Because everyone needs more moustache in their lives, right? 

I can’t wait to visit with Commander Hadfield via the International Space Station this Thursday at the Canadian Space Agency Day in the Life of Chris Hadfield CSATweetup.  There’s even a phone call with William Shatner.  We’ll also hear from CSA scientists and investigators and Astronaut Jeremy Hansen (@astro_jeremy)

There may be photos and tweets.  Set your filters to stun.

Today Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency talked from the International Space Station to students at Chris Hadfield Public School in Milton, ON.  One of the questions was “How can I become an astronaut?”.    In answering this question, Hadfield addressed career aspirations in general:

“The things I’m doing now, it’s because I started working at it when I was your age.”

“Decide what you might want to be and then start turning yourself into that person.”

“You can start to turn yourself into an astronaut today. It doesn’t happen just like that, but every single decision you make turns you a little bit into the person you want to be tomorrow and the day after that…”

“You have to turn yourself into who you want to be.”

By the way, the kids certainly did prepare for the event:

By the way, the CAPCOM for today was Astronaut Clay Anderson, who is retiring after 30 years of service to NASA.

I thought Cdmr. Hadfield’s answers were pretty good advice for the kids.  And for us.  What are you doing today that will turn you into the person you want to be?

It’s Friday again (we should have more of these) and I’m in the mood for a contest.  I have some mystery prizes, more than just swag, to give away.  But I’m not saying what it is until the contest is over. Let’s just say it will have data stuff, space stuff, and for certain one of those secret Canadian keychain bottler openers.  The value of the prize will be approximately $100… CANADIAN!!!!…which I think now is close to $100 million dollars USD.

How Many TLAs can you fit in a sentence?

Your challenge is to make a  grammatically-correct sentence that is dominated with TLAs.  What’s a TLA?  Why it’s a Three Letter Acronym, of course. But we’re going to be flexible.  You can use acronyms or initialisms and you aren’t limited to three letter ones.  You can also tack on verb endings and such. So things like RBARing, LOSed and SSDTed are fine.  We’ll have a group of prestigious fun judges to evaluate your submissions based on these guidelines:

• Length of sentence
• Length of TLAs
• Higher ratio of TLAs to “real” words – in fact, I want to see very few real words
• Higher weight given to non-product TLAs
• Originality is a real plus
• Higher weight given to a good mix of TLA “domains”.  If you can work in textspeak, space, tech, music, literature, arts and crafts, cycling and knitting, then you’re golden.
• The more snark the better.

Your TLAs should be commonly known or easily to lookup.   If we can’t figure out what it means, you’ll lose points.

Examples

I REd a CRM DB to get the DDL for the CASE tool, FTW.

OK, my C4ISTAR PM FUBBARed* my PLoA due to a SNAFU* with a SME's PEBCAK bug.

NASA SCUBA SMEs are NEEMO FTEs, AFAIK.

The Rules

Entries accepted from locations where these sorts of contests are legal.  Check with local authorities.  If you are unable to accept the prize for a corporate or government restriction, just let us know.  We’d still love to honour your work.  Canadian residents must solve a particularly silly mathematical question.  Study up on square roots and factorials. But they won’t be in the question.

Decisions of the judges are final.

You must be 13 years of age or older to enter.

You agree to let us publish your entries, but you get to keep ownership of them.  We are nice like that.

Your sentence must be an original creation, by you.

No explicit, illegal or shameful content.  Yes, I know some of you are disappointed.

Contest closes on 29 October 2012, 2 November 2012 at midnight my time, wherever I am at that time.

* UPDATE * I’ve just received some new swag from vendors, so I’m extending the deadline for this contest.  We will now have 3 prizes to give away. *

Taxes, customs, duties and any other silly mandated stuff that makes it less fun to win are the responsibility of the recipient.

*The TLA example above has alternate, family-friendly definitions.  I looked them up. Trust me.

How to Enter

Leave your entry here as a comment.   Yes, you can enter more than once…let’s say no more than 4 entries per person.  Yes, you’ll have to use a method to post that allows us to contact you to arrange for the major award.  You can submit anonymously, but no prize for you.

The Judges

Denny Cherry (@mrdenny | blog ) Unofficial SQL PASS Party Planner and Trouble Maker

Joey D’Antoni (@jdanton | blog ) Biker, but not that kind, who architects on the side

Marco Frissen (@mfrissen | blog ) Opinionated space and tech geek. Token foreigner on this panel

Thomas LaRock (@sqlrockstar |blog ) DBA, Happymaker, and bacon lover

Shannon Moore (@ageekmom | blog )  SpaceTweep Wrangler and cyclist extraordinaire

Karen Lopez (@datachick) Loves Space and Data.  Almost the same. But Space Data is best. Another foreigner, sort of.

I have some other photos to share, but the set I found most interesting were those with European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli showing Rob how to ensure that Barbie’s hair is just right before a photo shoot:

I guess all that centrifuge training she did at the DLR comes in handy when she hangs with other astronauts.

