NASA is composed of 10 centers, five involved in human spaceflight (Johnson, Kennedy, Stennis, Goddard, Marshall), five involved in research (JPL, Ames, Dryden, Glenn, Langley), NASA headquarters, and roughly half a dozen other facilities. Each center has a different function or specialty which support NASA’s missions of human space exploration, robotic space exploration, planetary sciences, Earth sciences, and aeronautics. In the map above, you can see that those centers are spread across the country. Geography is the first factor that drives the initial rhetoric regarding the budget.

The day after the budget was released, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) released a statement saying:

“I am pleased the President requested $830 million for Commercial Crew programs, which is America’s single most important near-term civil space project. But cutting the Technology budget while increasing the Earth Science budget – a function that doesn’t even belong in a space exploration agency – and continuing to shovel resources into the SLS money pit is a travesty.

“Any more of this kind of “leadership” and soon NASA’s entire budget will be consumed by JWST and the SLS, two things that won’t have made it off the launch pad ten years from now.”

So what’s behind this statement? Well, SpaceX and Blue Origin, two prominent commercial space partners, are both headquartered in California. In addition, two Mars’ robotics programs that are now at risk would be developed and run out of JPL and Ames, also in California.

Meanwhile, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) released this statement:

“As I told the Administrator during our meeting, I oppose these ill-considered cuts and I will do everything in my power to restore the Mars budget and to ensure American leadership in space exploration.”

Rare to see bi-partisan support of anything these days. Then, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) chimed in with this reaction:

“Despite repeated assurances from NASA and White House officials that the SLS and Orion are ‘key elements of our future strategy for human space exploration’, vehicle development for the heavy lift SLS rocket and the Orion capsule is cut by hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Given that JSC is one of the centers that will most benefit from the development and operation of SLS, these comments should not come as a surprise. The bottom line for each of these representatives is that a reduction in funding to a NASA mission supported by their local centers means a potential loss of jobs at each of those centers. Again, less budget means fewer jobs. Fewer jobs means that constituents in the districts that they support will be out of work.

Having the conversation center around the benefits of one aspect of NASA’s mission vs. another aspect of that mission will not advance the conversation very far. It causes internal strife in an organization that can’t afford to have that. Missions will always need to be appropriately vetted to ensure we are pursuing worthwhile scientific or technological goals. The reality is there are benefits to be gained from all aspects of the agency’s current missions. At this point, funding is being spread so thin across programs in a way that jeopardizes the long term success of several programs. To best accomplish NASA’s mission of exploring the solar system will require a combination of human and robotic exploration supported by satellite or telescopic observation. Each one of these areas of research provides different benefits. Someone who tells you we should only do one or the other of these things is likely not seeing the entire picture.

Satellite observation provides invaluable insight into the varied worlds around us. Satellites like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can help map a planet, identify where water once flowed, and point robotic exploration missions to areas of high value. They can peer far into the surface of these worlds giving us insights we would have otherwise never had.

Robotic missions can then go to the surface and help us understand the environment where humans will eventually tread. Robotic explorers can go where it is too dangerous to send humans. They can also explore for long periods without the need for refueling or replenishment. Eventually, those robotic explorers will fail and cease operation.

Enter the human explorer who can change a research target at a moment’s notice, conduct research and exploration without needing someone on Earth to command him or her to do so, and can repair instruments or rovers that break. In addition, as we explore the solar system, we learn more and more about ourselves. Space exploration tests the limits of human endurance and requires continued advances in so many areas.

To do human exploration, we need a US vehicle capable of reaching orbit, low Earth or otherwise. The commercial crew providers show promise but are by no means guaranteed success. As people are now finding out, the commercial providers face the same technological and budgetary challenges that NASA has faced for decades. Several are turning to NASA to provide tried and true expertise for operating their spacecraft. Just as it has always been, the future of human spaceflight will be a public-private partnership.

The real question shouldn’t be should we do robotics vs. human exploration or commercial vs. NASA, it should be are we as a country spending enough on scientific research and development. NASA’s total budget for 2012 is $17.7 billion. This represents .48% of the federal budget or less than half a cent from your tax dollar. This is the lowest percentage of the federal budget that NASA has received since 1960. Many people are under the mistaken impression that the NASA budget is comparable to the Department of Defense Budget. The DoD budget request for 2013 stands at $525 billion dollars or 30 times the NASA budget. By point of comparison, in NASA’s entire history from 1958 to 2012, the US has given NASA $543 billion dollars (non-adjusted) or $18 billion more than the DoD’s request for next year. Staggering.

At one point, I was a doubter of MPCV and SLS, believing the rhetoric that had spewed forth of it just being a pork program. That was before I talked to people hard at work on that program, people who are working as hard as they can to get this done as quickly and cheaply as possible, so that we can resume human exploration of the solar system. Without MPCV and SLS, NASA would not have any budget for human exploration and who knows if we would ever get that back. Now, MPCV is on track for a test flight in 2014 and SLS is slated for its first test in 2015 and a longer test flight in 2017. If funding is maintained, those dates will be here sooner than you think.

Couple that with the continued development of commercial crew services, which some companies are still on track to provide by 2016, and the US would have a fully operational human exploration program with access to low Earth orbit and beyond in 4-5 years. Robotic precursor missions would have already paved the way and suddenly, we would have the capability to do the things we’ve always dreamed.

