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• Commented on Building Orion

  @Spaceboy I stand corrected on the outer shell comment - it's clearly not an outer shell; I had the word "shell" in my head and for some reason it came out that way. Thinko. You're also correct that I have...

• Commented on Building Orion

  What an annoyingly biased article. Some comments: 1) Starting with the title: "NASA's First Lunar Orion Test Capsule Built" seems to imply that they've built a fully fitted Orion capsule, which is clearly not the case. He elaborates on this...

• Commented on While We All Argue - Let's Not Lose Sight of The Ultimate Goal

  Thanks, Keith, for the sentiment. We all may need to step back and take a deep breath; there's a lot of room for disagreement but the community has forgotten that disagreement gets unhealthy when we start taking things personally. It's...

• Commented on Blunt Talk in Houston

  It seems like the administration in general, and Bolden in particular, aren't very good at communicating the message - if they were, it might be better received. Having said that: the people here (NASA in general; JSC in particular) need...

• Commented on Space Policy: New Message, Old Voices

  I'm 30 and work on Constellation (Orion). I'm honestly a little disappointed when I hear that "Orion Lite" might live on; I had hoped it would be canceled outright. Here at NASA, for all of the hype about social networking...

• Commented on Building a True Spaceship - And Then Going Somewhere

  Except that the "Obama plan" isn't what canceled the Shuttle program. Just a friendly reminder. The notion of a "true spacecraft" - one that stays in space, never launching off a planet on its own power, is an attractive one....

• Commented on New Pointers To Deleted ISS Components

  I'm just thinking of the mountains of paperwork and hundreds of man-hours it took to get to that point ... "Hey, someone from building 1 said we need to get rid of the direction signs" "Huh? Are you crazy? We're...

• Commented on Non-televised Press Briefing with Bolden

  Ray, I apologize if you feel insulted or belittled. I do agree with you that nebulous, poorly conceived requirements are a recipe for disaster, and I've had to work under those conditions so I know firsthand what a poorly written...

• Commented on Non-televised Press Briefing with Bolden

  Ray, This attitude is a reason that flight hardware is so severely limited. Unimaginative people are much more comfortable saying "this is impossible" than "I don't know how to do this." I am not saying only a single mission. Many...

• Commented on Non-televised Press Briefing with Bolden

  joshcryer, All good comments. You're right that a lot of the technology that would get you to and from the moon would also get you to and from Mars, but there are still some key differences that have to be...

• Commented on Non-televised Press Briefing with Bolden

  Ray, Designing a vehicle for a specific mission is a sure way to back yourself into a corner that's very hard to get out of. One of the greatest liabilities with the Shuttle is that it was designed for a...

• Commented on Non-televised Press Briefing with Bolden

  Watched the all-hands yesterday (it was presented to us as a JSC all-hands meeting, not a press conference or public meeting - I'm in favor of open things, but I also think it's good for him to go to the...

• Commented on NASA Is Oblivious

  @Spaceboy What exactly do you think NASA is going to spend all that extra money on? You think they're going to fire everybody and hire a totally different set of people? Or fire everybody and bury the money in mayonnaise...

• Commented on NASA Is Oblivious

  The thing is that Orion (and probably other parts of Constellation as well) suffered from many problems: poor choice of contractors, outdated technology, far too many cooks in the kitchen, and unreasonably restrictive requirements, to name a few. No amount...

• Commented on NASA: Less Money, New Direction?

  giskard03: "The shuttle's great, but a second generation shuttle would only confine us to LEO longer." This strikes me as a narrow view: the point is not to make another Shuttle that does the same things as this one, but...

• Commented on LaRC Management Wants To Know Why People Show Up for Work

  Chuckie: Wow ... you must be either a manager (a bad one) or someone who has never had a job you've actually enjoyed. It's one thing to have a happy home life and want to get back to it, but...

• Commented on LaRC Management Wants To Know Why People Show Up for Work

  ... but if you only go to work because you *have to* - you're not a motivated (productive) employee. If you go to work because you're excited about what you do - that's what NASA needs. If this is a...

• Commented on Bolden Meets With Obama

  "You would use ISS-style modules only when it is efficient to do so... and not because you have no other choice." The fact that we can make them and launch them *makes* them an efficient choice. Engineering is about compromise...

• Commented on Bolden Meets With Obama

  zapkitty: "... what little money might be saved in starting out with Sidemount will be lost when you are forced to assemble projects out of multiple ISS-diametered modules again... something that everyone seems to agree is a bad idea." Who...

• Commented on NASA LaRC Poll: Helping People Feel Attractive and Lovable (#21)

  Chuck - My next question would be: how can a contractor with this sort of problem get consistently high award fee scores? Contractors doing a bad job is one thing, but when bad behavior is reinforced it only gets worse....

• Commented on NASA LaRC Poll: Helping People Feel Attractive and Lovable (#21)

  I would like to see this survey at all NASA centers. The science/art (you pick) of psychology sometimes leads people to ask silly-sounding questions (like #21), but the answers to those questions can tell a lot about the survey taker's...

• Commented on HSPD-12 Update

  Geoffrey: HSPD-12 didn't exist in 2001, true. However there was still a background check and a very detailed form to fill out, and postcards mailed to acquaintances and whatnot. When all of this started at JSC, co-workers were filling out...

• Commented on HSPD-12 Update

  Out of curiosity (I admit I haven't been following this at all) - do JPL contractors have to do a different background check than the rest of NASA? I haven't heard of this kind of backlash from any other NASA...

• Commented on Challenge Everything

  Wow ... did you actually read the post? They don't make any claims about inventing this idea. There are a lot of people whose work at JSC is very compartmentalized - you work on aspect X of project Y, and...

• Commented on Challenge Everything

  Well there's https://challenges.jsc.nasa.gov/, but it's really poorly implemented and nobody uses it so I'm not sure if that counts ......

• Commented on More Inbred Space Advocacy Choir Practice

  Government agencies have historically (at least for the last few decades) been bad at advertising themselves to the American public - we all know that NASA is no exception. This site and twitter feed seem campy and shallow, but maybe...

• Commented on China's Mir?

  Frank: why should the Soyuz be called the "greatest manned spacecraft ever designed and evolved" - because the design was in operation the longest? In terms of manned spacecraft, it stands apart from others only by virtue of having flown...