NASA Future In-Space Operations: Design Space for Space Design
NASA FISO Presentation: Design Space for Space Design – Cybernetics, Human-Centered Design
“Tibor Balint is a researcher at the Royal College of Art, School of Design, finalizing his second PhD in Innovation Design Engineering. He spent 4 years at NASA-HQ as the Senior Technical Advisor; the Program Executive for GCD at STMD; and a Senior Technologist at OCT. At JPL he worked for 8 years as a mission architect and technologist.”
Note: The audio file and presentation are available online and to download.
Interesting-describes all about the problem-but never hits the nail on the head. In Human Space Flight, which as shown is the preponderance of the budget, NASA has no strategy., in fact they do not even have a vision of what they want to do or where they want to go. There are lots of ideas: (1) make space part of the economic sphere, which is where we were in 1984 and where Shuttle and ISS were supposed to take us; (2) moon bases, (3) Mars flags and footprints and even (4) colonization.
In the midst of Shuttle, NASA decided they’d rather have fun flying the Shuttle and spending lots of money and resources to do so, instead of improving on the technology or making it more effective or safer. NASA wasted that initiative. ISS was and still is another opportunity for #1, but again it takes making it efficient and cost effective to operate-NASA is not trying to improve those. They’ve mainly given lip service to trying to find some users, Their selection of a CASIS which is no value added is part of that lip service.
Thanks to both the last and current Administrators, now NASA says they are on a path to Mars, except that if they don’t accomplish (1) first, they will never get to 2, 3 or 4. So it is pretty simple, NASA need to go back to the vision that got Shuttle and ISS sold and then they need to establish a plan to get them from where they are today. Not all hope is lost however; maybe Space X and one or two of the others will get us there.
But NASA is no longer on a path that gets it anywhere.
“Interesting-describes all about the problem-but never hits the nail on the head.” I thought the presentation was a bit scattered.
As far as I’m concerned, the actual thesis of the presentation was on slide 33: “Designers can play important roles in designing the design environments and improving communications between design teams; with stakeholders; with sponsors; and the public.” For those of us who have worked with institutional change, enterprise architecture, and system of systems engineering, this statement is obvious and well known. Engineering design processes are social systems that can be engineered like any other.
Over the years, I’ve seen countless ideas presented, and projects funded–large and small, attempting to address organizational problems. (For those who have been around long enough, you might remember Reengineering from the 90s.) Eventually I became jaded at encountering yet another approach to fix what ails an organization. What I predict is, while his approach is interesting, it will remain a boutique approach, not gaining large scale cross organizational support. I feel bad about being such a curmudgeon.
My experience with all of these ideas on organizational change -after 45 years-nearly 40 at NASA as a contractor and government, and at several NASA centers, is that this is all ‘fluff’ and unnecessary as long as there is a goal and a plan to get there. The NASA workers are usually first rate and will get what they need to accomplish the goal. Talk of technology being depleted is nonsense. As we see now, there is no goal and no leadership and so the workers don’t really know how they are supposed to be contributing.
Curmudgeon is an honorable profession, Sir.
“Designers can play important roles in designing the design environments and improving communications between design teams”
Now THAT is the kind of crap that gives my profession – design – a bad rap.
The most provocative statement of the presentation for me was on slide 4: “NASA’s technology base is largely depleted.” It was just an assumption of the presentation, with no supporting evidence. While I’m willing to easily believe it, I’d still like to see the case made. Maybe it has been somewhere.