Once VenusBarbie was set, then all four (Rob, Paolo, VenusBarbie and Chris2D) were ready to pose.

Good job, men.  And @VenusBarbie.

Nichelle Nichols (@RealNichelle) shares her story of meeting Sally Ride after NASA engaged Nichelle to help recruit more minority candidates:

“She once thanked me for my recruitment efforts while under contract to NASA, saying “If it hadn't been for you I might not be here.”

Nichelle inspired Sally and Sally inspired me (they both did, actually). Now I want to pass that along. That's why I spend time working to ensure that girls know that there are great jobs, rewarding careers, and fabulous opportunities in the STEM world.

What have you done, today, to inspire someone else?

We’ll be talking about:

Data Governance and Stewardship: Expert Guidance from Karen Lopez

Effective data governance and stewardship is a crucial component of every business. InfoAdvisors’ Principal Consultant, Karen Lopez, will share essential guidance on:

• Leveraging enterprise data as a corporate asset
• Tips, tricks, and traps to avoid when developing a data governance program
• Managing business expectations cost-effectively and time-efficiently

Karen will also reveal highlights on compliance and policy programs from recent discussions with data professionals in the US Federal Government and Industry organizations.

Karen Lopez, Principal Consultant, InfoAdvisors, Inc.

Karen is a Principal Consultant at InfoAdvisors Inc. with more than twenty years of experience helping organizations implement large, multi-project programs. She specializes in taking practical approaches to systems development and has helped many IT departments choose appropriate methods and standards, based on the department’s culture, experience, and focus. Karen is the Moderator of InfoAdvisors/ITBoards.com IRM discussion groups, an online community of several thousand data management professionals and is also on the Board of Advisors for DAMA International. For more information, visit http://www.infoadvisors.com.

Event Details

Date:        June 26, 2012
Time:        2-4pm
Location:  University of Minnesota Conference Center
                 1890 Buford Avenue. St. Paul, MN 55108
Phone:      612-624-3275
Register Now:  http://forms.embarcadero.com/forms/AMUSCA1206FieldEventMinneapolis6-26

I hope to make this interactive and fun.  There may also be space photos….

I was invited to attend a NASA Budget Briefing as part of a recent NASATweetup held at NASA Headquarters on 13 February 2012.  I’ve been to other NASA Tweetups, but this was a new type of event for both attendees and NASA.  First, the topic was more administrative than any others.  No fire or sound waves. No Florida hair.  Heck, one of the people I hadn’t seen for a while said "You look different".  My response: "You’ve never seen me in work clothes". 

The first two NASATweetups I attended were launches (STS-134 and Juno).  Both of these had 150 attendees with a two-day program of speakers and presentations, then a launch.  This meeting was part of an existing event, a media briefing about the 2013 Fiscal Year Budget.  Yes, this was PowerPoint and spreadsheets, for the most part.  However, the content of those presentation materials was going to show us which programs were moving forward and which ones were going to have to change or be dropped completely.  Being a data professional, this was my type of event.  I wanted the data and the budget wasn’t going to be released until one hour before the event.  That’s a fast read of a set of slides and some large documents.  I went for the slides.

The second thing that was different: this tweetup was much smaller. The original registration limited attendees to 20 and I think we had just under that.  The most important difference was that we were going to be part of the media, able to ask questions along with the traditional media.  This is a first for NASATweetups and I’m not sure how many other US Federal media briefings have involved a mix of traditional and social media. I was excited that I could be part of this new approach to media, especially because it brought together two of my passions: space and social media. More on that mixing later.

The NASATweetup

The first thing that was different from other NASATweeups: We received no badges or swag bags…because traditional media don’t get those, either.  If I do one of these again, I’ll bring my own badge or credentials.

In the opening statements, Bob Jacobs announced this new era and took our photo, which was posted to Twitter.

You can see him pause to take the photo in the video below.   I think that was our second sign that this press briefing was going to be different. 

This year, we are trying something a little different. As well as traditional media representatives, for the first time we have invited members of the social media community to be a part of today’s presentation, and we will be taking questions via Twitter using the #AskNASA. So we thank everyone for joining us for today’s presentation.

We will go over some of the ground rules first, but well, wait a second. I want to make sure I capture this. If we are going to be social media, I need to do it from here too.

[Laughter.]

MR. JACOBS: Okay. Got a Photo.

The briefing was done by Major General Charles Bolden, NASA Chief Administrator and Chief Financial Officer Elizabeth Robinson.  It started with a video about NASA’s plans.

I’ve listed some links in the related section below of the analyses of the impact of the new budget, but the ones that were of note to me:

• STEM education and outreach was cut from $138 million dollars in 2012 to $100 million.  That’s a significant cutback to this program, but only a tiny portion of a tiny portion of the overall US Federal budget.  This is going to make it more difficult to find and retain qualified people in the future.  I’m also guessing that other organizations are having their STEM budgets cut as well.
• ExoMars program will need to be re-programmed, meaning that we will not be collaborating with the European agencies for these Mars exploration programs . This has left ESA scrambling to find other countries to help with these programs, most likely Roscosmos.

