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What a Communications Pro Says About NASA's #JourneyToMars Public Engagement

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 3, 2015
Filed under

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

6 responses to “What a Communications Pro Says About NASA's #JourneyToMars Public Engagement”

  1. John Campbell says:
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    Some time ago I coughed up a cute quotable, mostly because, post accident (Challenger) we kept hearing the phrase “NASA Management”:

    “Leaders maximize gains, managers merely minimize losses”.

    Post-Challenger, when SSF was still, for the most part, just a set of drawings and foils, I observed– I think it was in sci.space.tech— that NASA suffered from performance anxiety, which drove me to think about what was happening.

    While there seems to have been some effort here on Earth to deny dreams by focusing on myopic nightmares…

    Who leads?
    And who manages?

  2. Littrow says:
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    I was glad to see Schimemi actually say that if you want something, you have to tell Congress what it is or else they won’t fund it.That, at least is correct thinking; too many NASA managers have told me that we need to wait for Congress to decide what we want and need. That philosophy got us to where we are today.

  3. Littrow says:
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    There is little leadership in NASA today. There has been little leadership for at least a decade. Leadership, more than anything else, requires vision. There was no vision when they shut down Shuttle with absolutely no other US options for launching humans. In terms of a lunar or planetary program, there was no vision in establishing Constellation or Orion; the greatest lack of vision was the NASA management’s throwing away everything-throwing away Shuttle elements and experience; throwing away ISS elements and experience. Together with the lack of vision is the lack of communications. They needed strong continuity and strong communications in making sure they were lining up payloads for ISS; instead they trashed everything we had worked for on Shuttle and NASA Mir. Just as much as trashing the experiments and science and research programs, they trashed the people and the experience that made those earlier programs work. And today they lack vision and communications in establishing a meaningful program and in telling people what they are trying to do. There is no vision and no inspiration today. The comments of the NAC committee appear to confirm that there is no leadership.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      I guess I thought that years before the shuttle was retired there were hordes of NASA planners running hither and thither madly trying to figure out how to continue HSF.

      I thought there would be a real sense of urgency and that this was a problem that NASA could solve. That failure, as they say, wasn’t an option.

      Turns out I was wrong.

      • Littrow says:
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        I think that plenty of NASA planners were running hither and thither, but then came Griffin, a true leader who edicted an insoluble solution. All the managers fell in line supporting the great leader, and sealing NASA’s fate.

      • numbers_guy101 says:
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        Yes, there were hundreds, if not thousands of NASA and industry people, especially after the mid-90’s, looking at what would be of Human Space Flight after the Shuttle, and after ISS. That’s a story someone should tell one day. So much good work. So many studies, and still more studies.

        The DC-X/DCX-A, X-33 and X-38/CRV were among the rare times we saw hardware. I walked beneath the X-33 being air-framed, and walked around the facilities taking shape in the desert. Well, we all know these didn’t all end as planned.

        There was urgency. Some people spoke frankly about how all the work was urgent and important against the day we’d lose another Shuttle. So we would be in a position to do the right thing when that sad, inevitable day arrived. This was a handful of people, not many. Though perhaps it was the type of talk people just didn’t want to admit to.

        Ironically, some smaller programs that were under the radar, like what became X-37, and even commercial cargo, would come to fruition. Commercial crew would end up at KSC, of all places (you’d think cargo ended up at KSC, then commercial crew at JSC), and the next NASA cost-plus rocket would be expendable, not reusable. In a way the later was predictable if we had been honest about it at the time as to who controlled the money, who sat at the table, and who did not.

        Oh yes, there’s a story here. About incentives, politicians, good intentions, lack of vision, or too much vision trapped inside a box we didn’t even realize we were in. Failure was not an option – it was a hidden assumption we realized too late.

        Now to hit “undo”. We have met the Borg. Now what to do.