Been A While

So, I've done what everyone with a blog inevitably does (no matter what they swear to) and gone a full year without a post. It doesn't matter too much though as I've had barely any readers since I never really told too many people about this little outlet for my pent up intellect.

I claim that this blog is about Space, Beer and Architecture, and so far it's been long (relatively speaking) on space, short on architecture, and beer has been non-existent (from the blog, not my life, there it's doing A-okay). I'll get to to beer later on because for now I need to focus on architecture for a while. You see, I'm an architect by training (and in the eyes of my home state) and that's what my day is basically full of, despite the fact that my head is often off in space. The problem is, I let myself get distracted by space way too much and my time daydreaming about what could be happening (but isn't) is keeping me from being good at what I need to be doing on a daily basis - being an architect.

The reason I mention this today of all days is that I had a personnel review at work. It wasn't hugely, overwhelmingly awesome - which is totally understandable because my performance in the last 2 years (since my last review) hasn't been great. I show up and I do my job, but there have been mistakes - big mistakes, mistakes that cost the firm money, and more than my share of those. I've been working for this firm for five and a half years, and to be honest, most of that time I've behaved like an employee, a clockpuncher (as my boss put it) if you will. On one level, maybe my bosses are OK with that, except that clockpunching doesn't bring job security (rightly so these days) in their eyes. They're not firing me, no they made it clear that I'm still with them (we've had layoffs) because they like me and they think I do an OK job, but they expect me to do better. They feel as if they've invested a lot of time and energy in me (not to mention cash on some of my screw-ups) and maybe they aren't getting a good payback on that.

Now, I assume all of you reading this have jobs with bosses but maybe some of them are just jobs or employment, and others might be careers or The Thing You Said You'd Do When You Were Young. Architecture for me wasn't always The Thing for me when I was young. My childhood had a pretty clear career path: Firefighter, Astronaut, Architect. Not atypical for an American male I'll admit, but for me architecture came by accident - high school was a weird time and when I figured out that astronauts weren't like airline pilots (I'll explain that later if you don't get it) I didn't know what I'd do with my life. At 14 this wasn't a big deal, but it did account for about 1.5 years of high school. After that a girlfriend and a random assignment in an excellent class suggested that maybe I should be an architect.

I dove into that with relish (and ketchup?) and didn't look back for nearly 6 years. Hell, maybe it was 10 or 12 to get me where I am today. I'm a licensed architect who has been going through the motions for a while. I've been trying to do my best all along, but what they don't teach you in school is that your day-to-day work is actually a gamble of other peoples money, and my best hasn't been good enough. I like to think my best has been mediocre for a reason, that I've been waiting for the perfect, morally awesome project to come along for me to fully bloom on, but that's not the truth.

I haven't been taking full advantage of the opportunities that I've been given, I haven't lived up to my potential. One of my bosses today suggested that I don't have the fire in my belly. I don't want him to be right - I've had the fire before, I had it nearly every day of school, and I want to breathe that fire again.

But, and there's always a but, school didn't tell me what it was really like to be an architect. School taught me how be to hero architect that may not really exist. School didn't teach me to deal with people who want to take the easy way, the cheap way, the people who have the money but don't want to spend it - the contractor who "doesn't do it that way", or the lazy sub-contractor who doesn't want to do it your way. These things wear at you and make you forget that you once had a fire inside you, that you want to make something amazing, that maybe you can make something better than what you were given - that you can be a capital-A Architect! Because back in the day that's what you were, and goddammit, people still get wide-eyed when you tell them that you're an Architect, and you want to make sure that you earn that awe.

I may not be curing cancer, but I am trying to make our surroundings better - I am an Architect, and I've forgotten what that means, but I intend to discover it again - to feel that fire again - and this is where I'll be writing about it.

(The image above is the front of a t-shirt that Ryan North of www.qwantz.com (Dinosaur Comics) made. It breaks my heart every goddamn time I see it, but it seems appropriate here, and so you should go buy it. Or just read his comic - it's awesome.)

Thank You Shuttle SE&I

Thanksgiving comes a day early this year with this highlight reel from Space Shuttle Systems Engineering & Integration. It's all the best shots from the launch of STS-129, and I don't mean just the stuff straight from the NASA TV feed, this footage is pooled from all the cameras and is artfully edited together.

Something Novel

Here's something from New Zealand; a private company there is getting ready to launch it's first rocket. What's interesting about this is that, as far as I can tell, this is something that the government of that country has never tried, or at least isn't pursuing at the moment. Private industry is giving it a shot, and even though it's only a sounding rocket it's an approach that I think few other countries have tried. The model of the US and Russia with the government fronting tons of money and research to figure out the basics and then the commercial groups give it a try, seems to be the most common. It'll be interesting to see how this goes for both the company, Rocket Lab, and for the country. Even though it's just a small sounding rocket, it could lead to much more, and I for one hope it does.

The Future, If You Will

I have a lot of mixed emotions about today’s launch of the ARES-1X. I’m surely excited to see a new, and one of a kind, vehicle fly, but I’m also apprehensive. It’s not clear to me that the current Constellation Program is going to be robust enough to support a broad exploration regime, not to mention that currently it won’t be able to lift humans until we’ve retired the only place that they’d be able to go.

