Stuck Inside The Space Bubble
Keith’s note: Speaking as a person bitten by a space bug at age 6 in 1961, nothing in this Planetary Society piece “A cosmic perspective worth fighting for“ is actually incorrect per se. But it is written from the warped perspective of one person inside the space bubble talking to others inside the same space bubble. Anyone who takes 30 seconds looking outside that bubble will realize that the real world – where all of the non-space converts and decision makers spend 100% of their time – has no time for lofty goals and inspirational things. It is all about meat and potatoes, paychecks, whether or not you can love someone, all covered with a deep sauce of ‘us Vs them’. Space people need to read the room and adapt their strategies to the world as it is – not as we would like it to be. Ad Astra etc.
3 responses to “Stuck Inside The Space Bubble”
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This picture captures the issues perfectly. Head in the sand has been the consistent choice I see in many NASA programs, but make no mistake that it is people who want status quo who are choosing to put their heads in the sand when presented with a real challenge or positive disruption. The major doers can see clearly what is going on, used to joke about it instead of crying because the forces against positive cultural change were exhausting, but are now increasingly over it or have already left the agency all-together. The chaos of the new admin seems to have magnified the fundamental issues that were already there.
I wish the best for those still trying to make things work, but please do not near-kill yourself with exhaustion trying when most others are just not trying. Your job will change you before you ever change it when cultural change is this difficult.To those keeping with the technical work despite the crazy, hats off!!!
Do not get me started on those technical leads or engineers who are being aggressively silenced in the name of schedule and sabotaged by the management they trusted right now. I do wish some light would be put on that because these are the critical thinkers of the agency. To those people, your sanity is not worth it when they have betrayed you. Please go and get yourself back. There are other career paths for you that will enrage you.
Ha last word was embrace not enrage!!
The difficult thing is that, from the day I stepped foot at my nasa center, I realized how our public relations misses the mark. So many newbies had similar remarks when they joined. NASA is in a bubble and they have no idea how the rest of the world views them, for better or worse. Especially feds who have only worked there with no outside experience. Sometimes it is difficult to look into the mirror and admit the hard things but they need to collectively read the room.