No real surprise for those that have been following the Aerospace media outlets, but reports are starting to accumulate which indicate that NASA’s most recent attempts to return to the moon have now come to an end.  I personally saw an alarming convergence of items a little over two years ago which indicated what I thought at the time to be a dangerous crossroads.  In reality it ended up being not a fork in the road, but the inevitable outcome of a chain of events built upon a broken foundation. 

For me, it is a bittersweet moment to say the least.

There is the aspect of the space program that I saw as a boy and have ever since had a difficult time letting go.  That child saw the space program as a symbol for everything that is great and possible in humanity.  Our ability to leverage our minds to construct tools and methods to overcome the limitations of our bodies and our environment.  The fascination that imagination and creativity can be forged into reality.  There are many applications of this paradigm, but I chose to identify human spaceflight as the pinnacle manifestation of these qualities in present day.  And while some would debate placing spaceflight on the highest pedestal, I doubt that many would argue that it is not worthy of a place somewhere on the podium.

However, there is also the aspect that my growing reservations ultimately ended up being vindicated.  NASA had spent the 1980’s and 1990’s hopelessly circling in Earth Orbit at the same altitude as a road trip from Houston to San Antonio.  In 2004, after the Columbia accident, a convergence of events occurred which caused me to stake claim with my own career path in the way forward.  The Shuttle had been deemed unsafe.  Any subsequent vehicle upgrade projects would be viewed in an either-or rather in-addition-to the Shuttle.  This eliminated the issue that had repeatedly bitten NASA in the past with projects such as the VentureStar and National Aerospace Plane.  People and Congress had historically chose, “Hey, we still have the Shuttle, let’s just keep flying that instead.”  Now the question posed to America was instead: “The Shuttle is unsafe.  We’re not flying it anymore.  Do you want to be a space-faring nation… or not?”  The Columbia accident coincided with the ascendance of the Chinese into the elite status of the third nation capable of indigenously sending humans into orbit.  The less-than-private ascertations of our Communist and ill-intent perceived adversaries that their ultimate goal was our nearest celestial neighbor compounded with the retirement of the Shuttle would not only sustain Americans presence in space, but would surely once again set our sights on the moon… wouldn’t it?  I bet my career on this fact for this is the opportunity I wanted to be a part of.  An orphan of Apollo, I now had the opportunity to become a steward of the return to the moon: Constellation.

So I made the most of my opportunities, packed my bags, and in 2004 with both youthful and ignorant gusto- set forth to Houston.  For several years, everything looked peachy.  NASA defied historic convention and appointed an astoundingly capable and well educated engineer, Dr. Michael Griffin, at the helm.  Decisions were being made that made sense.  If you are going to build a new space exploration architecture, then shouldn’t an engineer hold the reigns to the carriage?  Unfortunately, progress was not forthcoming.  The new NASA administrator spent an upfront chunk of time to undo the spiral development engineering methodology set into place by his predecessor.  An architectural decision process then followed with the eye-brow raising decision to inject innovation into an otherwise Apollo/Shuttle, blast-from-the-past architecture, by using for the first time ever, a solid rocket booster as an exclusive first stage of the follow-on Ares I rocket.  And on a launch vehicle that would be carrying humans no less.  The accusations for this selection are numerous and could and probably will spawn an entirely separate blog post on the subject.  Schedules then began to slip.  It had already been decided to stop flying the Shuttle on or near 2010, but initial boisterous claims to have the follow-on Orion ready to fly in 2011, became 2012, then 2014, and most recently 2017 has been announced and I have even read 2018 uttered in certain circles.

And then… 2008 happened.  Ahhh, millions were taken aback by the fervor of the Democratic primary and their race to capture the hearts and minds of Americans.  During the campaign, a certain junior senator from Illinois made page two news by announcing that his plan for reforming education in American would be directly financed by delaying the Constellation program.  Uh-oh.  While it is not unusual for politicians to take jabs at one government agency or another in order to seize financing for their own projects of interest.  But to call out a program directly… by name?  That seemed rather… odd… and specific.  To this day I do not know his true motivations, but again, for another blog post topic, I tend to believe it is that he expertly harbors a concealed desire for humanity that is directly converse to that of the boy that I described above, perhaps even unknowingly to himself.  The junior senator was trailing the former first lady by a wide margin though.  Surely this, “concept paper” on education policy would end up being moot.  Right?  But then this teleprompter-dictating-master-orator began winning primary states, and then another, and another.  All of sudden, he had the upper-hand, and the American people seemed attracted to him like moths to headlights.  Uh-oh.  And indeed, the incumbent was so hated by the American people that the Republicans had no chance, and low and behold, come January 2009, that concept paper on education policy was now at the very least, a glimpse into the sub-conscious motives of the man that now held the highest office in the land.  As I watched his acceptance speech on election night as so many people rejoiced in what they felt was an historically important moment, I couldn’t help but sense the strong irony at the contrast of what I felt at the time.  Seeing the dominoes lined-up against what I had desired for so long; the A -> B -> C -> D of what was going to happen, it was a melancholy event as I looked on from my living room.  Yet, despite the verocity of my reaction and prognostications- my interpretation was still held in common view as an outlier.  I read something the other day that generally cited: as abstraction increases, the number of your peers which will share the insight decreases.  Looking back upon this axiom now, I realize that it was foolish of me to expect others around me to have fully understood.  It should have been expected and understandable that most people will perceive as irrationality to them what appears to be overreaction to an otherwise benign and unrelated event.  While this knowledge would not have changed the reality of ideological isolation, it would have at least made the bitter pill of such a little easier to swallow.