Isn’t that worth paying for?

Quick addendum: I’m not trying to suggest that the government should give NASA whatever it wants unchecked. Accountability is absolutely needed and funds for research should also be used in other areas of scientific, technological, or medical research. I am suggesting we ought to consider our national priorities of where to invest taxpayer money and perhaps alter the balance of things.

Sometime this year or next, I expect the discovery of the first potentially habitable planet to be announced.  Exoplanet discoveries have steadily ramped up over the past year and that will only increase as more resources are devoted to deciphering data from research projects like the Kepler telescope.  The discovery of a habitable world will no doubt spark a small mention in the national conversation, but the stark reality is we will be limited in how much we will be able to learn about this world at this time.  So we will discover the world, we will no doubt listen to it and study its atmospheric composition, but beyond that there won’t be much more we can do.

On human exploration, I have to believe that at some point in the next 2 decades some man or woman will set foot on another world in our solar system.  Whether that person will be from the United States, Russia, China, Japan, Germany, Italy, India, South Korea or any other space-faring nation is ultimately irrelevant.  What really matters is that someone will do it.  That person may set foot on that world for the noble goal of exploration, due to an attempt to instill national pride, or in some misguided cold-war-style space race, but it will be done.

When that happens, I want to believe that the final hurdle will be overcome and that the floodgates for exploration will be open.  This is naive, of course.  At a minimum, I hope we have learned lessons from the incredible accomplishments of Apollo and hopefully, we will be there for more than just a brief visit.  Of course, the real gate-opener for exploration and ultimately colonization will be to find a way to make it profitable whether it’s through mining, scientific advancement, or some other unforeseen reason.  Make it profitable and companies will come.

While this exploration of the solar system will ultimately result in advances in medicine and medical technology due to the obstacles overcome in that exploration, medical advances will continue to advance due to terrestrial research.  Within the next couple of decades, the developed world will start to have access to life-extending medications.  Even without these medications, the world population will continue to increase and the ability of the planet to support the ever-growing population will continue to be stressed.  Could the world population ever become so large that humanity is forced to try and expand to another world?  Possibly, but it’s more likely that some section of society would collapse before a solution like that would be pursued.

Eventually though, assuming there are enough well-to-do private enthusiasts and/or government funding, enough money will be poured into developing space exploration technologies that the cost-to-orbit will be lowered, advanced propulsion capabilities will be delivered, and the technical challenges related to establishing a colony on another world will be overcome.  Then finally, whether through necessity or curiosity, humanity take out an insurance policy on the Earth and begin living on another world.

Given the current rate and commitment to exploration, 50 years is probably too ambitious a time frame for this to happen.  This is where you have to recognize that even if the United States doesn’t do this, then some other country will.  With any luck, it’ll be a cooperative effort.

Once a foothold is established on another world, we will then begin the task of reforming that world into something more hospitable for us and turning it into a long-term home for our people.  Currently, these technologies and approaches are only theoretical, but we have plenty of time to turn those theories into reality.

Up next, the 22nd century…

Spaceship design is something that I have been playing around with since I was about ten years old.  One year, my mom brought me home a tablet of graph paper from her civil engineering firm and I spent hours and hours drawing spaceship layouts, identifying where the ships systems were, challenging myself to come up with designs that weren’t recognizable as ships from Star Wars or Star Trek.

In college, spaceship design and function continued to dominate my creative thoughts.  It was then that I wrote the short story “The Scout” which was an attempt to write a short story where the main character was the ship itself and its journey through space.  Finally, a year after I graduated from college, I started working on the International Space Station (ISS) and I got to delve into the design of a real spaceship.

My first assignment on ISS was as an instructor for life support systems, so it should come as no surprise that the Hannnah’s systems reflect much of what I learned then.  From a life support systems perspective, the ISS is the first spacecraft that has attempted to have a close-looped system.  For a spaceship that is going to spend much of its time in space, you want an efficient system that will not waste any resources.  On ISS, an oxygen generator uses water produce oxygen and has a leftover component of hydrogen. A separate system removes carbon dioxide from the air.  The oxygen from that carbon dioxide is combined with the hydrogen from the oxygen generator to then form water, which when processed can be used to produce oxygen, and so on.  The key philosophy here is that a spaceship has to recycle everything and waste as little as possible.  The more you waste, the more you have to replenish.  ISS doesn’t have a truly closed system, but it’s taken great strides towards one.

About a third of the way through Dust, the Hannah experiences problems with rising carbon dioxide levels.  Max then embarks on a hunt to figure out why this is happening.  One of my favorite lines of Max’s is when he says that there are no mysteries on-board a spaceship.  Everything is definable; there are few variables.  Everything that happens in that closed environment has a limited set of contributors and probable outcomes.  Max knows this and immediately knows that something is amiss.

At this point, Max starts tearing apart the ship to find the source of his problem.  This reflects another lesson learned from ISS: everything breaks.  Every component on ISS has been pored over, rigorously tested, and then operated on Earth to make sure it works.  Even still, things are constantly breaking.  Before the ISS was fully complete and it didn’t have fully redundant systems, the biggest threats to having to abandon the station were that the oxygen generator would break, the carbon dioxide remover would break, or that the toilet would break.  And those three things broke with disheartening regularity in the early days of the program.