DataChick’s Question on Open Government and Open Data

I was fortunate to be called upon to ask a question:

Let’s take one more question over here, and then we will take a couple from Twitter, and then we will go to the field centers.

QUESTIONER (Karen Lopez): Hi. I am Karen Lopez. I am Datachick on Twitter.

One of the ways that the public, the rest of us, can benefit from all these NASA missions is via access to open government transparency and open data initiatives, like at data.NASA.gov. Have budget pressures made any changes to those programs? Will they continue to expand?

ADMINISTRATOR BOLDEN: Do you want to take that?

DR. ROBINSON: Okay. So NASA couple things. One is you know the administration has a very vigorous Open Government Initiative, and NASA is a participant in that. And it recently went international, and we have an international event coming up in April April, thank you April, where we will be gathering together folks from around the world, virtually, of course, to work on things. So we have very vigorous programs.

And a large part of what we do in Open Government is, as you said, we leverage off of things that the programs do already, make their data available, make it accessible, Open Government a little bit more just to point them in the right direction. So it’s really Open Government is really a philosophy at NASA that we try to put as much as we can out into the public in the most understandable way possible, and so we are doing that.

The Open Government Initiative has taken us in a few different directions, and we will continue that. We plan to keep going forward, but it is always when you talk about Open Government, it is really it is hard to predict, because we are going to do so much, right? We are going to have so much data coming in and all of that. NASA is a very exciting place to work, because now we have apps on our iPhones from NASA and a whole bunch of things, so we are already out there in terms of Open Government

QUESTIONER (Karen Lopez): [Speaking off mic.]

[Here I followed up with "So no immediate changes?" ]

DR. ROBINSON: Well, not in the near future. We’re going to assess I am looking at my partner here. I am the senior accountable official for Open Government, and then our CIO over there

ADMINISTRATOR BOLDEN: We are both looking at the CIO.

DR. ROBINSON: Yeah, we are both looking at the CIO, and it is her folks mainly who do it. And so I think we are really going to assess up to this international event, how to keep those kind of things going or not.

And with that question I was able to add my third passion: Data.  As in, Love Your Data.  The terms data or information was mentioned 21 times during the briefing, twice in NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s opening remarks.

This budget supports more than 80 science missions, 56 currently in operation and 28 now under development, that cover the vital data we need to understand our own planet, diverse missions reaching farther into our solar system, and the next generation of observatories peering beyond the reaches of our neighborhood to other galaxies and their solar systems and undiscovered phenomena

The missions currently at Mars the Mars Science Laboratory, on its way, and MAVEN, well into development will provide many years of data to help us understand the Red Planet and our needs in future years to meet the President’s challenge to send humans to Mars in the mid 2030s.

Citizen Journalists?

No, we weren’t. In some of the descriptions of the event, including the announcement of the Tweetup, we were described as "Twitter Fans" of NASA.  One of the issues I can see with trying to mix fans and journalism is that…they shouldn’t mix.  Sure, it’s not unheard of for a journalist to be excited about interviewing someone, but in theory they aren’t supposed to be fans.  I don’t think my role there was as a citizen journalist.  However, I think we Tweetup attendees did a good job not gushing all over Bolden and Robinson in our questions.  In fact, I was impressed by the lack of fanboi attitude in any of our questions.

You can really tell the difference when you see this still taken from This Week at NASA coverage:

Three laptops, all running Tweetdeck in that photo.  That’s me tweeting in the upper center of the frame. Most of the traditional media attendees brought digital recorders and paper.  So while they were taking notes, we were sharing live.  That’s not necessarily better.  It’s different.  Mixing social media and traditional media can work.  They don’t have to compete.

Some of the traditional media people from major media organizations even retweeted my question and told me afterwards that our questions were good.  I think that means the new era of mixing traditional and social media may continue.  I look forward to future NASATweetups for these types of events.

Overall….

In talking to people after the event I think this experiment was a success.  The Tweetup crowd came up with some great questions, as did the Twitterverse via the #AskNASA hashtag.  I am happy that I was selected to be part of this new era of social media, NASA…and Data.

NASATweetup Video from C-SPAN

The entire event was just over an hour.  You can watch the whole thing via this C-SPAN feed.

Or if you prefer the shorter briefing of the briefing, you can watch the one minute version on TW@N at the very beginning of this video.

Related articles

Image via Wikipedia

The American experience stirred mankind from discovery to exploration. From the cautious quest for what they knew (or thought they knew) was out there, into an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown. These are two substantially different kinds of human enterprise.
-Daniel J. Boorstin

Which kind should we be?

On Monday, 13 February I’ll be part of another NASATweetup, this one at NASA Headquarters.  Administrator Charlie Bolden will hold a briefing on the 2013 NASA Budget.  There have been many reports that the 2013 budget will remain about the same as it was in prior budgets.  However, this means that NASA will most likely have to pull out of agreements with other space agencies such as the European Space Agency (ESA) on collaborative efforts for future MARS missions.   

