More so than previously, I have come to know a number of people working for NASA in the last year through the Tweetup program. I’ve been watching as they announce that they’ve gotten the call, and that their last day is coming. These are the people who have made this program work. The astronauts take the final risk, and a big one it is. But it’s the people who work at Kennedy Space Center, at Johnson Space Center, at Michoud, Dryden, and other sites who have made that possible. They are the ones who know that their names will never be known, that they will not be going on media tours, and that they have truly uncertain futures. My friend CraftLass wrote a beautiful post about these heroes. And while nobody would argue that the astronauts are not heroes, I think even they would agree that the true heroes are the people who solve the hard problems in obscurity.

I’ve been to the Space Coast a couple times recently, and after being in Titusville for several days, I have seen what a depressed economy truly looks like. With the combination of the real estate market being where it is, and the economy in that area being even worse, nobody can afford to pick up and move to where a job might be. But despite this, the technicians, engineers, managers, and other NASA employees are doing their jobs, and responding in a dignified manner. They are true professionals. They know that tomorrow morning, Shuttle Mission Control at JSC shuts down, the last shuttle is handed over to the Transition and Retirement team, and they will be there right up until they are told they are no longer needed.

I think what bothers me most about this entire situation is the loss of so many talented people. While there are some commercial space players who have set up shop in Florida, such as SpaceX, they can only employ a fraction of the people who are losing jobs at NASA. This doesn’t even take into account people working at JSC and at other facilities. These people have years of experience with space flight; some have been at NASA for 30 years or more! It saddens me that this incredible pool of talent is dispersing. The lucky ones will be able to put their skills to use in a new job. Many others will take whatever work they can find. What is even worse is that when the commercial space business picks up in a year or two and has some real momentum, these same people will likely be tossed aside because they have a gap in their resume.

This is not how we, as a nation, should treat our heroes. I have always been of the opinion that industries will grow and change, and that we should not eschew that change because someone will lose their job as a result. Automation, improved processes, the failure of individual businesses to adapt: these are all natural changes, and we can’t avoid it just to make sure that an assembly line worker keeps his job. We cannot save the jobs, but we must save the people. It is our responsibility to help them retrain, to develop new skills that will enable them to move forwards.

I don’t know how to solve this problem. I wish I did. I wish I could tell my friends at NASA, and the myriad others who have made the dream of a little boy or girl to grow up to be a spaceman a reality, that there is a way through. I can only hope that they will keep their positive outlook, and find a path themselves.

Spacepoints is just such a grand idea. It’s not a game. It’s not an app. It’s a dozen apps, and a hundred different games, and so much more. The problem is that even trying to describe it is difficult, because there’s no way to do it without talking in concrete terms. So we talk about a system where people can tell other people about the space outreach things that they do and earn points. But what about a check-in app? OK, so we add that in. And what about the next idea for how to increase outreach and awareness? Why does it have to be space? What about particle physics? I could go on, but hopefully you get the point. This is why we talk about “Spacepoints: The Flame Thrower”. By injecting what seems ludicrous, we’re trying to remind people to think outside the box.

Even more than that, we really have to just do something. This is why whenisthenextrocketlaunch.com is a great example of what Spacepoints is after. Sean Herron, sitting at SpaceUp Houston wanted to do something, and in less than an hour he registered a domain, created a website, and had a finished project to provide people with information about when and where the next rocket launch is. It’s about ISS Notify, where Nathan Bergey created a device to show when the ISS is going overhead, shared the design, and then got other people excited about the project on KIckstarter! He didn’t need the incentive of Spacepoints for that, just a desire to share his excitement for space with everyone else.

So how do we not fall into a trap where a single implementation becomes the definition for what Spacepoints is? The people who get it, the ones who couldn’t care less about the idea of Spacepoints if it gets in the way of the outreach, need to own the idea. As much it is about the community and getting people to go out and do, there still needs to be some kind of organization that are watching out against corporate entities coopting the idea (among other problems). This could be a non-profit organization, a “board of directors”, or something less formal. It is a place to provide guidance, to organize resources, and to make sure that the grand idea stays intact. If someone is working on a project and they need web design help, or graphics, or coding help, or anything at all, there should be a place they can go to find some help.

This is what I see Spacepoints as. It’s a way to enable people to do STEM outreach. Not just by incenting them to do so through points and prizes, but by making it easy for them to take something from an idea to a reality at ludicrous speeds. The more we can come up with to get people excited, the easier it is to find the next big idea that will be the breakout hit. So why are you still sitting here reading this? What idea have you thought of that you haven’t started creating yet? What’s stopping you?

There are many who are upset over the end of the Space Transportation System (STS) program. We can debate the politics, lament what is past, or get angry over the decisions that have been made, or we can channel that energy into moving forward. Yes, many people are losing their jobs right now, and this is sad because there is so much still to do. The Space Launch System (SLS) program continues to be stuck in limbo, and as a result there are a lot of people who have the skills needed for SLS but are being laid off. The commercial players in the future of space are hiring, but definitely not everyone being laid off, and in many cases not in the same physical locations. This transition period is going to be very hard, but we need to look forwards, and not back.

