Alan Stern named associate administrator for SMD

NASA has finally announced the replacement for Mary Cleave who is retiring in April as AA for the Science Mission Directorate. Dr. Cleave was trained as a biologist and an engineer, but became an astronaut almost straight out of grad school (her Wikipedia entry). She was never really accepted by the science community, which is likely one, but certainly not the only, reason for the strained relationship between the greater NASA science community and HQs for the last couple of years. She felt we were constantly whining and we felt we weren't being listened too, it was a bad situation all around.

I think that Dr. Cleave did her best in what is a thankless job, especially during tough budget years, but I for one, will not be sad to see her go.

Dr. Stern is an interesting choice for replacement. I don't know a lot about him besides what was in the press release, but he is clearly a scientist and an active member of the planetary community, so he gets points for that. (Although according to his Wikipedia entry, he was very nearly an astronaut, but I won't hold that against him.)

Alan is from Colorado, a graduate of the Univ of Colorado, he is currently executive of the Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI’s) Space Science and Engineering Division. Which, I believe, is in Mark Udall's district. Mark being the chair of the House subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. So they should get along well.

He is also the PI on the New Horizons mission to Pluto. I know that it's going to be a while before we get to Pluto (July, 2015), but even so, doesn't that seem like a conflict of interest? I wonder if they will make him relinquish that title while he is at HQ.

Can Dr. Stern make a difference at HQ? Can he do anything to improve communication with the science community and erase some of the bitterness that has been built up the last few years? I hope so.

Joss Whedon interview

There's a great 4 part interview with Joss Whedon up at Geek Monthly. He talks mostly about the upcoming Buffy Season 8 comics, which I have to admit I am so excited about.

I don't normally read comics. Nothing personal, it's just never been my thing. But I gotta tell you, I would read the back of a triscuit box if Joss wrote it. And then I would re-read it and look for hidden layers of meaning. And then I would go online and see if I could find others who had read and dissected the layers of depth in the triscuit box and had drawn parallels to works on the back of other snack foods and then I would search out those snack foods and read their backs before re-reading the triscuit box once again to ensure that I could fully appreciate the genius that went into the triscuit box. Yeah, it's kind of a sickness.

Also, some of my other favorite Buffy writers are also going to be writing issues of the comic, including Jane Espenson and Drew Goddard. It's going to be so good.

Anna Nicole's final bow - an act of humanitarianism

I haven't said anything about Lisa Nowak yet, mostly because I haven't had anything either insightful or hilarious to say, but I woke up this morning with a somewhat morbid thought that Lisa and her family, not to mention NASA as a whole, must be so grateful to Anna Nicole Smith for dying. Apparently I'm not the only one who thought that, as I stumbled on this blog entry this morning.

I, for one, won't miss the circling helicopters and stupid news vans hanging out at JSC's entry gates.

This made me laugh today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOyQ3nTDgCs

A parody of Ron Howard's Apollo 13 that wonders what Thanksgiving might be like at Gene Kranz's (Ed Harris from Apollo 13) house, especially when things go terribly, but familiarly wrong.

It's hilarious:

- "What did you do?"

- "Nothing, I stirred the gravy."

NASA's 08 budget announced

NASA announced it's 08 budget yesterday. You can find the transcript of Mike Griffin's comments here and the pdf of the actual budget is here

NASA will receive a 3.1% increase over last year's budget request, which is not terrible, it could be worse, of course, but it's not good, especially considering how NASA got the shaft in the continuing resolution. NSF, by contrast, got a 7% increase. Ever since the President skipped over NASA in his ACI (American Competitiveness Initiative), NASA has become something of the redheaded stepchild of science when it comes to funding.

In a press release, the chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, Bart Gordon said:

"Once again, NASA’s budget request is not sufficient to do all the agency is being asked to do. Exploration and human space flight are important long-term missions for the agency and our country. So are NASA’s core activities in science and aeronautics. Yet this budget request and its five-year funding plan do not provide the funding needed to ensure the future health of any of these initiatives. I fear we may be heading for a train wreck if no corrective actions are taken."

On the other side of the Hill, Sen Mikulski was also disappointed:

“The space program needs presidential leadership, and we expect to see that leadership in the budget. Unfortunately, we don’t see it in this year’s budget yet again. I fought to have NASA included in the American Competitiveness Initiative, but the White House refused. NASA’s work should be the hallmark of any national program to promote America’s competitiveness,” said Senator Mikulski. “I will keep fighting for a balanced space program – science, exploration and aeronautics – all leading the way for innovation and discovery.”

Times are tough, and not just for science; exploration, aeronautics, education, everything NASA does is getting squeezed.

A few good things came out of the budget announcement though:
* GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement mission) is moving forward, thank goodness, because the TRMM satellite that it's replacing is running out of fuel, and those measurements are important for things like accurate hurricane predictions.

* The next-generation LANDSAT is also moving forward after a lot of fits and starts, though to slowly to avoid a data gap, but still.

* A new funding line for Lunar Science is finally being started - this was something I tried to push for when I was on the Hill, but I could never get any traction, everyone said it was too early, we didn't need it yet, but I guess they finally felt it was time.

* For those who care, the SOFIA mission has been reinstated and is back on track.

* The budget runout allows for increases to the previously estimated costs for purchasing commercial cargo and crew services to support the ISS, which I take as a sign that they are really serious about pursuing COTS, which is kinda exciting in the big picture. I really hope that some viable commercial options materialize.

* Finally, one of the best things to come out of yesterday's announcement, in my humble opinion anyway, it sounds like they are going to readjust some of the Full Cost Accounting procedures. - "Our full cost accounting practices created a complex allocation of overhead costs which disproportionately inflated the operating costs for our research centers." - ya think?

So that's a quick look from my perspective, I haven't really had time to comb though the nitty gritty numbers yet. What do you think? Is NASA going to muddle through, or is the "train wreck" just ahead?

What are we going to do on the Moon?

I get that question a lot. Haven't we already been there? Why do we need to go back? Don't we already know everything?

Here is a list of 181 things that NASA has figured out that we can do on the Moon, not that we are necessarily going to do all of these things, but there's 181 of them, we're certainly going to make it through some of them.

new paintings

I put some newer work up on my website.