The House Science Committee’s space subcommittee is holding a hearing this Tuesday titled “The NASA Workforce: Does NASA Have the Right Strategy and Policies to Retain and Build the Workforce It Will Need?” (10:30 am, Rayburn 2318). Witnesses scheduled to appear include:
Ms. Toni Dawsey, Assistant Administrator, Human Capital Management, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA);
Dr. David Black, Co Chair, Committee on Meeting the Workforce Needs for the National Vision for Space Exploration, National Research Council;
Mr. Gregory J. Junemann , Director, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers; and
Mr. John W. Douglass, President and Chief Executive Officer, Aerospace Industries Association.
Meanwhile, as previously noted here, there will be an AIAA-organized forum today at 11:30 am in Rayburn 2325 on “Making the Business Case for Space – Where’s the Value?” The subject of the forum is to discuss how to make NASA’s programs more relevant to the general public.
A timely editorial that addresses this issue appears in today’s edition of the Berkshire (Mass.) Eagle. In the opinion of that paper’s editors, NASA should be spending more money on Earth sciences programs at the expense of the exploration vision (which the paper has criticized in past editorials):
This one is a no-brainer. Abandon the JFK-era program to the moon and beyond. Stop pouring good money after bad into the space station. Invest in satellites that may help us save our planet, as well as unmanned probes to explore our neighboring planets. Unfortunately, NASA is a no-brainer as well.
Does NASA Have the Right Strategy and Policies to Retain and Build the Workforce It Will Need
Ummm… Build?
Maybe i’m out of line here, but isn’t that currently the problem?
Regarding strategy, at first I was appalled at NASA’s apparent moving-chairs-on-a-sinking-ship shift of the lunar robotic effort out of NASA Ames. It seemed pointless political gamesmanship, and I hated to see a major space project moved out of the San Francisco suburbs. However, I have finally read the Space News article on the subject. Combined with Dennis’ intelligence that NASA is attempting a lot of similarity between the automated landers and the human lander, this now makes much more sense to me. Making one lander design for everyone should be a net gain for the VSE.
— Donald
The stop exploring and spend the money on the Earth is EXACTLY what NASA did do starting in the early 70’s. This abandonment of exploration has done more to HURT the Earth than any policy since the dawn of Apollo.
If we had not abandoned exploration then we would arguably have a presence throughout the inner solar system today and could even now be extracting the resources needed to get us beyond the material shortages and increased pollution brought about by the industrialization of China and India.
Dennis
The article isn’t really for Earth-orbiting missions and against exploration missions. Yes, it’s for Earth-orbiting satellites and it’s against the VSE, but it advocates unmanned exploration of the planets and abandoning the ISS. It does make a certain amount of sense to consider something like a climate research satellite with fairly obvious, short-term, and low-risk payoff to be an essential, and the VSE to be a speculative, high-risk/high-payoff type of investment where a small percentage of overall effort is appropriate. Both types of investment are appropriate, but in obvious proportions.
I’m not familiar with the implications of the internal NASA move of the lander from Ames to Marshall, but it does sound like merging the automated and human landers would be a gain for the VSE. However, this gain strikes me as similar to the gain for the Shuttle when various automated missions were forced to the Shuttle. The Shuttle’s gain was at the expense of the automated missions and commercial launch possibilities. When you think of Ames and Worden you think of cheap, effective missions like the Pioneers and Clementine. Hopefully that isn’t what’s being given up.
For what it’s worth, Ray, they’ve put one of the founders and experts of the small-is-beautiful spacecraft school at Ames.
— Donald