NASA: YOU CAN’T JUST BLAME THE BOSS

You GROW or you DIE:
Example Number 735

Several months ago, Space Shuttle Atlantis had a flawless touchdown Wednesday at Cape Canaveral.  This was the spacecraft’s last trip, and this ended this invaluable NASA program’s exploration of space. Along with the overdue closing of this project, budget cuts will eliminate or severely curtail many others. The new budget is going to force the roll-back or cancellation of many vital missions.

The result:

• Years of expertise, experience, progress, potential for breakthroughs will be lost at worst, or at best, placed on hold.
• Discoveries that could have been made, worlds that could have been conquered, dreams that could have been realized, capturing the imagination of the country…they’re all gone for now.
• Facilities will be shut down and teams of highly skilled engineers will be disbanded. All of their priceless instincts and experience will disappear with them.  

Who’s to blame?

You could probably pass it around to a lot of people. Many will want to blame the President, since during his campaign stop in Cape Canaveral he explicitly promised, “Not one person will lose their job.” Well, as it turned out, similar to so many of our good President’s promises, that didn’t turn out to be true. They all lost their jobs. Wait, I’m wrong. He was truthful. He actually said, “Not one person” would lose their job, and he was right. In many areas, they ALL did.

But you can’t just blame the President

The government is in a historic financial bind and running out of money. Obviously that was a big factor. But the truth is the government is just like you or your family. No matter how tight the money is, somehow people find a way to pay for things they REALLY want and things they really need.

Why did the President and Congress feel like NASA was a program that could be minimized? 

Maybe the blame starts at NASA itself:

• who failed to keep capturing the imagination of the country?
• who failed to keep the spark alive?

Maybe they just assumed people would know how important they are to our future.  

They may have been making incredible progress, incredible discoveries, but who knew?  The space program is something that’s been on the back page.  It’s become mundane, routine, taken for granted in the public’s mind.  Nothing’s been done, no stories, no personalities.  In other words, whatever success they had was extremely poorly marketed.

It demonstrates, once again, a Great Truth…You either Grow or You Die.  

If you don’t continue to expand, keep fresh the ideas coming, come up with things to capture the public’s imagination, your project is going to fade into the background. Once it fades from their consciousness, it fades in importance, and now, funding for crucial missions has faded.

The big problem was at NASA…they just assumed everyone was aware how important their work was.