This is an Ignite talk. If you're not familiar with Ignite, the talks are all EXACTLY 5 mins. You get 20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds. It's a real challenge to not get behind on the slides.

Despite the challenge of giving a compelling talk in this format, I do really enjoy it.  It forces presenters to get the point in 5 minutes and you can get through quite a few really great ideas in a 90 minute session.

Is it just me or were several of those slides way shorter than 15 seconds? Hmm...

I love rallying cries.

I also love the huge list of things that the world benefits from as a result of NASA over the last 50 years.

BUT (come on, you knew there was a BUT in here)

Making lists of things accomplished in the past isn't enough to get programs funded for the future.  They are a by-product of other goals.

Great by products, but they are still by-products.  The result of something else.

By-products don't get billions of dollars in funding.  The chance of some by-products is also not a good motivator.

Programs that have vague half hearted goals don't get the American people's support.  Without public support, congress has a difficult time giving a program money.

It's the reality of the situation, whether or not you think it's right or fair.

We need our leaders to make a decision about the space program.  A bold decision that motivates entire generations to step up to a common goal.  To become something bigger than we are.

Only that will save NASA.

If you're not a space geek, let me back up a second since NASA isn't even on most people's mind these days and fill you in on what's going on.

The short short version.

We've had this space shuttle since the 1980's.  Technologically amazing, but pretty boring from an exploration standpoint.  As a result, the fine folks at NASA have performed amazing feats of technological greatness and the public has met this with a collective "ho hum".

In 2004, President Bush announced a pretty bold plan to phase out the Shuttle and reach towards returning to the moon by 2020. Programs are established, committees ensue, congress under-funds the whole thing and  5 years later, they are pretty behind. And by pretty behind I mean there is no freaking way it's going to work.

President Obama commissions a committee headed by Norm Augustine, a longtime space industry player, to put together a group to evaluate the current state of the program.

To put it mildly, things don't appear to be going well.

As a member of the general public, one might have caught a few minutes of the Senate Hearings on the matter last week and thought "uh oh.  Oh.  Wow, did she just say that?".

As an advocate of space exploration, I was actually a little embarrassed by the whole thing.

So today, NASA would like 3 billion dollars a year MORE in funding to put their goal back on track.

All week, I've been hearing rumors about the President making an upcoming John F. Kennedy style epic call to return to space exploration.

I really, really want for us to return exploring space.

Bad.

But if this whole thing was a movie, this would be the part when the scientists all throw popcorn at the screen and cry "Oh, come on." and "How convenient that they found water on the Moon right at that point."

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but my BS radar just went into high gear. For starters, what exactly does "significant" mean?

Here's to hoping I'm wrong.

This afternoon (June 24, 2009) at 2:30pm Eastern Time, the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the United States Senate's Appropriations Committee will be marking up the FY 2010 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill. For those of you feeling lost by that sentence, the plain English translation is: this afternoon, a group of Senators will be making edits to the proposal for the amount of money to provide to NASA and other federal agencies for fiscal year 2010.

If recent history and the Washington rumor mill are accurate predictors--and they almost certainly are--one of the first things that will happen tomorrow is that these Senators will slash the $20 million NASA requested for Centennial Challenges, the Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training (FAST) program, and the Partnership Seed Fund. With near certainty, the budget for these programs will be reduced to zero.

To reduce the budget for these programs to zero would be to allow a great opportunity to pass. Each of these three programs provides an incredibly amount of value to NASA, and helps stimulate the American economy by creating or retaining high tech employment opportunities. To cite one example among many, the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, one of seven incentive prizes offered by the Centennial Challenges programs, encourages innovative American teams to develop, build, and perfect vertical takeoff and landing rocket technology of the sort that will provide tangible benefits both to NASAs return to the Moon and to a variety of other civil, commercial, and military space applications. To date, NASA has paid out $350,000; and with the X PRIZE Foundation, the Northrop Grumman Corporation, and their partners supplying the operational funding, that $350,000 is a close representation of the total cost of the program to date. For that amount of money, NASA has incentivized approximately 75,000 person hours and the equivalent of about $12,000,000 in research and development--an astonishing 35-to-1 return on each taxpayer dollar invested to date. Along the way, teams have developed impressive subsystems, helped improved our nation's regulatory regime, and generated unique data for engineers.

One could easily list dozens of such examples for each of these programs: the SEED funds leverage taxpayer dollars by a factor of ~4 and help drive technological improvements that immediately and directly benefit each of NASA's Mission Directorates; the FAST program provides a unique and critical opportunity for new businesses to test out their hardware in a reduced gravity environment, shepherding the creation of new industries and new technologies that will likely generate tangible benefits well beyond the confines of NASA or even the aerospace industry.

The programs accomplish amazing things on extremely small budgets. The White House has recognized this, and a Statement of Administrative Policy (PDF version) released yesterday expresses concern that these programs, which use "public-private partnerships to advance important technologies and enable access to new sources of innovation through incentive prizes and partnerships" have already been identified for cuts by the US House of Representatives.

Concerned taxpayers can help breathe new life back into these programs. To show your support, please consider making a call to your Senator and Congressperson. Tell him or her that you support these prizes, even though you cannot know for sure if the eventual prize winners will live in your home state or district. Constituent calls to any member of congress are helpful, but calls to Senators Shelby (R-AL), Mikulski (D-MD), Hutchinson (R-TX), Feinstein (D-CA), and Voinovich (R-OH) may prove particularly useful. Calls to Senator Shelby are likely the most important.

Tough economic times call for financial discipline at NASA, just like in every other agency, company, or household across the United States. One of the best ways to do so is through programs like these: highly leveraged, innovative programs that appeal across party lines and that help strengthen the American aerospace industry.

via The Launch Pad: Successful NASA Program in Jeopardy!.

I was struck by something while I was there. What if we were that enthusiastic about Space exploration? My father's generation (he was born in 1950) witnessed his parents generation spend a huge amount of time, money, risk and energy getting into space, to the moon, and sending spacecraft all over the solar system. All with computers and technology many of us have in our homes today.

Somewhere between my fathers childhood and my children's childhood, the enthusiasm has been replaced completely by other things. NASCAR is cool, but it's about going in a circle REALLY REALLY fast. Sounds an awful lot like our current space program.

What can we do to channel some of that enthusiasm and energy into getting somewhere? Maybe sometime in my lifetime even...

Thanks for everything Arthur, we miss you already.

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