I believe this is the first time that NASATweetup attendees will be attending a formal briefing and the first time we will be able to ask questions.  In addition, NASA will be taking questions via Twitter from tweets using the #askNASA hashtag.   My interest will most likely focus on the impact on NASA’s successful open government (http://open.nasa.gov ) and open data ( http://data.nasa.gov ) programs.  I’ll also be interested in hearing what these budget restrictions mean to ongoing collaboration with other space agencies such as the Canadian Space Agency, Roscosmos, JAXA and ESA.

You can watch the budget briefing live at NASA TV on Monday, 13 February at 2 PM EST.  This is available in many formats; make sure you take advantage of the formats offered for your device. 

NASA prepared a video last year about their quest to win the future.  It looks like NASA will be scaling back on those plans for 2013.  

Briefing photo by Bob Jacobs

Resources:

• http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html NASA Budget Page
• http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/516674main_NASAFY12_Budget_Estimates-Overview-508.pdf The FY 2012 Budget Estimate

Related articles

Today marks the anniversary of the first and only orbital mission of the Buran, the Soviet Union’s only shuttle program.  This flight was unmanned. Haven’t heard of the Buran?  Neither had I until I visited the Speyer Technik Museum just outside of Frankfurt, Germany as part of the social activities of the European Space Agency’s first SpaceTweetup a few months ago.    In 1988 I was working at Space Division at a US Air Force base and I still had not heard of this program.  I guess I was focused on data and process models to much.

During the visit we were able to climb up to view the payload area and some of the crew areas.  I’m betting that the general public won’t get this sort of access to the US Space Shuttle orbiters once they are delivered to their museum homes next year. 

		Buran at the Speyer Technik Museum VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

From Wikipedia:

The only orbital launch of Buran occurred at 3:00 UTC on 15 November 1988 from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 110/37. It was lifted into orbit unmanned by the specially designed Energia rocket, which to this day remains the heaviest rocket running on liquid fuel. Unlike the Space Shuttle, which is propelled by a combination of solid boosters and the Shuttle’s own liquid-fuel engines sourcing fuel from a large fuel tank, the Energia-Buran system used only thrust from the rocket’s four RD liquid-fuel engines developed by Valentin Glushko. From the very beginning Buran was intended to be used in both fully automatic and manual mode. Although the program accumulated a several-years delay, Buran remained the only space shuttle to ever perform an unmanned flight in fully automatic mode until 22 April 2010 when the US Air Force launched its Boeing X-37 spaceplane. The automated launch sequence performed as specified, and the Energia rocket lifted the vehicle into a temporary orbit before the orbiter separated as programmed. After boosting itself to a higher orbit and completing two revolutions around the Earth, ODU (engine control system) engines fired automatically to begin the descent into the atmosphere. Exactly 206 minutes into the mission, the Buran orbiter landed, having lost only five of its 38,000 thermal tiles over the course of the flight.^[6] The automated landing took place on a runway at Baikonur Cosmodrome where, despite a lateral wind speed of 61.2 kilometres per hour (38.0 mph), it landed only 3 metres (9.8 ft) laterally and 10 metres (33 ft) longitudinally from the target mark.^[6] The unmanned flight was the first time that a spacecraft of this size and complexity had been launched, completed maneuvers in orbit, re-entered the atmosphere, and landed under automatic guidance.

Wikipedia contributors, "Buran (spacecraft)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buran_(spacecraft)&oldid=459715789 (accessed November 15, 2011).

The Buran program was the Soviet Union’s response to the NASA Space Shuttle program.  Once the cold war came to an end, the Buran program was ended in 1993.  No manned space flights of the Buran happened.  Now both programs are over and we are back to non-reusable vehicles to launch astronauts to the International Space Station.

Watch the video of the Buran being delivered to the Speyer Technik (German)

As we left the exhibit, I wondered what a joint shuttle program with more space agencies co-operating might have been.

Several weeks ago NASA announced a new Tweetup for the launch of NASA Juno, a mission to collect data about the origins of Jupiter.  Rob and I were not selected in the first round, but waitlisted (lovingly referred to as being on the #WaitUp List).  Just a couple of weeks ago we both got news that we were moved up to the invite list. That made me happy, as Rob has not yet had the opportunity to attend a NASATweetup before.  This time we can share the experience…and I hope the blogging and picture taking duties. 

This rocket launch is scheduled to take place Friday 5 August around 11:34 AM ET.  Right now it’s looking like the weather is still at 70% go, even with Emily forming in the Atlantic.

Like the NASATweetup I attended in May, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will be providing briefings and demonstrations the day before the launch.  Notice that you can watch some of the NASATweetup activities on NASA TV starting at 10:30 AM ET on 4 August.  Since NASA provides this stream for free to most TV providers, you may get this channel for free.  If not, you can also live stream via the links provided.