It was only natural to me then that the Hannah would constantly be having problems.  While I fully expect that in 500 years a top-of-the-line spaceship will be full of self-healing alloys, self-healing nanostructures, and other “unbreakable” components, the reality for Max is that he flies the equivalent of a 30-year-old used Winnebago.  Nothing heals itself, half the ship is replacement parts, and nothing runs for too long without breaking.  Someday, when spaceships are as ubiquitous as cars, we will have to deal with the reality that not everything is a top-of-the-line model.  When that happens, I hope the owner has a maintenance robot of their own to help with all of the repairs.

On the ISS when something breaks, the crew knows that they will be spending some time within the next couple of weeks replacing something, which means they’ll have to go digging through storage areas to find the spare parts.  Then they’ll have to spend a good deal of time cutting through clutter to get what to what they need.  Pictures of the inside of ISS, like the one below, show that the station is jam-packed with stuff.

So, my procedure says to follow the white wire...

For this, I gave Max a bit of an advantage as he gets to use a 3D printer to generate replacement parts.  I had to do something to cut out the piles of stuff that would otherwise be lining the floor.  I did however try to preserve the concept that there is no wasted space aboard the ship.  Behind every panel is some vital piece of equipment.  Throughout the story, Max is forced to worm and weasel his way into and out of tight spaces all in the name of making a living.

So through the Hannah’s systems and operation, I tried to reflect a realistic spaceship environment.  That realism though means the entire ship is one big pain-in-the-ass for Max to run by himself which is what ultimately leads Max to trying to hire on some extra help.  I could have made the ship less of a junker, but I’m confident that Max wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Dust is available in the Amazon Kindle store for $3.99 and is free for Amazon Prime members.

What is Dust about?

Dust is a science fiction adventure set in deep space, hundreds of years in the future.  The story follows a young man, Nick Papagous, as he runs away from his rich, luxurious homeworld and journeys to the rough and tumble frontier.

Nick is running away from home to escape the control of his father, a top official in the Marshall Conglomerate.  The Conglomerate produces everything needed to help maintain a safe and secure society.  They serve the people and in so doing they serve the Republic.  Or so his father says.   Nick, though, has found something rotten in his father’s work and he can no longer live with the man he once admired.

Nick is forced into the employ of Max Cabot, an old, weathered freighter pilot who does supply runs to the last colony humanity has established, the colony on Dust.  Max has been on this route for ten years, trying to put his tragic past behind him.  The Republic has turned a blind eye to Dust, an inconsequential world that isn’t worth maintaining. However, Dust has plenty of secrets beneath its shifting sands, secrets that will challenge everything Nick believes.

What is my writing background?

Dust is the second novel I’ve written but the first I’ve published.  My first novel, Crusade of the Warrior King, will be released later this year.  I’ve also written many short stories, several of which are also available on Amazon.com, Smashwords, iBooks, and other sites.  Check the Hutt Publishing tab for details.

Who or what influences my writing?

I’ve read more science fiction novels than I can remember, but my favorites are Isaac Asimov’s Robot novels, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Jack McDevitt’s Omega series, and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.  I prefer fiction that has a bit grittier feel, that has a bit of an edge to it.  I’m not a big fan of happy endings, which is probably why I like King’s work as much as I do.

I do love space opera and the grand sweeping stories of the original Star Wars trilogy or the Star Trek movies.  They’ve romanticized flying through the stars, fighting super-villains, and the rogue-ish hero.  There’s no denying the influence that movies like that or shows like the ill-fated Firefly have had on me.

I’m also a big fan of Ben Bova and his series of novels that explore the colonization of the solar system.  Bova’s fiction falls under the category of hard science fiction, rooted in real-world science wherever possible.  While I prefer adventures that allow humanity to travel from star to star, I still try to root the story in some form of reality.  I hope that some of my twelve years working for NASA on the International Space Station shine through in an entertaining manner.

I hope you enjoy the novel and I am open to any and all feedback you may have, positive or negative.  I’m also happy to answer any questions about the story.  I’ll be following this post up with a few other posts on some aspects of the story including the technology, comparisons to real space vehicles, etc.

Dust is available for $3.99 from the Amazon Kindle store and is free for Amazon Prime members who own a Kindle.  I’ll post an update when the paperback is available.  Please rate and leave feedback.  If you enjoy it, please pass it on.  I appreciate any and all support.

In the late 1960s, my father was a troubled teenager.  He had been expelled from Northeast Catholic High School in Philadelphia months before he was supposed to graduate.  His father had to intervene and beg the school to let him get his degree.  Following this, in an effort to make his family proud, he volunteered to join the U.S. Army and go to Vietnam.  He volunteered at a time when many men his age were drafted involuntarily and when some felt it was more honorable to flee the country than fight in the war.  He did it because he felt he could redeem himself in the eyes of his family.

In Vietnam, he served in a mobile infantry unit.  He was part of a small 3-4 man crew that operated a Track, a small armored vehicle out of which he would fire mortar rounds to attack the enemy.*  One day during an exercise, my father was accidentally shot three times by the gun mounted atop the Track.  The three bullets entered his body about midway up the left side of his torso.  Two of the bullets passed all the way through him.  The third bullet did not.  It ricocheted off bone, tore through his intestines and testicles and ultimately lodged in his right hip.

He was not expected to live.

