Tuesday, May 30, 2006
A "Senior Moment" At NASA
The May/June issue of Government Leader is all about the coming
shortage of managers in the government bureaucracy as Boomers start to retire.
I'm sure that Boomers will use this an another excuse to offshore jobs rather
than train the next generation of managers or streamline our bloated bureaucracy.
Gen X-ers are just slackers. Why bother training them. But I'm getting off
track here.
There's an article entitled "Succession Game Planning" (unfortunately,
Government Leader magazine doesn't appear to exist as of 6/2010), which
quotes a passage in a book by David DeLong entitled Lost Knowledge:
Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce. Here's the part I want you to
read about:
In an era of cost-cutting and downsizing, the engineers who
designed the huge Saturn 5 rocket ... were encouraged to take early retirement
from the space program. With them went years of experience and expertise about
the design trade-offs that had been made in building the Saturn rockets. Also
lost were what appear to be the last set of critical blueprints for the Saturn
booster, which was the only rocket ever built with enough thrust to launch a
manned lunar payload.
According to DeLong, the blueprints were actually lost in some giant document
warehouse in Georgia. But the point is, no one knows where they are. Should
NASA return to the moon, the space agency will have to start from scratch.
It's just amazing that this level of incompetence could happen. The Boomers grew
up dreaming of riding the Space Race to other worlds. They took the keys from
the generation that actually got us to the Moon and, when it came time to hand
those keys over to the next generation, they lost them.
I wish I could remember the name of the article I read several years ago about
NASA's resistance to a bunch of new employees who dragged the agency into the PC
Age with desktop computers! The old guard didn't want to give up their
punch card and tape reels.
When W announced the beginning of the drive to put men back on the Moon and then
Mars, space advocacy groups rejoiced. I felt nothing after the speech.
The deficit was already sky high after the War in Iraq, I couldn't see how
Congress would approve it. But it wasn't just that, the speech sucked. It lacked
excitement. It fell way short of Kennedy's 1961 speech which tasked this
country to put a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960's. There was no passion.
No fire in his eyes. No zeal. And the public's reaction mirrored the
President's.
Sure enough, there's been no funding for this goal. NASA has been told to make
do with the budget it has.
Science
programs are being drastically cut. It's become an unfunded mandate, an
empty promise.
Space exploration isn't cheap. It takes the deep pockets of governments to
adequately fund these ventures. Sadly, it comes with a thick layer of
bureaucracy. While some can't see the scientific benefits of space exploration,
they probably couldn't live without the common everyday spinoffs like: velcro,
global weather coverage, bazillions of channels for their TV's, the network that
enables cell phone coverage (there's more to it than just the towers), not to
mention the spy satellites which help to maintain our military's technological
superiority.
I think that private industry is the only thing that can possibly save the
American space program in the long run. Congress has screwed with NASA for
decades. It's why we lost two shuttles and never went back to the Moon. Congress
doesn't have the desire and committment to see the American space program done
right. They're just looking at the next election. Only people in private
industry have the passion and committment to see that our voyage into space is
done properly, cheaply, and safely.
Now if only we could get Congress to drop all the regulations regarding
spaceflight and get the hell ou of the way.
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About Me
Name: DED
Location: United States
I'm a stay-at-home Dad who survived dotcom burnout and a
chemical engineering career that fizzled. Once the kids are in school full time,
I'll need to find a new job, but I'm hoping for a new career: writer.
I'm a moderate
libertarian, rational environmentalist, science and technology enthusiast,
who reads and watches sci-fi, drinks and brews beer, and listens to metal.
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