The Juno spacecraft will take five years to reach Jupiter.  In 2016 it will spend about a year orbiting the red-eyed planet then "deorbit" into Jupiter to end its mission.  The spacecraft is solar powered.  You might notice how large those panels are in the NASA artwork.  That’s because Jupiter is 25 times further away from the sun as the Earth is, so it has less sunlight to power the craft.

Our agenda for the 2-day NASATweetup will be:

Thursday, Aug.4/L-1: Tweetup Day 1

(8:00 a.m. – Tower rollback)

9:00 a.m. – Welcome by Trent Perrotto (@NASA) & Veronica McGregor (@NASAJPL)

10:30 a.m. – Waleed Abdalati, Chief Scientist, NASA Headquarters (NASA TV starts http://www.ustream.tv/nasatelevision)

10:45 a.m. – Jim Adams (@NASAJim), deputy director, Planetary Science, NASA Headquarters

11:00 a.m. – Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator

11:10 a.m. – Steve Levin, Juno project scientist

11:30 a.m. – Juno Science Team members Toby Owen, Fran Bagenal, Dave Stevenson discuss Why Jupiter? Why Juno?

11:55 a.m. – Steve Matousek (@SteveMatousek), Juno proposal manager, and Jan Chodas, Juno project manager

12:15 p.m. – Chris Brosious, chief systems engineer for Juno, Lockheed Martin

2:00 p.m. – Tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, including stops at Launch Complex 17 (GRAIL), the Atlas V Spaceflight Operations Center (Juno/Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity), Launch Complex 41 (Juno), and the Vehicle Assembly Building

Friday, Aug. 5/ Launch: Tweetup Day 2

8:30 a.m. – Group picture beside the countdown clock

8:35 a.m. – Mike Ravine, JunoCam instrument manager, and Mike Caplinger, JunoCam Systems Engineer, Malin Space Science Systems

9:00 a.m. –     Group 1: "Eyes on the Solar System" demo with Doug Ellison, JPL Visualization Producer (@NASA_Eyes) in press briefing room

Group 2: Gravity table demo with Dan Goods, JPL Visual Strategist, and What’s Up? astronomy demo with Jane Houston Jones, JPL Outreach Specialist, Cassini mission (@CassiniSaturn) in the tent

9:30 a.m. –     Group 1: Gravity table and What’s Up?

                        Group 2: Eyes on the Solar System

10:00 a.m. – Rex Engelhardt, (@NASA_LSP), mission manager, Launch Services Program

10:30 a.m. – Bill Nye the Science Guy, (@thescienceguy)

11:34 a.m. – Launch window opens for Juno spacecraft to Jupiter

(window closes at 12:43 p.m.)

~1 p.m. – Post-launch news conference on NASA TV

What an agenda.  Bill Nye the Science guy.  Investigators, Scientists, Project managers, Mission managers.  What I found so great about the previous Tweetup I attended was having the opportunity to chat with people who are making a difference in the lives of millions of people, even for generations to come.

The tour is one of the most amazing parts of being a NASATweetup attendee.  Special access to launch pads, the Vehicle Assembly Building, operations centers: these are really once in a lifetime experiences.  We’ll be tweeting most of the event and posting pictures using the #NASATweetup and #NASAJuno hashtags, along with 150 other lucky space geeks.

A couple of weeks ago, Karen posted Professional Development: What Would You Tell Your 16-Year-Old Self?  There was a lot of discussion about it on Twitter and I’ve been meaning to write up a post about my 16-Year-Old self ever since then.  It would appear though that they’ve finally come out and said that time-travel is impossible so I’ll never get to go back and say these things to myself.  I also had trouble finding a pic of me at 16, but I did find the one above of me at 18.

While Karen focused on the purely professional advice she’d give to herself, I’m going to wander a bit more than that and hit the highlights on a few more topics than she did.

1. The end of high school or university is not the end.  Remember that you always need to be learning new things.  You don’t necessarily have to take formal classes, but there will always be new things to learn.
2. You can’t rely on others to look after your career and your training.  You are the one that is in control of your life.  Don’t ever forget it.
3. Working for a living is not the same as living for work.  And you don’t have to work 40 hours a week for someone else to make a living.
4. Learn how to say No.  As you work through the early years in your career you need to make sure that you only take on what you can handle and that it’s okay to say ‘No’.  Somewhere you grew up with this idea that you can’t say ‘No’, but think about it.  You are the one that can judge whether you can handle something or not.  You may not know this now, but even your own Father learned to say no to certain jobs he didn’t want to do. And that’s okay.
5. Speaking of our Father…watch how he does those mechanical and household repairs.  Sooner or later you’re going to own a house and you’ll need to know those things.  But just remember, you’ll never be able to drywall, tape, mud and sand as well as he can.
6. You’ll never, ever regret those two years of typing class you just had.
7. You know that Space Shuttle that just launched? Keep watching those because in 30 years it will have it’s last flight.
8. Take time to enjoy life as it comes and don’t let work get in the way.  And when Karen (oh yeah, you’re going to marry a wonderful woman named Karen) goes to Germany, Amsterdam, New Zealand and … (heck, I can’t even list them all), don’t say you can’t go with her because you have to work.
9. Never forget to have fun.  When it stops being fun, stop doing it.
10. Oh, and one last thing…that company called “Apple” that just started publicly selling shares last year…buy some.

