If you haven’t read “Who Moved My Cheese?” this might be a good time to go pick up a copy or steal one from your neighborhood “change and transition” specialist. It’s the story of two mice (named “Sniff” and “Scurry”) and two ‘Littlepeople’ (named “Hem” and “Haw”) who are beings who are as small as mice but who “looked and acted a lot like people today.”

The four are in search of cheese in a maze. Don’t ask why these “Littlepeople” don’t have access to alternative means of sustenance like water, tacos, or Snickers bars. Or why they’re the size of mice. They’re stuck in a maze and they just want cheese. (You wouldn’t crave a block of meuster if you were 5 inches tall and confined to a labyrinth of hallways with only mice as company?).

Anyway, the two mice and two Littlepeople find a supply of cheese in the maze and get fat and happy and then the cheese supply vanishes and they are forced to deal with the changed access-to-cheese situation. I won’t spoil the story (it’ll take you 45 minutes to read), but the gist is that there are four types of people when it comes to change: 1) people who “scurry” to get things done no matter what the situation and adapt quickly and aggressively to change; 2) people who “sniff” out change and are perceptive to warning signs to see it coming, thereby positioning themselves to adapt; 3) people who “haw” and fear any change to their comfortable routines but ultimately learn to laugh at their fears and adapt; and 4) people who “hem” themselves into stubborn routines, resisting any change to their habits or behaviors, even when it is clear the only way to survive is to change.

The paradigm in space is clearly changing. Our cheese has been moved. Even if a strong resistance from Congress saves the Constellation Program, the writing on the wall is clear: change or cease to exist.

The cheese is moving, but what cheese are we talking about here?

Is the administration saying that the “cheese” is the ability to put people into space and that NASA, with its 50 years of spaceflight heritage and founding principles built around ensuring safe access to space for human space explorers, is hemmed into a stubborn routine incapable of change?

Is the message that the values and technical competency of our workforce are no match for the new, nimble players in the completely unproven commercial spaceflight sector—or the minds of competing nations like Russia, China and soon to be India?

While I consider myself a “sniff”, at least occasionally perceptive to change and willing to adapt to search for new cheese if that’s what’s needed, something doesn’t sit right with me here. Maybe I’m actually a “haw” who fears change because it threatens my routine of assumptions about NASA’s purpose, competence and value to the nation…

But isn’t looking for new cheese what NASA’s all about?! It’s in our very charter! Our existence is a bold statement by this country and humanity itself that we are not content to sit back, get fat, and accept the world as it is in spite of overwhelming bureaucratic and technical hurdles, or the cynics who label such endeavors as “impossible”. We will not rest on our laurels, nor stand on the edge of a frontier and shy away from the unknown.

The very thought of complacency should strike deep, bone-chilling fear into the hearts and minds of those whose passion is Exploration. NASA stands for the highest standards of integrity, discipline, responsibility and technical excellence and our existence is an example of the best of what our species is capable of.

So while the space access swiss may be moving, don’t tell me the exploration Monterey Jack is moving too and that our values—those same bedrock principles that formed this nation and still represent the enduring nature of the human spirit—don’t tell me those are all of a sudden obsolete or worse, irrelevant.

Don’t tell me that NASA is dead, that our role is to play second fiddle to other nations and companies whose ambitions are greater, whose resolve stronger, whose leadership better adapted to change.

Don’t tell me its acceptable to stand on a new frontier and choose to back away.

No, NASA represents something rare and very much relevant for us now and in the future. We represent change itself. We represent that bold proclamation to the universe that we cannot stand on the edge of a frontier and not act. We will seek new horizons and in doing so, we will lift up the human race.

If we lose that, we’re doing future generations a grave injustice.

If we can build on that unrelenting resolve that Exploration is itself an act of searching for new cheese, we just might stand on the shoulders of giants, and see new light.

And so, I don’t like giving up our commitment to create what was billed as the ‘exploration infrastructure’ of the future. But I’m behind this new search for new cheese ONLY if it truly frees us up to do more of what we were created to do—explore, explore, explore. I think it will and I’m going to help make it happen.

Because the cheese that’s moving isn’t just a destination, like that pie in the sky we once visited many, many years ago. The real cheese that’s moving is our reliance on “old, moldly cheese”. It’s the inability to change that put us in this situation. And if this change brings about a renewed culture which takes along with it the best of what made us great and creates a new atmosphere of innovation and discovery, built around the ability to never stop looking for that new cheese, what could be more in line with the spirit of exploration than that?

So if we’re really going to abandon this stinky limburger for a fancy gold palate assortment of bries, cheddars, provolones, and colbys, we’d better remember that it’s the act of finding new cheese that we’re all about in the first place.

The best laid schemes
O’ mice and men
Often go astray.

Robert Burns

“Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac

The new NASA budget is a fundamental challenge to the way we operate in the human spaceflight community.  It asks us to stop expecting Washington or another JFK to tell us what to do and demands that we determine what we can offer the nation and set out to break as many boundaries as we can, while respecting the fiscal realities this country faces.

We can either fight this “paradigm shift,” as some have called it, or we can embrace it and make it our own.  Human space exploration is not going to die because of the cancellation of the Constellation program.  The American human space program itself will only die if we fail to rise to this challenge.  The NASA community has core assets and capabilities, such as the premier ability of JSC’s Mission Operations Directorate to conduct launch, ascent, and reentry of human crews, that must be conserved and shared if we are to succeed.

No, the commercial space entrepreneurs are not ready to fly astronauts yet.  However, NASA is chartered by the Space Act to foster commercial enterprises in space.  Go look at it if you don’t believe me. The agency is obligated by law to help them grow, while still meeting its own needs.  The question before us is how we can bring the best of NASA and its people to create this new public-private partnership in LEO and determine a more innovative and sustainable path for exploring the rest of the solar system.

Yes, these are uncertain times.  I know I prefer certainty as an engineer. Given that the most common complaint I’ve heard about the new budget is the lack of an explicit destination or timeline, it would seem I’m not alone in that preference.  The adversity to risk that is endemic in our professional culture and, frankly, our society only compounds the anxiety.  I ask you, my friends and colleagues, to not despair, though.  We may never have an opportunity like this again.

We have a chance to break down the institutional barriers that have stymied further advancement into space time and time again.  We have a chance to escape the overbearing current of organizational inertia and find enabling processes, systems, and technologies that can take us further than we even imagined.  We have an open horizon and the Administrator has asked us to help him chart the course.

I think the choice is straightforward: Adapt and thrive or go find something else to do.  There are many problems to solve in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.  There is no lack of work to be done.  We need serious, dedicated, and passionate people to  turn this very high-level view of NASA’s future into a cohesive, coherent reality.  There is no one right answer to be handed down from on high.  That’s why we need everyone’s ideas and inputs.

I got into this field because I believe our species’ future depends on exploring space and settling the solar system.  I know that many of you share this view.  The military doesn’t quit their core mission when one of their programs gets canceled.  They find a way to get the job done with the parameters they’ve been given.  So must we.

President Obama's JFK Moment, Buzz Aldrin, Huffington Post

"Thank you, Mr. President.

That's what we should say to President Barack Obama in light of his Fiscal Year 2011 space budget for NASA. The President courageously decided to redirect our nation's space policy away from the foolish and underfunded Moon race that has consumed NASA for more than six years, aiming instead at boosting the agency's budget by more than $1 billion more per year over the next five years, topping off at $100 billion for NASA between now and 2015."