The Army flew his father out to the hospital in Japan where he had been transported.  His father was flown out because he was not expected to survive.  This would not be the last time my father beat the odds.  His was eventually transferred to a military hospital in New Jersey; his days in combat were now over.

He's wounded in Vietnam and the paper can't even bother to get his name right, but hey, he got to meet Miss New Jersey.

Sadly, the Army would not award my father a Purple Heart because his wounds were suffered in a friendly fire incident.

From that day forward, my father’s life was altered by the horrors he experienced and the pain he dealt with every day.  The bullet that lodged in his hip would remain there until the early 1980s.  The bullet caused him to develop osteomyelitis, a bone infection, in his right hip joint.  The only solution he was offered was to entirely remove the hip joint.  The entire ball and socket that comprise the joint were removed.  His right leg was now several inches shorter than the left with the top of the femur now just rubbing against his pelvic bone stabilized only by scar tissue.  He was not expected to walk again, let alone walk without crutches.

For the majority of my life, he walked with only the support of a cane.

Every day of his life was now filled with pain.  His hip hurt.  His knees hurt.  His back hurt.  For the rest of his life, he would take pain pills, not Tylenol, but Tylenol #3 with Codiene or Darvocet or other equivalent medications.  Eventually, he built up such a tolerance to the medications that he would take them by the handful, 5-6 at a time, every 4 hours.

The wounds he had would cause him to be medically retired when he was in his early 30s.  He was considered 100% medically disabled and would not work full time.  It was too painful for him to sit at a desk all day.  With this, he would now spend everyday at home alone while my mom would work and I was off at school.  He was isolated.

He tried to pass the time with hobbies – he built models of clipper ships, fished, collected stamps, and several other pursuits – but he was isolated with only his thoughts and memories of war for company.  Before he had been medically retired, he turned to vices, cigarettes and alcohol, to help him forget his physical and mental pain.  The loneliness he now felt due to his retirement only exacerbated his troubles with those vices.

My father tried to reach out to a veteran’s organization in order to connect with others in his situation.  At that time, Vietnam Veterans were not respected, they were still considered baby killers and murderers, not soldiers, and the World War II vets would not except him.  The loneliness he experienced would turn into depression and with that he sunk into the grips of alcoholism.

He lived his life through a haze of strong pain medications and alcohol and it caused strain on the entire family.  He had already had one failed marriage after his experience in the war and his relationship with my mom would be a constant test of perseverance for both of them as they fought through his struggles.

The alcoholism caused several incidents that I remember vividly.  The most memorable of which was one Christmas Eve, when I had to have been about ten or twelve years old.  He started drinking wine early in the evening while wrapping presents and at one point left to pick up my step brother and sister from his ex-wife’s house.  I went out to the car with him and he asked me to go back and get something for him.  I remember having him promise me that he would wait for me, but of course he didn’t.  Hours passed and he didn’t come back.  I was sent to bed and my mom called her sisters asking for help.  I remember sitting in the window of my second floor bedroom, waiting for him.  Eventually, my uncles found him passed out on the side of the road and I remember coming out of my room, very late that night, to see them dragging him in.  He needed help.

He would be in and out of rehab several times.  Those programs addressed the alcoholism, but they never addressed what really drove it.  It wasn’t until the late 80s/early 90s that Vietnam veterans were more socially accepted.  My father started opening up about his experiences in the war.  He would start sharing his war experiences with my grandfather, a World War II veteran himself.  He was also finally awarded a Purple Heart by the Army and he joined the Military Order of the Purple Heart.  He found friends and enjoyed the camaraderie of people who had been through similar events.  He was able to quit drinking.

For several years, he led as normal a life as he would ever have.  For those years, he felt like a person again.

Always the charmer.

Once my mom died, he fell back into bad habits.  After decades of smoking and drinking, he developed cancer.  Two years ago after several rounds of treatments, trying to once again beat the odds, his heart gave out.  He died weeks before his 60th birthday.

A couple of months before he died, I asked him why he had volunteered to go to Vietnam.  That’s when he told me the story of wanting to make his family proud.

I told him he did.

And in doing so he paid a heavy price.  My father is now buried in Arlington National Cemetery with my mother.

I don’t tell this story looking for sympathy.  I have long ago come to grips with the effect his alcoholism had on our family and on me personally.  I want people to recognize those veterans who return from war are dealing with more than most will ever understand.  They need to be thanked and some need to be helped.

*-My apologies for any inaccurate terminology.  All of this is remembered from the stories my father told me before he passed away two years ago.

We’ve come a long way from the early days of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs when the astronaut corps was comprised of mostly test pilots who knew every facet of how their experimental vehicles operated.  Those astronauts were supported by hundreds of the best engineers on the planet who knew the ins and outs of every nut, bolt, circuit board, and vacuum tube that comprised those vehicles.  The astronauts were responsible for flipping every switch on those spacecraft; they controlled the horizontal and the vertical and everything in between.

With shuttle, we not only had pilots and commanders who knew every facet of the vehicle but we also had mission specialists and payload specialists who were responsible for their own specialized tasks.  Those tasks ranged from extra-vehicular activities (EVAs), space walks, to using the Shuttle and ISS robotic arms to perform ISS assembly tasks, to wide array of scientific experiments focusing on anything from materials science to studies of the human body.  Those crews, initially supported by teams of hundreds as in the early programs, eventually were supported by teams of dozens as we grew more adept at operating the shuttle.