For fun I thought I’d share two of the videos that I filmed while visiting the Kennedy Space Center as part of the NASATweetup to view the launch of Endeavour.

The first is of the retraction of the Rotating Service Structure (RSS) that surrounds the shuttle while it is being prepared for launch.  This happened about noon on 15 May 2011, the day before the launch.  We tweet up-ers were taken by buses courtesy of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Visitor Complex to just outside Pad 39A where Endeavour activities were finishing up prior the launch.  I took a screen shot of Google Maps on my phone to show the location near where we viewed the retraction.

I was able to get a bazillion pictures, as the retraction takes about 30 minutes. We all stood there in the Florida sunshine, watching people do their work while the RSS slowly rotated away from the orbiter.

In addition to using real cameras, I also gave Video Girl Barbie a chance to do her own filming with her embedded video camera.  Her camera produces low quality recordings, but I find what she does produce to be of decent quality.  First up is the retraction video taken on 15 May just outside Pad 39A.

For some more context, this is my photo of Endeavour.  That’s how close we where.

The next morning we arrived at KSC just after 3AM.  It was especially nice to see the orbiter all lit up.  We definitely weren’t as close this time, but being 3.1 miles away meant that we were the closest non-staff viewers of the launch.

Video Girl did a great job filming the launch.  You may want to crank up your speakers to get the full effect of the rumbling launch sound.

I have a bunch of pictures to share, and a few draft blog posts hanging around that you’ll see over the next few weeks.  I’ll try to spread them out a bit so that you aren’t inundated with all my #spacebrain content all at once.

KSC Countdown Clock

I haven’t blogged yet about my NASA Tweetup experiences, for the most part because I’m worried about coming across as too emotional about the entire experience.  As I previously posted, I’m attending a special NASA program that brings 150 Twitter users from around the world to Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch of the Shuttle Endeavour on her last mission, STS-134.   I started this post hoping to keep it as a short overview.  It’s not.     

Pre-Tweetup – Level Green

The launch was originally scheduled for mid-April, then that was moved to 29 April due to a traffic jam in space.  No worries. I arrived here in Florida on 26 April.  Wednesday I picked up my credentials and then went over to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to add to my space brain, the term I’ve been using for being inundated with science about space exploration. I also met up with my house mates of Venus House for the first time.       

Thursday – Level Orange

Thursday we headed over to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to get settled in the Tweetup Tent (affectionately referred to as the twent).  I new we were going to be close to the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building, but I had no idea we’d be parking right next to it. That was just awe-inspiring.  There we met our fellow Tweetup attendees.  We started with the obligatory “everybody introduce yourselves, tell us where you are from and something interesting about you”.  Crap.  Interesting? Okay, I’ll say that I’m a…well, let’s wait to see what everyone else says.  I was sitting on the far end, near the air conditioners.  They started on the other side.  As people stood up to say who they were I sat there stunned by the number of accomplishments and backgrounds.   Quick…what the hell can I say that is interesting? Somehow “I like data” just didn’t seem to be that interesting with this group.  Attendees came from all walks of life: 3 -time Jeopardy champion, Internet company founders, Twitter staff, rocket scientists, TV and film stars, musicians, pilots, journalists…well, you can read what most said about themselves at http://nasatweet.com/wiki/STS134_Fun_facts …but I think that most people were a bit too humble about their interesting things.     So I finally settled on “I’m a former national spokesperson for Women in IT. I help encourage girls to take more science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)”  That seemed to go over well, with this crowd being STEM friendly.  I mentioned that I had brought the technical Barbies with me to enjoy the launch, too.  I was already starting to have the overwhelming feeling that this Tweetup was going to be something like I’ve never experienced before.  Emotions were at Alert Level Orange by that point.            

Kennedy Space Center VAB

We did a tour of the KSC property, including the inside of the VAB.  There we got to see Atlantis being prepped for her last voyage soon after Endeavour’s trip.  Did I tell you we got to go inside? That’s insane.  There aren’t normal tours for going inside the VAB.   I guess to other people it’s just where they work.  For me it was just amazing.  I need to find another word.  Someone find me a thesaurus.    

Thursday was a full program of speakers from NASA, including astronauts and staff.  More on that later.  We were supposed to go out near the pad to watch the retraction, but freaky storm weather cancelled that.  My first disappointment.  Emotions still at Level Orange, but barely.             

Friday – Level Red

The Saddest Right Turn...

