antangil

This is my personal opinion. The Moon to Mars Objectives offers an agency-vetted response that’s probably better than mine.

I think folks with this opinion are very nearly allies. They have an interest in things outside their immediate environment, they recognize the value of both investment and innovation, and they’re unsatisfied with the status quo. I can get behind all of those qualities and recognize in them a friend.

I also, for the record, want to see the world a better place. I want to see conservation and education, I want to see the hungry fed and the hurting aided. I don’t want to pick between aiding hurricane victims and educating youth. I don’t want to pick between feeding the hungry and going to space. All of these things can be good and valuable at the same time, and there is no reason we as a society should be forced to choose. I’m a “yes, and” voice for those who want to see the world a better place today… I think that the human behaviors that NASA inspires are critical to achieving your goal.

Tsiolkovsky’all / [email protected] is a direct NASA employee.

(Hi folks! I’ll go first to show you what I have in mind.)

I am not part of NASA’s Public Affairs office and have no official outreach role. I’m part of this community because I love what I do, but nothing that I say should be interpreted as an official NASA position.

I have a masters degree in systems engineering with a concentration in space systems and a BSE in Mechancial Engineering. Before that,
I was a barista and a mall retail worker. Before that, I was a college dropout with a difficult-to-achieve 0.0 cumulative GPA.

I worked for NASA as a contractor for over 10 years and was hired as a direct NASA employee fairly recently - all of that experience is in the domain of human spaceflight. In one way or another, I’ve been lucky enough to work on pretty much every going concern in the Moon to Mars portfolio. Folks that worked Artemis 1 SLS, the early days of HLS, or in the ACD integration organization would generally recognize me.

My experience lies in a few related domains: Cross-Program Integration (the engineering effort to make sure that all the hardware built by the programs works together)

• Modeling and Simulation
• Digital Transformation (I hate that term)
• NASA SE Processes (logical decomposition, requirements development, verification and validation, etc)
• Technology maturation
• Human Systems Integration

In addition to moderating, I’m going to try to contribute content generated by NASA’s ESDMD that is in the public domain but that maybe doesn’t get a lot of mainstream press… especially about NASA’s evolving plan for Mars (which is something I’m mostly just really curious about).

There’s definitely relevant crossover, but I’m also okay if members of both communities focus any zeal for Musk in your domain. I’ve got a lot of respect for Glynn and her team and SpaceX is definitely having their Apollo moment - and they have a gift for keeping the press excited in a way that’s generally good for the whole world of space exploration.

But… (fair warning) I’ve worked SLS and the NASA govt reference design for HLS. My personal feelings on the “just give all the work to Elon” storyline are therefore a bit complex. Regardless, welcome to the community - all engagement is positive. :)

I’ll throw out another one. Would it be useful to the community to see short bios on those among us that work at (or around) NASA? Would others that work there be interested in posting one?

If there’s interest, I was thinking that I’d police that post heavily to ensure that only posters that had proven their credentials to me had posts… and that I’d share my own credentials with anyone that passed so that we were all on the same playing field.

I’ve worked at NASA for a good number of years, and I’ve interacted a lot with the human health and medical establishment. Anyone want to do some read-and-discuss threads on interesting layperson-friendly HMTA papers?

I’m a human spaceflight guy, and well-read in the area of NASA’s evolving plans for crewed exploration of the Moon and Mars. Would y’all like a series of discussion posts on NASA’s Moon to Mars Objectives?

Right on, then. I’ll start looking for some content creation bots, pull in some feeds from the agency, maybe NASAwatch for some color.

Actually… if my SATERN training has been good for anything, it’s hammering home the value of inclusion. How do you feel about the idea of getting one member of the community to rep for each of the mission directorates? Job would be to watch the feeds, throw something into the community when it pops. I can probably rep for ESDMD, but I don’t even really know what ARMD stands for. :)

I’ve got no clue what I’m doing as a mod, but I do work for NASA if that helps? US CTZ.

Happy to pitch in.

At the heart of the OC’s question there’s a valid and useful impulse. We should, as a society, always be asking whether we’re putting our resources in the right places. I just think that the case for space exploration dovetails pretty nicely into where OC wants to focus. Folks that want to shift funding into environmental reclamation are the natural allies of us space exploration nerds. It’s all science, it’s all toward improving humanity. Just need to get us all on the same side of the ball. :)

…starts with a dizzying triple combo of ad hominem (democrats are infestations), straw-man (arguing that the commenters are bad instead of focusing on the article we’re commenting on), and association (all folks who disagree with me are bad).

…then demands fair and elevated discourse and complains when it’s not offered.

I might have been part of the problem in /r/politics, but your message leaves out the “treat others how you wish to be treated” lesson that is also frequently lacking in the policies of the states in the article.

Every big program is appropriated annually; this isn’t a death knell, it’s just a vote of no confidence in the way things are. Proposed budget Is probably enough to keep the lights on during a reorg and rethink of the current mission scope, it’s just not enough to make forward progress. If they can get back in the box, I’d expect future appropriations to match the cost challenge Congress gave.

Of all the stupid things that Congress does, this feels…less stupid than usual. Usually they’d just cancel it outright.

This isn’t a particularly hot take. It’s been a steady drumbeat since at least the instantiation of NASA… and it’s probably traceable all the way back to the folks standing around eating raw meat and laughing about the fool trying to tame fire.

The two biggest drivers for innovation are exploration and war. Exploration is the useful force in your proposed endeavor, teaching us how to survive in hostile environments and giving us insights about other resources or natural systems that we can adapt to our own. Exploration keeps the human race learning, thinking, and working together. You need those things.

What isn’t going to help you is the piddling handful of spare change that is spent across the world on space exploration. If your goals look inward, I respect that - you’ll have better returns by reforming the health and education mafias that siphon cash and stifle innovation. You’ll find more money and progress by far if you can divert funds and engineering focus from the military to environmental renewal.

What you shouldn’t want is to stifle any existing area of peaceful collaboration and innovation; this isn’t an either-or, it’s a yes-and. The target should be any societal aberration that makes it harder for people to get higher on Maslow’s pyramid. You’ve got valid goals, but bad aim.