With ISS, we faced different challenges.  In took some time for us to adjust to the ISS paradigm where the astronauts do not pilot the vehicle; the mission control team does.  With shuttle and the earlier vehicles the astronauts controlled just about everything and knew every inch of their spacecraft; that is almost an impossibility with the ISS.  The vehicle is too large and too complex for any one person or two people to control.  Now, mission control teams in Houston, Huntsville, Toulouse, Munich, Moscow, and Tsukuba, fly the vehicle on a day-to-day basis.  Those mission control teams control the orientation of the vehicle, change its attitude, maneuver the vehicle to avoid orbital debris, control ISS power, life support, computer systems, etc.

With crew members freed from the majority of these vehicle control capabilities, that leaves them free to perform two things: science and maintenance.  Currently, ISS crews are expected to perform 35 hours per week of science experiments, ensuring that we are using this national laboratory for its intended purpose.  The majority of the rest of their time is spent taking care of themselves and the vehicle.

To take care of themselves, every crew member is expected to do at least two hours per day of exercise.  To ensure they stay sharp mentally, they are given plenty of resources and time to stay in touch with family members or to entertain themselves with their leisure activity of choice.

Beyond that, fixing the vehicle takes up the rest of their time.  One of the many things that I love about the original Star Wars trilogy is the spaceships, in particular the Millennium Falcon.  The Falcon isn’t some sleek, smooth, perfectly operating vehicle; it breaks.  The hyperdrive doesn’t work, it suffers burnouts, and various other problems as the ship attempts to lurch from planet to planet.  This is one thing the George Lucas got right.

We don't have hydrospanners yet, but I'm sure we will some day.

Filters get clogged.  Valves get stuck.  Software gets corrupted.  Electrical components short out.  When any of those things happen, the affected equipment needs to be fixed or replaced and while there are dozens of mission controllers on Earth who can tell the crew what to do; there are only six people in space who can actually do that work.  Every day, the ISS crew spends time fixing things with support from their mission control teams.

So instead of training pilots, we train repairmen and women and scientists.  We train them to live in a house, a house with the best customer support in the world, but not to fly a spaceship.  Mission control teams no longer just support the crew; they fly the vehicle.  We have to train accordingly.

With the right funding and a little luck, we on the NASA-side will resume training pilots to fly any of four or five different spacecraft to fly to ISS.  For now though, that pilot training is the responsibility of our Russian colleagues. Once those vehicles are in place, we will hopefully set our sites outward in the solar system.  Then our training challenges will multiply.

We will again have to shift our focus.  Astronauts will once again be in charge of the spacecraft.  Once the spacecraft gets far enough away from Earth, it will no longer be practical for the ground to control all aspects of the vehicle.  Once again we will have pilots, but with the long duration nature of missions, we will need more repairmen and women.  And in addition to those roles, there will of course be scientists ready to carry out our next steps of scientific discovery in the solar system.

For ISS, we already face challenges with having to train so much information that there is no way one person can retain it all.  To offset that, we are challenged to produce training materials that can be delivered to the crew members at the moment they need them.  Astronauts receive 2.5 years of training; flight controllers receive another 2.5.  All to operate a vehicle that we are able to communicate with instantly.

In the future, we won’t have that luxury.  But equipment will still break and the crew will need to fix it.  Astronauts will need to maintain their piloting skills even while on the surface of Mars or an asteroid. They will need to set up habitats, operate rovers, perform surface EVAs, etc.  It won’t be practical to train all of this prior to a mission.

Over the next decade, my organization is challenged with developing the means and methods of providing efficient and effective training to crews and mission controllers when and where they need it.  We will do this while still providing training to astronauts and mission controllers the operate and utilize the ISS.  To do this, we will use ISS as a test bed just as ISS will be used as a test bed for new technologies in propulsion and spacecraft equipment.

This is a challenge that I and many of my people are eager to tackle.

Throw this away; it will do you no good here.

When a person first goes through the gates of Johnson Space Center and begins his or her career in human spaceflight operations, he or she will enter the workplace with dreams of embarking on a grand adventure to advance humanity’s reach into the unfamiliar expanse of the cosmos.  That person will walk in the doors with a mixture of excitement and nervousness ready to make a difference.  Then, he or she will speak to their coworkers and out of their mouths will spew a stream of inscrutable letters and numbers that have some vague tie to the English language.

The first challenge that every new employee must overcome is learning to speak the language.  At this point, it’s cliché to say that NASA has its own language.  Except, this particular cliché is based in absolute fact and you have no idea the depth of the problem until you become immersed in the culture.  NASA is hardly unique when it comes to jargon, but we seem to take personal delight in developing new, obscure terminology, and then simplifying that term by turning it into an acronym.  On-board the International Space Station (ISS), we don’t have air conditioners; we have Common Cabin Air Assemblies (CCAA).  We don’t have a gas mask; we have a Portable Breathing Apparatus (PBA).  We don’t have computers; we have Multiplexer/De-multiplexers (MDMs).