 On Friday we headed back over to KSC ready to experience an opportunity of a lifetime — to see the launch from just over 3 miles away. To put this in perspective, if you were 400 yards from the launch the heat and flame would kill you.  If you were 800 yards from the launch, the sound would kill you.  So 3 miles is close.  It’s as close as non-workers can get. Emotion Levels were Reddish Orange, sort of like a tequila sunrise. I set up my tripod to reserve a space.  Right next to a tripod from an international camera crew.  My tripod looked sad next to theirs, but it was setup and ready to go.  More exciting program inside the twent happened, and I’ll post pictures of that in a later post.    

Every presenter over the two days spoke of the emotion and the feeling of awe of what they did for a living.  It was all about STEM, but overall the most blow-me-away thoughts were about humanity, peace, the meaning of life, and…emotions.   As each person spoke, I could see the passion they had about the work they did;  they were changing the world and they loved every minute of it.         

Sadly, as Rob blogged, the launch was scrubbed about noon on Friday due to a mechanical failure.  We were terribly disappointed, but all of us understood that safety first is the key phrase.  We watched the Astronaut Van drive slowly past, it made an unexpected turn into the VAB drive.  We were hoping that it was just making a special drive by of the special observation area, but it wasn’t to be.  I was interviewed by NPR’s All Things Considered about this disappointment.  I found out that interview made it to the air because people all over the US started tweeting that they heard me on their drives home from work.  How wonderful is that?   

I have to say that seeing that Astro Van take a turn when it wasn’t supposed to was heartbreaking.  It wasn’t a crushing blow because I was by then riding a full RED ALERT emotionally already.  I had experienced so many amazing things up to then it didn’t matter.  The launch would happen when Endeavour was ready for it to happen.              

Later in the afternoon President Obama arrived, even though the launch had been scrubbed, to meet the astronauts and their families.  We were able to wave to him as he waved back at us, a bunch of Twitter Space-crazed photographers.              

NASA Tweeps get Engaged at the Countdown Clock

And then there was more: NASA Tweetup attendee Chris Cardinal proposed to attendee Nina Tallman, right in front of the Countdown Clock.  As a fellow geek, that was so amazing to see.   My emotions were now just going crazy.  I took a bazillion pictures.         

Most of us stayed in the twent, listening to ad hoc program presentations, chatting about everything that had been happening so far, and talking about making extended travel arrangements.   We looked forward to a launch in the next 48 hours.  All was fine. 

Saturday – SQLSaturday

When the scrub was announced, Kendal van Dyke (twitter and another former NASATweetup attendee) reminded me there was a SQLSaturday happening in Jacksonville.  I caught a ride with him and two other great SQL community members Bradley Ball (twitter) and Dan Taylor( twitter).  So I got to spend time with the rocking SQL Community at the last minute.  What a great opportunity. For the ride back we were all really tired and we had great gut-busting laughs, the kind that are hilarious if you are tired, entirely stoked from being with a great community and punchy from getting only a couple of hours of sleep.  Thanks, guys, for taking care of me and the Technical Barbies.  Oh, and for letting me be part of your SQLRoadtrip.      

Now – Back to Tequila Red Orange

I have many photos and blog posts to share and am struggling with how to not overly spam this blog with them. I have lots of potential blog posts that talk about data, project management, decisions, and costs, benefits and risks.  But my main concern is that I’m still GUSHING with emotions and I don’t think my posts will come across as anything but completely insane.  I’ve been struggling with this post, trying not to fill it with #FTW #AWESOMESAUCE #ZOMG and 10,000 exclamation points.  Did I tell you have pictures?        

I so wish I could have taken every single girl that I talk to about taking more science, technology, math and engineering along with me to see an hear just how freaking rewarding STEM careers are.  I’d show them how these careers change the world and make lives better.  I’d show them the fabulous role models, how much fun they have, and how being in a community of insanely smart people can make every minute count.  

As I am putting the finishing touches on this, NASA just announced that the current date (more about that coming, too) will be pushed back again.  I was doing okay travel-wise because I was already planning on being in Orlando for SQLRally on this Saturday.  Staying over a few extra days was cheaper and easier, so that’s what I’m doing.  As of right now, it will be later and not 10 May as last announced.  You know what? I’m still at EMOTION LEVEL RED…ish.  All things considered.        

Image by nasa hq photo via Flickr

A Right Turn Instead Of A Left Turn

Some time ago, Karen and I put our names in to attend the #NASATweetup scheduled for the last launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-134).  Karen was chosen and went down last week and had a fabulous experience, but with less than 3 hours to go until the launch it got scrubbed.  Throughout that morning they had already worked on a problem with a regulator and had made up for lost time caused by a storm the previous day and it all looked good for a launch.  I was watching the tweets and through NASA TV saw the astronauts in the Astro Van heading to the launch pad when they turned right to go back instead of left and we found out the launch was scrubbed.  As of right now, a new launch date has not been set as they work on the problem and determine when the next eligible target launch date can be.

