator and flew from carriers and that is a kick-ass resume. PLUS, he is a politician who can carefully answer questions like a lawyer. That is the person we need to deal with Congress. Bravo Zulu, “Brainstem”

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      TheNavy activities are impressive, but how they train a NASA Administrator isn’t clear, aside form the emphasis the military puts on leadership.

  3. Skinny_Lu says:
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    No mention of SLS… not once. =)
    On the other hand, he mentioned “Commercial Partners” several times…

  4. Donald Barker says:
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    Keith, thanks for all the good information here.

  5. ghall says:
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    As an outsider and by that I mean never worked for NASA or a contractor, very poor questions about YOUR future with an organization. There are some good ones down below but the big picture as I see…they didn’t get the votes. Some of these top questions are HR/Business questions. You can ask them…but someone in that position is going to heavily lean on HR. We had something similar. CEO flies in, never been on the property before and is asking questions and feedback. Our questions were engaging, we let the CEO know we are ready to grow/evolve and need his support. Later that year our branch gets a huge investment and expansion. IMO, questions like “your view on climate change” followed by “as a non-political organization” are wasted questions. You are just going to get rhetorical answers, because frankly the question fits the answer. Retirement benefits, initiatives, future in 5 years, etc are questions you need to ask to grow an organization. But I have a strong feeling the ones asking and voting these questions must know that and just want to be petty and therein lies the future of NASA. I’m that person who has followed NASA since I’ve been a kid. I’m a space fanatic and most of the time (not always) NASA continues to disappoint. If you can’t tell this one really set me off. I’m sure the young pups (and yes I stated that to insult us old people) at SpaceX could asked better questions about their future within the organization.

    • Natalie Clark says:
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      As a relatively recent retiree from NASA your observations are right on the money. The workplace is very petty. Not sure age is really the problem, when (deputy director at the time) came to the research center (larc) where I was working both young and old asked an interesting question after he presents a roadmap of where nasa was going. One of the young new hire asked what our centers role was as in the presentation it wasn’t clear.the NASA Deputy director then answered by discussing how the programs don’t want to fund research. A senior engineer/branch head then stood up and asked what can we about that that so our research can be more relevant to the programs. The nasa Deputy Director was silent and had no answer. Both the LARC Director and deputy director said nothing. A new hire engineer from a top tier university then stood up and said he had just turned down job offers from industry because NASA said they needed researchers and was excited to accept the nasa job. The reaction from all the directors was pathetic diversionary non answer. Looking around the room I knew what people were thinking. The old were counting the days to retirement. The young were putting sprucing up their resumes on their to do list. The lazy were thinking I don’t care I get paid for not working anyway.

      I can’t imagine a ceo coming to a company research division site to discuss plans and vision only to say hey we don’t have you in our plans because nobody want to fund research – but don’t worry we’ll still pay your salaries – and can’t do anything about it if the programs don’t want to fund research. Keep up doing whatever it is you All do.

  6. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    Hopefully he takes time to read through the full list because watching the video the questions asked were reframed, ignored and massaged compared to that list you posted. Interesting way to gather the pulse of the agency and what are the common man issues troubling the workforce assuming there wasn’t any shenanigans in the upvoting scheme.

  7. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    At what point do Bridenstine’s training wheels come off ? There are so many real issues and programs needing adult supervision currently. For instance, are ISS and SLS 4-letter words ?

  8. jamesmuncy says:
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    That’s a pretty wide range of topics and perspectives/biases on the topics. Certainly an intellectually diverse bunch of participants. “Herding cats” doesn’t even come close to describing the challenges ahead…