The state of affairs for the Human Spaceflight (HSF) program is dismal right now. All we know is that things are ending, that we as a nation are surrendering capabilities, leadership and access to space. We’re told that the “gap” between the Shuttle and Orion will be short, but public opinion isn’t really behind the program right now and so it seems like that gap could grow, which is unacceptable to space advocates.

Just the same, the team of NASA engineers, technicians, contractors and scientists did a fantastic job and despite the weather delays (the one thing NASA can’t control – yet) the launch was beautiful. They have done great work despite heavy criticism about the program.

It’s too soon to say what this launch means for viability of ARES-1, there’s tons of dertailed data to pour through, but I think we can feel confident that NASA has “proof of concept”. If they decide that it worked right and that this is the way we’re going to go, what we’ll need then is leadership. We’ll need someone forcefully saying where the program is going, why it’s important that we do this, and then make sure the money is there to make it happen.

Mr. President, I’m talking to you.

A Glorious Mash-up

I know that this video is making the rounds on the web, and so readers may have seen it before, but I still think it’s worthwhile to post here. My research has led to several potential authors for the video and song, but I think the real artist behind it is someone named Colorpulse who used something called autotune to turn Carl Sagan’s spoken word into an only slightly robotic sounding singing voice. The result, once you get past the awkward start, is a hauntingly beautiful song that contains a reminder from beyond the grave to look up and wonder.

Sagan lived through some amazing times, and saw our understanding of the universe expand a thousand-fold. We need his voice now more than ever because we are indeed standing on that shore of space, but in our time are poised to turn our backs on it.

Lyrics:

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch

You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes

You might emerge somewhere else in space

Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us

If we do not destroy ourselves

We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits

Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise

A morning filled with 400 billion suns

The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths

Of exquisite interrelationships

Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully

On how well we understand this cosmos

In which we float like a mote of dust

In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect

It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes

it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one

Has an elaborate logical underpinning

The brain has it’s own language

For testing the structure and consistency of the world

[Hawking]

For thousands of years

People have wondered about the universe

Did it stretch out forever

Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes

From dark matter to a possible big crunch

Our image of the universe today

Is full of strange sounding ideas

How lucky we are to live in this time

The first moment in human history

When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean

Recently we’ve waded a little way out

And the water seems inviting

Big Day For Space

There's a lot going on right now, Discovery waved off two landings today, the Augustine Report Summary came our yesterday, and there was a (potentially) important rocket test, and a (definitely) important rocket launch in Japan today.

First, to Japan where the first launch of an H-IIB rocket took place. The launch was a great success, and sort of cavalier because the payload is the H-II Transfer vehicle (HTV). This will be third form of delivering cargo to the ISS once the Shuttle stops flying next year (?) after the Russian Progress Vehicle and the European ATV. I'm looking forward to seeing how the rendezvous and docking goes, which should be in the next few days.

The launch test was in Utah at the ATK test facility and consisted of a horizontal firing of the new 5-segment STS Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). It's always interesting to see a test of magnitude, but I have to admit that I don't really know what to make of this one. It proves that at least part of Ares 1 will work (the part that we all knew would work anyway - it remains to be seen if vibrations or drift will still be a problem). But on the other hand, Ares 1 might get cancelled in a few months, and really, the US human spaceflight program stands on the head of a pin right now, so it's hard to get excited about anything short of a successful Shuttle launch and landing.

An Open Letter to My State Representatives and The President

Greetings Senator/Congressman/Mr. President,

 

I was very moved by the President's speech yesterday to the children of this nation; I found his message of hard work, self-reliance, and education as part of national pride to be welcome and inspiring. 

 

I also believe in the value of education and feel that there was an opportunity missed in yesterday's speech that could still be capitalized on.  The President and Congress have the unique position of giving the youth of America a goal to their educations, the goal of reaching to the stars. 

 

It was once that we the USA led the world in science and technology, that the best engineers in the world came from this country, now it seems that the best engineers in the world come to this country to learn at places like MIT and then go back to their country of origin.  I believe that part of the reason for this is that we are no longer making bold steps in human spaceflight.  The President surely has an inspiring story, and I do believe that much of our youth look up to him, but we have the responsibility to give these kids a goal befitting the drive that this inspiration gives them.  It doesn't help children if they do all this work to get an education and a college degree if they can't then use that degree. 

 

The space program is one goal that these kids can strive for, and for an investment that is small when compared to other large programs that the nations money is spent on.  I've always believed that funding for NASA should be seen as funding education, because we need smart people to work

there.

 

The Augustine Commission released a summary of their findings today, I have read it and agree that this country needs a direction in space, and that with that direction comes the inspiration and the will to make great things happen.  I ask that you also review this document and then push the President to forge a bold direction in space exploration; and to also push your colleagues to increase the funding to NASA.  The Commission outlines several paths forward, and I encourage you to discount any that recommend staying the course.  We need a big goal: the Moon, Mars, Near Earth Asteroids.  Let businesses handle getting astronauts to the International Space Station, it makes sense on many levels, and keeps us from having to pay the Russians for that service, a humbling prospect at best. 

 

I thank you for your service and your time in reading this. 

 

Let's go, boldly.

 

Sincerely, [Deep Beam}

Massachusetts