The way the NASA guy talked to us made it seem like we had just been accepted as Star Fleet cadets: he talked about how this was our opportunity to shine, that NASA had seen potential in us and this was our opportunity to show them what we were made of. We were in the pipeline now, he said, and the farther the pipe went, the narrower it got. Look around the room, he said. This is your competition.

Our competition? Our competition for what? To become civil servants? To work for NASA, that floundering, unwieldy, money-bleeding enterprise which can't send a rover to Mars without coming in a half a billion dollars over budget? To become as poor as our NASA advisors?

For the first time someone was presenting NASA to me as it ought to be, a great honor, an opportunity to join a team of men and women whose destination was the stars, who worked in outer space and who were going to make it possible for everyone else to work there, too. We were in the pipeline. The pipeline to become principle investigators on missions, the pipeline to become astronauts, the pipeline to become NASA administrators! I began to feel a flicker of inspiration for the future that I had never felt before about joining NASA.

I went to lunch with my NASA advisor. We were in a group with a bunch of other NASA employees. They were talking about NASA parties. "Yeah," my advisor said, "NASA never has good food."
"That's because NASA is so goddamned cheap," somebody chimed in. "That's what you'll learn about NASA," he said, leaning over to me, "that NASA is so goddamned cheap." I thought about our new student orientation, and how they offered muffins and bananas and coffee for us for a suggested price of $1 per item. "So," said one of the people at the table, "what do you want to do when you graduate?" I felt my answer should be politic in front of my advisor, so I listed a group of institutions for which I might do research, like NOAA or the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "Aren't you going to become a professor?" my advisor asked. I gave an equivocal answer involving work-life balances and the fact that my current academic advisor comes to work at 4 am every day. Another fellow said, "Yes, but all that academic and government stuff aside, are you going to get a real job?"

"Out there, you mean?" I said
"Yes, I mean, in oil or the like."
I had to admit to him that this was a possibility. I once again felt saddled with the choice between making a lot of money and making a difference. I was once again faced with question of whether or not, through all the inefficiency and red tape, that I could make a difference in an organization like this.

We were walking back to the building. It had some name like the Innovation Center, and each room had a name like "The Idea Loft" or "The Inspiration Room". I mentioned the room names, trying to get an idea about how inspired they felt when they used them. They exchanged a look, a look that seemed to say that these catch-phrase room names were just another bit of corporate bullshit that the Everyman laughed about behind closed doors away from the hearing of his supervisor. I felt my inspiration slipping away.

It's so easy to be a critic. It's so easy to be the guy who always says, "It's never going to happen," or "we're never going to make it". It would be very easy to never return to the Moon, and despite NASA's declarations, there are plenty of people within NASA itself who are pretty convinced it will never happen. But what if we could return to the Moon? What if we could establish a base there, build a telescope, reach outwards into space towards Mars and beyond? What if, just like the in the 1960s, mankind could work together towards a common, peaceful goal, and achieve it? One of the Apollo astronauts commented that it has become a popular phrase to say, "What, we can put a man on the Moon but we can't _fill in the blank_?" The answer is, we put a man on the Moon, and now there isn't anything we can't do. The whole point of space exploration isn't really the utility of having people in space, although that might be important far in the future. The point isn't to frivolously spend money that we could be using to help people or protect the nation (defense, medicare and medicaid, and social security have a bit more than 20% of the federal budget each, while NASA's share of the federal government funds is about 0.6%). The point isn't to increase the USA's profile among the nations or to establish ourselves as a leader. The point isn't even to make sure that there are plenty of scientists and engineers to design new weapons systems in times of need. The point is to unite all of humanity in an endeavor that is much larger than humanity itself, which requires the peaceful participation of the whole world, and which requires us to unite, not against anything, but for something, for the exploration of new frontiers, for new knowledge of the Solar System and the Universe, for knowledge of limits of the human spirit. That's what NASA is for. I guess maybe it's our opportunity, the opportunity of the kids in the pipeline, the opportunity of every kid out there today who ever dreamed about outer space, to get out there and make it happen, to rebuild NASA into the Space Academy. After all, doesn't the future belong to us? Can't we make it into whatever we want it to be? I'd like to speak on behalf of my Star Fleet classmates to say, "Let's do it."

nicely put.
» thaitanic on 2009-07-23 10:28:02

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