What's new?

Almost a week has gone by since the announcement of the cancellation of the Constellation program. For the last two days I have been here at the Human Research Program Investigators' Workshop, which is full of happy people. Well, nobody's outright happy about the cancellation exactly. In fact there has been lots of akwardness as they talk through the slides of their research that have been centered around sending astronauts to the moon. But the thing is about this group is that for the most part they say, "when we DO eventually go back..." The thing is that they do research on how astronauts can safely live in space, given that there are so many changes that occur to the body in space. Because we still don't have answers for many problems. They will always have a job as long as they have human access to space, like the ISS. Oh, they could also be happy because in the same White House budget, the Human Research Program got an increase of 42% for research in 2011. This after having been yanked of important funding for the past 5 years as science was kicked to the curb in favor of engineering the new vision to go to the moon. As a result, the science on ISS has suffered compared to what it could really be. What Nobel laureate would apply to do top rated science if there's no funding really? Well with the new budget announcement, there will now be money to attract great scientists to ISS for great research.


So for the past 2 days I've been in a friendly cocoon (even though there's nobody celebrating the loss of Constellation).


Then again even if there are people happy about the cancellation who in their right mind would admit it? You'd be flamed.


Yesterday I gave my first presentation on ISS science as the Associate Program Scientist for ISS. Following me was supposed to be a speaker for the Constellation program. But she did not come. She had to go to headquarters over this recent mess. I had to modify my charts to remove talk of Ares and Constellation. Btw in the end it went really well. I have no fear of public speaking but I was nervous giving the presentation Julie usually gives! But it turns out that a group of teachers is the best audience to get your feet wet. They are so excited about being at NASA and just love it all.


Anyway, I have started to realize more and more the friends I have who have been working for the Constellation program, both civil servants and contractors. Right now they are unsure of their fate and while the contractors may get fired, civil servants can't and so they face the potential of having to work at a new position they may hate.


Like me after I came back from maternity leave and all of my co-workers jumped ship from ISS to Constellation. And my work was restructured in a way that left me bored and unmotivated until I got lucky with getting this current position last year. So I feel like I'm just a year ahead of them.