NASA Shutdown Plan, 16 December 2018 (pdf)
“Pursuant to OMB Circular A-11, Section 124.2, NASA is hereby submitting a revised shutdown plan in the event of a lapse in appropriations, updating the plan submitted to OMB on September 25, 2015, In this plan, NASA continues to require each NASA Center to provide for protection of life and property. The Decision on what personnel should be excepted from furlough is very fact-specific , and DIrectors in charge of NASA Centers are in the best position to make detailed decisions regarding the suspension of ongoing, regular functions which could imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property.”
“NASA’s plan recognizes that the excepted activities include the following:
– Space launch hardware processing activities, which are necessary to prevent harm to life or property.
– Tracking, operation, and support of the ISS and operating satellites necessary for safety and protection of property.
– Completion or phase-down of research activities in cases where serious damage to property would result from temporary suspension of the activity.”
And yet again we find ourselves here, a place where we have been before. Although our government may yet again be in rough shape, space is still there, waiting for us, and nothing our lawmakers can do will change that. Tonight I see stars peering down at us between the clouds, waiting for us to sort all this out so we can reach up and grab them.
I wonder why reading these sorts of lists makes me so sleepy?
I sort of liked the comma in the first item. Assuming it was intentional and to create independent clauses. Ok. That’s a pretty esoteric and geeky thing to find entertaining. So you’re probably right.
In my experience, phrases like that are directly copied from relevant legislation.
Say, for instance, I want relief from a front yard provision. I go to the County Land Development Code, where I will find, somewhere, that someplace in Officialdom there’s a person tho can do what I want her to do; but she can only grant the request in cases where specific criteria are met. Then the criteria are listed.
Bingo! Copy, Paste. And now our official has terra firm below her feet. Life is good!
Sure. And you probably don’t want to know how much time and effort goes into that within NASA. Having those magic words to cut and paste is incredibly valuable when you’re writing a proposal. Enough so that a huge amount of time goes into writing Decadal Surveys and Science Definition team reports, just to make sure the magic words you want are in the final document.
In the case of the shutdown, the words “necessary to prevent harm to life or property” were almost certainly cut and pasted in the way you suggest. But I don’t think the comma was. Assuming it was intentional (and that’s hit or miss…) it makes the sentence two, completely separate statements. Launch processing activities will continue. Launch processing activities are necessary to prevent… Without the comma, it would limit the meaning of launch processing activities. The statement would mean that the subset of activities which were necessary would continue.
In the same way, the Republican National Convention in 1984 spent a whole day arguing about a comma. Did the party platform oppose “tax increases which are harmful to the economy”, or “tax increases, which are harmful to the economy”?
The comma is intentional. Systems and the manpower to monitor and operate them are only declared “essential” if they are necessary to prevent harm to life or property. Some systems were left on (such as phones or backbone networks) with a skeleton crew because they are supporting activities that have been deemed essential or are being operated by non-civil service contractors with some money left on a forward funded contracts.
Many co-located commercial processing activities still use Government managed power, cooling, site security and communication resources. Personnel doing essential work will not be paid until the government returns from the shutdown. By law, non-exempted civil servants are not allowed to volunteer their time or use government equipment during a shutdown. The visibility into NASA the public sees can appear hit-or-miss. If the shutdown becomes protracted, IT Systems (especially publicly visible systems) can be at risk or take longer to return to service because there are limited facility people monitoring cooling, power, RAID disk management and IT Security.
They told us to check NASA email for updates on the shutdown. Oh…wait…we can’t access NASA email on our personal devices anymore…and we can’t go into work. Bummer.