{"id":7697,"date":"2010-02-05T10:09:42","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T10:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/the-challenge-and-the-opportunity\/"},"modified":"2010-02-05T10:09:42","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T10:09:42","slug":"the-challenge-and-the-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/nasa\/the-challenge-and-the-opportunity.php","title":{"rendered":"The challenge and the opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac<\/a><\/p>\n

The new NASA budget is a fundamental challenge to the way we operate in the human spaceflight community.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

We can either fight this “paradigm shift,” as some have called it<\/a>, or we can embrace it and make it our own.\u00a0 Human space exploration is not going to die because of the cancellation of the Constellation program.\u00a0 The American human space program itself will only die if we fail to rise to this challenge.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

No, the commercial space entrepreneurs are not ready to fly astronauts yet.\u00a0 However, NASA is chartered by the Space Act to foster commercial enterprises in space.\u00a0 Go look at it<\/a> if you don’t believe me. The agency is obligated by law to help them grow, while still meeting its own needs.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Yes, these are uncertain times.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The adversity to risk that is endemic in our professional culture and, frankly, our society only compounds the anxiety.\u00a0 I ask you, my friends and colleagues, to not despair, though.\u00a0 We may never have an opportunity like this again.<\/p>\n

We have a chance to break down the institutional barriers that have stymied further advancement into space time and time again.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We have an open horizon and the Administrator has asked us to help him chart the course.<\/p>\n

I think the choice is straightforward: Adapt and thrive or go find something else to do.\u00a0 There are many problems to solve in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.\u00a0 There is no lack of work to be done.\u00a0 We need serious, dedicated, and passionate people to\u00a0 turn this very high-level view of NASA’s future into a cohesive, coherent reality.\u00a0 There is no one right answer to be handed down from on high.\u00a0 That’s why we need everyone’s ideas and inputs.<\/p>\n

I got into this field because I believe our species’ future depends on exploring space and settling the solar system.\u00a0 I know that many of you share this view.\u00a0 The military doesn’t quit their core mission when one of their programs gets canceled.\u00a0 They find a way to get the job done with the parameters they’ve been given.\u00a0 So must we.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac The new NASA budget is a fundamental challenge to the way we operate in the human spaceflight community.\u00a0 It asks us to stop expecting Washington or another JFK to tell us what to do and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nasa"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}