We will make acronyms into words, such as the acronym for the Solar Alpha Rotary Joint (SARJ, pronounced Sarge) or the Station-to-Shuttle Power Transfer System (SSPTS, pronounces SPITS).  We have acronyms that stand for multiple things; LCA can stand for Lab Cradle Assembly, Loop Crossover Assembly, or the Load Control Assembly.  We have different acronyms for the same hardware; a laptop, identical in hardware, will either be called a Station Support Computer (SSC) or a Portable Computer System (PCS) depending on how the computer is used.

We don’t just use acronyms for hardware; we use them for facilities such as the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility (SVMF) or Space Station Training Facility (SSTF).  Inside the SVMF, you’ll find the Space Station Mockup Training Facility (SSMTF) and formerly the Shuttle Mockup Training Facility (SMTF) which you could reserve for use through the Operations Control Center (OCC).

We also use them for meetings such as the Flight Operations Integration Group (FOIG, pronounced either Foyg or Foe-ig depending on who you’re talking to).  We use them to identify organizations positions such as Visiting Vehicle Officers (VVOs) or Integrated System Engineers (ISEs, pronounced ice).  We use them for forms, files, and reports; be sure you know if you need to file an Anomaly Report (AR), Discrepancy Report (DR), Change Request (CR), or some other report.  Yes, someone even created TPS reports, though I don’t remember what it’s supposed to stand for.

I’m not sure if it was heartening or disheartening to learn that the love and overuse of acronyms in spaceflight was not limited to NASA.  Each international partner brings with them their own set of terminology.  Perhaps the most egregious example of our overuse of acronyms came with respect to cabin lighting.  We don’t have cabin lights; we have General Luminaire Assemblies (GLAs).  Those same pieces of equipment in the European Columbus module were called MLUs – Module Lighting Units.  Eventually, both sides reasonably agreed to use one term for those lights.

Despite our over-reliance on these word jumbles there is usually a method to the madness.  Every component has an official name or operations nomenclature (ops nom for short).  Once the ops nom is approved, that name is used consistently in every piece of documentation – reference manuals, training briefs, schematics, procedures, flight rules, etc. – so that everyone knows exactly what you’re talking about when you use that name.

In critical operations, it is important that there is no ambiguity when you are referring to a specific location or component.  In fire response, when an astronaut reports to mission control that the crew believes there is a fire in the LAB1D6 rack, everyone on the crew and on the ground knows exactly what they are talking about.  When the ISS computer system spits out a message that says the LAB1P6 CCAA has failed, everyone involved knows what that means in as few characters as possible.

To get to that level of understanding takes time and is the first obstacle that any new person must overcome.  There have been several noble attempts to compile references to help new people sort through all this terminology, though most lists are incomplete.  That’s why even our official system allows employees to make inputs and updates.  The use of acronyms is pervasive, though, and once accepted into the culture, people don’t often consciously realize when they are using them.  The meaning behind the acronym then becomes irrelevant, and the acronym is used as the name.  Plenty of people have forgotten the words or titles that acronyms stand for, even the ones they use on a daily basis.

To train people properly on these titles, we do exactly what I’ve done here.  Wherever possible, we relate the terms to the common, Earthly objects to which they refer.  With that, enough repetition, and immersion in the environment, you’ll be speaking NASA-ese in no time at all.  But, should you ever switch departments, projects, or programs, expect to have to learn a whole new set of terminology.

Despite the common acceptance of acronyms, we do recognize that they are overused.  When the Constellation Program was in its infancy, a recommendation was passed forward to call a light, a light or to call a pump, a pump.  Even though we can use complex terminology, it helps every person entering the organization if they don’t have to learn a new language when they walk in the door.

Although sometimes, acronyms are used because they are fun, such as when the Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office was called C3PO.  But since we all have our inner (or outer) geeks here, we’ll always use acronyms like that.

Then one day, something terrible happens.

It starts with a smell, a burning electrical odor, and then the next thing you know, the air around you looks hazy, like some mid-summer Houston smog has settled into the air.  Thanks to your excellent training, you know just what to do.  Instincts take over and you react swiftly.

The first thing you do is push a button that lets the entire crew and all the mission control centers around the world know that there is a fire aboard the space station.  Major news agencies will pick up on this within minutes.  Soon, the entire world will know that there’s an emergency on the station; the lives of the six crewmembers on board are now at risk.  You’ve now got everyone’s undivided attention.

With any luck, this is not like the solid fuel oxygen generator fire that occurred aboard MIR.  That was a fire that could not be put out with an extinguisher and was hot enough to melt metal.  You’re also hoping it has nothing to do with the 100% oxygen system that provides oxygen to experiments and emergency gas masks across the US segment.  Either of those situations could be catastrophic.

So you’re ready to face the worst, ready to charge in and be the hero, to save the day and ultimately grace the cover of the New York Times and Washington Post.  You’ll also be able to line up a pretty good book deal.  You look to the module to your left.   It’s full of smoke.  You need to save the lives of the crew and preserve this multi-billion dollar investment.  You charge in ready to save the day.

And you’ve killed yourself.  You just suffocated yourself with carbon monoxide or hydrogen cyanide.

You apparently didn’t build up enough of a survival instinct in your training to know that you shouldn’t go charging blindly in to save the day.

So let’s back up.  Once you’ve sounded the alarm, the first thing you do is get the whole crew together.  Make sure everyone is safe, accounted for, and you’re all on the same page with respect to what you need to do.  Since you see smoke, you know you’ll need a gas mask of some sort, there’s a couple of different varieties and you grab whatever is handy.  Time is of the essence here, you don’t want whatever small fire is burning to blossom into something that’ll destroy the station and kill everyone on-board.