And while the political waters began to ice over, the engineering issues mounted.  The Shuttle successor went from being able to carry six people to four.  It went from being able to be reused, land in Washington state and recovered by a small team, to being disposable, landing in the water off of Los Angeles, and needing a Navy fleet for a welcome party.  The launch vehicle was discovered to cause vibrating oscillations that would render any humans riding atop it’s organs to a ride akin to a paint stirrer.  It was discovered that due to its unusual center of pressure and gravity dynamics that it’s stability in flight was in question.  And that it could run into the launch tower in high winds.  And that the Air Force whom is in charge of range safety in Florida announced that the crew would almost certainly perish in an explosion of the launch vehicle.  And so on and so on and so on.  The truth of these issues and the fighting that occurred between media and the agency as to the veracity of these claims is not the relevant issue here, this is simply what was being reported.  And what is being reported is what is in the ear of the American people.  And in a public-financed industry that does not function on profit, but on public approval, well… the words in the ears of those citizens are more important than all the simulation data, design specifications, and mode team studies in the country combined.

Meanwhile, the very same Chinese that caused a stir with their lunar aspirations did not follow-up with anything tangible to fear.  Their flight rate was slower than NASA’s in the post-Columbia environment.  At the rate they were going, the Chinese would indeed end up on the moon with Communist footprints, sometime before the end of the 21st century.  Not much of a Soviet-esque 1960’s democracy to the moon motivator, eh?

So as sweet as it seemed in 2004.  In 2008 it became rather obvious to me.  My mood with things in general began going south faster than NBC’s opinion of Conan O’Brien.  It was a dream some 25 odd years in the making and I did not take it lightly.  I was honestly in unfamiliar territory and was uncertain what to do.  When you build up something as the summit and then begin the arduous climb up the mountain, how appealing is it when you find out that the mountain is a farce, made of pyrite, and you are left instead to contemplate which one of the foothills to drudge up that is looming below?  This is the challenge that I faced.  I felt lost, with nowhere to turn.  I had gone after something I loved and when it failed to live up to my admittedly vast expectations- I simply couldn’t motivate myself for a career in writing user interfaces for consumer electronics devices, or ATM software, or spell checking algorithms.  I wanted my individual talents, intellect and energy to bootstrap humanities presence in the final frontier.  To open up a new chapter of innovation, expansion, and rejuvenation for our species.  And I wanted this because I wanted to live in this environment so as to make my own life more enjoyable. 

Compromise is not in my vocabulary.  It never will be.  I cannot look back on my life when it is all said and done and feel satisfied trading my values as a commodity.  And I’m not talking about events outside of your control or what you watch on television on a given evening.  I’m talking about the qualities and values that you hold in high regard.  The ones that you look for other people.  The ones that you look for in a career.   I’m talking about rationality, integrity, honesty, productiveness,  and justice.  Forging humanities path into the cosmos resoundingly fit the bill for all of these qualities to me, and I continue to struggle to find a suitable replacement.  But my contradiction is that I also knew that a replacement is what I knew I direly needed.  Fortunately, I believe that I have found that replacement.  I will eagerly share new details as soon as I can, but for the time being, secrecy of the specifics is paramount.  Suffice it to say that while this chapter is coming to an end, I still have a heartfelt and steadfast belief in technology and its contributions to the values that I mentioned above.

Regrettably there were those that doubted me and that this dreadful state of American human space exploration would occur.  They believed my pessimism to be unfounded, and derived not from assessment of the evidence at hand, but instead to be an ill-fated character trait.  I would have tended to agree had this been my modus operandi my whole life.  But all those that knew me from 2004-2008 knew how much all this meant to me and how happy I was to apply my own intellect and abilities to the pinnacle of human engineering.  This binary relationship of my past happiness should have been sufficient to justify my present sadness.  And time has proven me correct, for my pessimism was simply the proper outlook given which reality presented itself.

Finally, let’s finish with a quote to wrap things up as it applies to the conclusion of this chapter in my life.  In what to others seems like an extraordinary amount of emotional capital to have paid for what I now know, I respond that moral correctness exceeds all else.  Or in the words of Dr. Gregory House from the TV drama of the same surname; following an incident in which he paid-off the apartment complex plumber more than the cost of the  job simply so his landlord whom was at fault would get stuck with the bill he quipped:

Plumber: Are you happy?
House: No… But I’m right.