One of the many things that NASA is good at is solving the difficult problems. We all know their resume: they’ve put men and women in space, on the moon, and they’ve built a home and laboratory 240 miles above us. They have gone from the Cold War mentality of beating the Russians at all costs to working together with them to launch and assemble the pieces of the International Space Station. But the STS only went as far as low earth orbit (LEO): NASA has sent vehicles to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond. Voyager 1 is now over 17 billion kilometers from Earth (or more than 116 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun) and still receiving and transmitting data! And they keep sending them out: the Juno mission to Jupiter will launch August 5th, and the Curiosity rover (the Mars Science Laboratory) will launch later this fall. NASA continues to look to the future, including landing humans on asteroids and getting them back to the Moon and to Mars.

These are the hard problems that NASA should be working on, and we must continue to fund this exploration work. But LEO is no longer a hard problem. The STS is complex and expensive, in part because it was so novel when it started, but also because the orbiter is a compromise vehicle: it is designed to carry both 7 people and up to 26 tons of cargo to LEO. These are two completely different types of cargo, and very difficult to launch together. But if we launch them separately, it is much easier, and much less expensive. We know we can get cargo to LEO much less expensive on expendable vehicles like Atlas, and soon on commercial vehicles like SpaceX‘s Falcon 9 and Boeing‘s CST-100 as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program. And SLS will take what we have learned from STS and become a launch vehicle capable of taking a payload up to 130 tons to low earth orbit! Getting people to LEO is simpler too using a capsule, rather than an orbiter. The Russians do it with Soyuz, we’re developing the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), and companies such as SpaceX are developing Dragon and other vehicles. Where once we had only NASA and Roscomos, we now have competition both for the launch vehicles and crew vehicles. Should we not celebrate these developments?

So where does that leave us? Space exploration is important. We have to keep sending vehicles out and figuring out how the universe works. We need to explore the other planets, both within our solar system and beyond, because we cannot understand our own without doing that. We need to continue to launch observatories, such as Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, SDO, and JWST, because our own atmosphere hampers our ability to see all that there is to see. And above all, the results of these endeavors must be shared with the world in an open and collaborative manner. It is up to all of us to make sure that our representatives in government support this work. If nothing else, this is what each of us can do to further space exploration. However, there is a reason I have provided so many links in this post. Read about what we are doing, and look at the results. What we have accomplished so far is amazing, and the best is still coming.

At the same time, we must continue to expand our nearby capabilities outside Earth’s atmosphere. The future craft that will carry people to our nearest neighbors and beyond will need to be launched from there by necessity, because the first 200 miles from Earth requires the most power. But now that there is competition, the work has to be shared by both the governmental and commercial entities. The STS has laid the groundwork for this, and shown what can be done. It has given us a staging area in LEO. It has fostered international collaboration in space exploration. Celebrate this, and celebrate its end, but we must not allow ourselves to wallow in sadness for the end of the program. It is but one small step beyond this little rock we call Earth. Let’s take the next step.

When we moved at the beginning of the year, we had decided not to put the girls into daycare for the time being. Marcy was not going to be working and we were looking for ways to keep our spending down. As a result we ended up looking for enrichment activities for Bella and found Curiosity Zone. Parents of young kids know it can be difficult to find good activities for children under the age of 5, so their Little Lab program was exactly what we needed. The night when she goes to her “science class,” as she calls it, has quickly become her favorite day of the week. So much so that we immediately signed her up for the entire year after her first day. She learned about geologists, engineers, astronauts, and other professions during the last session, and this time around it’s backyard science, where they’re learning about backyard animals, weather, and other fun things.

I can’t possibly overstate how proud it makes me feel that Bella loves science so much, and I do everything I can to encourage that. We have color crystal kits and prisms for her to play with at home. While she’s tending more towards her dolls lately, blocks and Tinkertoys and LEGO have always been the favorites. I take her to the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center to look at the planes, and her favorite exhibits are the space artifacts. I selfishly don’t want my mother to ever move from the condo she has in Boston because it’s right next to the Boston Children’s Museum. Bella’s imagination and creativity is astounding, and when you combine that with wanting to learn how things work it’s going to take her far.

Partly because of her interest in the space displays at the museum, and partly because I have never been able to see it, we wanted to plan a trip this fall to go see one of the final Space Shuttle launches. Who knows when there will be a replacement program, and there’s something about seeing the Shuttle launch, especially knowing there are people in it, that is more amazing than a rocket launch. The STS-133 (Discovery) launch is now scheduled for November 1st, the day after our planned Walt Disney World trip ends. That, much to my boss’s chagrin, has turned our trip into a 2 week vacation to Florida. We are renting a condo right on the Indian River in Titusville, directly across from the Kennedy Space Center, for the month of November. That way we have somewhere to watch from even if the launch slips by a few days (or a few weeks). Of course, we’ll spend plenty of time at KSC doing tours and seeing all the exhibits as well!

I’m also getting a little treat just for me. Several of the high energy physics labs, including CERN and Fermilab are hosting photowalks for amateur photographers on August 7th. I was able to get into the limited group going to Fermilab (only about 50 people per site are allowed). We’ll get to see one of the accelerator tunnels, the antimatter factory, and a few other sites. I just hope I’ll be able to get some good pictures, since I’m only just picking up the hobby again after a long hiatus. The last time I took any serious pictures was in college.