Now, you’ve made sure everyone know what’s going on, everyone is safe, and you have a plan of attack.  You go back to where you think the problem is, with a friend of course since you’re not going about this alone.  The buddy system once again has its uses.  You see plenty of smoke, but thankfully or not,  no ball of fire.  Now, you realize you are in the middle of a module filled with dozens upon dozens of electronic components that could be the source of the fire.

Most of those components have been built with materials that are fire resistant, but in microgravity things get in unintended places, wires can rub against other things, a piece of flotsam can jam a motor, or any other series of unfortunate events could have happened to lead to this point.  But you’re still in the middle of this module, ready to do the hero’s work.  You just need to know where to do that work.

At last word comes from another crew member elsewhere on the station, he or she’s got some places for you to look.  She’s sitting at a laptop, in relative security, looking over station telemetry to try and find some clues to the fire’s location.  She tells you.  You grab your extinguisher, you fire it off, you’re the hero!

Except you just wasted the extinguisher because that’s not where the fire was.  And you went shooting across the module and damn near knocked yourself out because in microgravity discharging a fire extinguisher is like firing off a jetpack.  Next time remember to secure your feet.

Whee!

See, just because a piece of equipment is in a certain spot on the station, that doesn’t mean that its power source is in the same spot.  Imagine you’re at home and you’ve got a light plugged in on one end of a long room.  You have it plugged into an extension cord to reach an outlet on the other side of the room.  Now, say there’s a fire at the electrical outlet.  You’re first sign that something is wrong may be that the light goes out, but you’re not doing much good by using a fire extinguisher on the lamp.

Now, imagine there were a hundred such lamps in the room and one of them catches fire.  What’s the first thing you want to do?  If a toaster, radio, or something else starts to smoke, what’s the first thing you do?  You turn it off.  The same thing is true on the ISS; if you know what’s burning, you turn it off.  Now, with a hundred lamps connected to, say, twenty-five extension cords, it could take awhile to figure out the right one to turn off.  Just to be safe, we’ll shut off the power to the entire room.

The same philosophy applies to the space station and that is what you’re ready to do.  At this point, your helpful companion in the other module knows what piece of equipment might be on fire and where it’s plugged in.  You turn it off and if that doesn’t put out the fire, you’re finally ready to use the extinguisher.  You remember to secure your feet and you’re wearing a gas mask so that when you use the extinguisher you don’t kill yourself by surrounding yourself in a cloud of carbon dioxide.

U.S. fire extinguishers aboard the ISS don’t use water.  Instead, they release carbon dioxide.  Just removing oxygen that the fire needs to burn is good enough to put out the fire and maybe you’ve preserved some other expensive, delicate equipment that wouldn’t be able to handle being doused with water.  Russian fire extinguishers use a soapy foamy substance.  Those are not supposed to be used in U.S. modules.

Finally, the fire is out.  You are the hero you knew you could be.  Now you can close off the module and take a break while you and mission control put together a plan to clean up this mess.

Well done.

***

This post was inspired by a picture that future crew member and commander of ISS Chris Hadfield posted which provided a behind-the-scenes look at ISS fire response training.

We acquired that smoke machine about a decade ago in an attempt to create a more realistic environment for our fire response training while still meeting all of NASA’s stringent safety guidelines.  The smoke is harmless, but is realistic enough to create a sense of urgency in this training.  This is an approach we stole from the airline industry.  I spent five years as an Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLSS) instructor for ISS.  Fire response was one of the few things we trained the crew on that we hope they will never use.

Ah, Spring in Worcester, Massachusetts

The crew of Shuttle mission STS-73 visited Worcester Polytechnic Institute in early spring of 1996.  Unbeknownst to me, I shook the hand of my future that day and I mean that quite literally.  The STS-73 crew included the head of the WPI chemistry department, Al Sacco, as a payload specialist.  As a result, the crew’s debrief tour led them to this small engineering school in central Massachusetts.

At the time, I was a junior in college.  Along with another good friend of mine, I had just chronicled the STS-73 mission in a school publication, the Advanced Space Design Journal.  I already knew at that time, actually well before that time, that I wanted to pursue a career in space exploration.  I had no idea how I would go about that, where I would get started or what I even really wanted to do, I just knew that my future would follow that path.

I promise the smell of stale beer will wear off before we do ISS emergency training.

The commander of STS-73 was Ken Bowersox (pictured above, next to me in the Flyer’s jacket).  Ken Bowersox would later go on to be the Commander of the Expedition 6 Crew.  That just happened to be my final assignment as an International Space Station (ISS) Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) instructor.  In that role, I would be responsible for training Bowersox and the rest of the crew how to operate all of the life support equipment on ISS as well as how to respond to emergency situations like a cabin fire or leak.

Ken Bowersox is now a prominent member of the SpaceX team which is currently developing a new cargo and crew vehicle that may provide US access to low Earth orbit in the near future.  For this reason, I’m sure I haven’t seen the last of him in my career.

No, seriously, I'm going to be your training lead in 10 years.

Also on that flight, serving as a Mission Specialist, was astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria (in the blue suit above).  Lopez-Alegria would later be assigned as the Commander of ISS Expedition 14.  Coincidentally enough, Expedition 14 would be my first assignment as a Station Training Lead.  In that role, I was responsible for leading a team of instructors to ensure the crew was trained how to properly operate and live in the ISS and be ready for any contingency.

10 years later and as promised, I no longer smelled of stale beer.

The point of this story, you never know when you’re going to come face-to-face with your future.  Try to conduct yourself accordingly.  Also, wear a little more dignified, understated jacket when you’re posing for picture with astronauts.

At the moment, the world is celebrating the final flight of the Space Shuttle, STS-135. At 5:56 am eastern time tomorrow, Shuttle Atlantis will roll to a stop on the runway at Kennedy Space Center and at that moment, the shuttle program will effectively end.  Thirty years of shuttle flights will draw to a close.  In that fleeting moment, the shuttle will capture the attention of the world.  Then minutes, hours, days, or weeks later, it will fade from the thoughts of many, if not most.

The challenge with space exploration is that it is not a necessity of life for the majority; there will always be more pressing concerns.  Whether it’s the debt ceiling, the federal budget, taxes, war, death, disease, or scandal, something will be pressed to the front of the collective consciousness of society.  Space exploration will be left to the die-hards and, frankly this is okay.

It has been argued that exploration is at the core of the human spirit, that to be complacent is to let that spirit die.  Exploration, in that sense, comes in many forms, be it scientific research or medical research, both of those push the boundary of human knowledge and thus can be deemed exploration. For some though, there is a need to focus outward.  Some argue that space exploration should be cancelled and those minds and resources should be moved to problems like healthcare or education.

I have always argued that space exploration is a healthy aspect of the government’s investment portfolio.  Space exploration is ultimately a study of both other worlds and ourselves.  We learn the limits of human endurance and of the body’s ability to endure harsh environments.  Those lessons then improve our every day life here on Earth while they help us expand into the Solar System. In order to ensure a bright future for its population, the government must invest in the areas deemed too risky for private industry, that it must continue to invest in the evolution of knowledge and technology, so that its spirit continues to grow.  This is why I lament the end of the Shuttle program, and more importantly, the loss of its supporting workforce and their collective experience.

Instead of continuing to evolve, to push ourselves, to explore new frontiers, we are now in a steady state, waiting for bold leadership to select a viable new direction and then waiting to see if someone will be willing to pay for the vision that is offered up.

Two years ago, my office included a group of twelve training leads for the Space Shuttle program.  These individuals were selected because of their talent, their leadership abilities, their work ethic, and their drive to do what they did.  In three weeks, that group will no longer exist.

The decades of experience the individuals in that office gained will be lost to NASA.  Some will join a few of the commercial companies now developing new space vehicles and for those few, the goal of transferring the government’s expertise in low Earth orbit spaceflight to private industry will be realized.  But most of that knowledge will simply be lost.  Careers and lives that have been dedicated to this cause are now stopping and shifting abruptly.

Years from now once a new vehicle is developed and a new mission is selected and funded, we will be in a position where we will need that expertise and we will not have it.  A common criticism I have seen leveled at NASA lately is why weren’t we able to easily recreate the successes of the Apollo program with modern technology.  After all, we did it before; it should be easy to do again in the digital age.  When a program is cancelled though, the workforce is let go, the infrastructure is dismantled, and data is lost.  Experience and knowledge walk out the door and it is irreplaceable.

If we are ever to truly expand the reach of humanity beyond Earth, we must take a smarter approach to space exploration.  Currently, the exploration goals of NASA are subject to the whims of the current administration.  In this partisan environment, one party’s vision is the other party’s trash.  So a Democrat must throw out the plans of a Republican and a Republican must throw out the plans of the Democrat.  So we shift with the administrations, scrambling to establish as concrete a foundation for a program as we can, in the hope that the next administration will see its value and we will be able to continue that work.

This approach will not lead to long-term success.

To explore, to establish a true human presence off of this planet, will take time and money.  We can’t look at plans that are four years down the road or even ten, we need a plan, a strategy, that takes us twenty, thirty, or even fifty years into the future.  We need a logical progression from one destination to the next, with the recognition that as one program retires, we carry the lessons learned and experience gained to the new program.  We need to naturally transition from program to program, not start, make progress, stop completely, and then restart.

The International Space Station, recently completed, has been in orbit for 10 years.  In another ten years, we could possibly decommission it.  How long will it take us to evolve from that?  Will it ever be replaced?  We should already be developing plans for its successor, for our next step in establishing a firm human presence in orbit.  In ten years, will I be decrying the loss of the ISS workforce as we continue on another startup program?

In a way, I don’t lament the end of the Shuttle program.  There is a reason people no longer drive around in Model-Ts or use Commodore 64s or listen to 8-tracks.  Technology progresses, new needs emerge, and we continue to evolve our capabilities. The shuttle program has completed 135 missions in 30 years.  It has assembled the most complex engineering challenge that humanity ever attempted.  It has contributed a staggering amount to the scientific knowledge of the human race. It has, in effect, completed its mission.

We could have continued to fly more shuttle missions year to year; however, it is time for us to move beyond low Earth orbit and continue our exploration of the stars.

Yet, we are not able to do that.  And by the time we are, the knowledge and experience of those who have contributed to the significant achievements of the shuttle program will be lost.  That is the tragedy here.