But We’re Going To Disappoint All These People

The launch delay got me thinking about how decisions like that get made especially so close to the deadline and how we could apply this thinking to our own projects.  Think about it, the President was on his way, there were numerous dignitaries, 150 #NASATweetup attendees, and an estimated 700,000 others there to watch this historic launch of the last shuttle flight of Endeavour.  Can you imagine having to be the one that has to say “not today”?  Have you ever been on a project when the executives are there saying “Let’s just go ahead and implement it and we’ll fix it later”?

Your Decision Making Process Is Key And Must Be In Writing

While most of us don’t deal with projects with the same risk factors as NASA does we still have to deal with problems and risk, but how we deal with it is key.  As Karen detailed in her post #NASATweetup – It’s a GO! Readiness Reviews and Your Projects this all works when you have everything documented beforehand and you have a formal process for this.  In essence, you have algorithms and decision trees that you follow that make sure that you make the right choice and don’t let human emotion and behaviour get in the way.  Don’t get me wrong, this was not an immediate decision and I’m sure it was not an easy decision.  But if you have all of your options and decision trees, policies and procedures mapped out ahead of time then the decision is based on those written policies and not subject to human emotion.

In the announcement of the delay Shuttle Launch Director, Mike Leinbach, stated:

Today, the orbiter is not ready to fly…we will not fly before we’re ready.

This was not a decision taken lightly, but after thoroughly  evaluating the problem and determining if it could be fixed prior to launch or if it was more serious.  But with such a short time to launch they had to make a firm decision, so they did.  In my mind, this takes a lot of integrity and strength to be able to stand up and say that they can’t launch.

WWND

So the next time you have a problem on one of your projects think about this: WWND – What Would NASA Do?  Better yet, when you start a project, write down all the possible scenarios, risks and decisions and a have a formal process so you can follow it when you need to.

Image by lug00ber via Flickr

Yes, it’s time for me to start heading to Orlando, FL, then over to Cocoa Beach to pick up the keys to the condo where 3 wonderfully smart ladies and I will be staying as part of the NASA Tweetup.   It seems like I waited forever for this time to arrive.  I put the sign, courtesy of Carson Skinner (blog | Twitter) there on my office door to let Rob and Other Rob (my assistant) know that I was away.  Just in case they didn’t remember.

Right now the launch is scheduled for Friday, 29 April at 15:47.  I’m leaving tomorrow to ensure that I have sufficient padding in my schedule to give the airlines plenty of time to get me there for Wednesday.  One of the great things about working remotely is that I can work from anywhere, at least for short periods of time.

On Wednesday, I’ll stop by the Kennedy Space Center to pick up my information packet and to get my NASA Tweetup Badge.  My housemates will be arriving on Wednesday throughout the day.  Have I told you that I have an amazing group of women to share this experience with?  Sue (Texas)  works in the space industry, Liz (Minnesota) is a science blogger, TV personality and mom and Sheilah (Ontario) is a children’s librarian.  Up until a few weeks ago we’d never met and now we are rooming together and heading off to share a once in a life time experience watching the last flight of the Endeavour space shuttle.

Thursday we will make our way to the Kennedy Space Center for the first day of tours and information.  In the morning we’ll get to meet NASA Team members Stephanie Shierholz and John Yembrick who make all this Tweetup magic happen.  Next we will get a demonstration of the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) and Mark III spacesuits, then lunch in the NASA cafeteria.

Around noon NASA TV will start for the official part of the program:

· Dana M. Hutcherson, space shuttle Endeavour’s flow director, , Kennedy Space Center

· Tara Ruttley, International Space Station associate program scientist, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, @ISS_research

· Astronaut Clay Anderson, @Astro_Clay, Expedition 15 flight engineer, STS-131 mission specialist, shuttle Discovery (April 5-20, 2010)

After that, we’ll board a bus for a tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, including visits to the Apollo Saturn V Center, a drive by the Shuttle Landing Facility, Mate-Demate Device, Orbiter Processing Facility, Vehicle Assembly Building and Mobile Launcher Platforms, and viewing of the retraction of the Rotating Service Structure, scheduled for 7 p.m.

I think that sounds like a wonderful day.  More posts about Friday, the main event (I’m hoping).

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been tweeting a lot about NASA, the shuttle program, and space anniversaries lately because I’m attending the NASA Tweetup on 28-29 April.  I can’t tell you how exciting I am about attending, especially after the 10-day delay we experienced earlier in the month.  The delay was due to the Russian mission to the International Space Station (ISS) causing a traffic jam in space, so the Endeavour Shuttle launch was delayed.

Even though the delay was announced well before today, we didn’t know until just now that the date is a go because today was the Flight Readiness Review, where experts do a complete system risk assessment of all the systems and dependencies for Endeavour and the Space Station.

The Flight Readiness Review is a type of design and operations review that ensures that everyone and everything is ready for launch.

• More debris tile to provide more debris protection in more locations
• Systems on board the Space System needed to be checked because Endeavour will be doing maintenance on the Space Station
• Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) being installed on the ISS requires checking
• ET-122, the External Tank, was struck during Hurricane Katrina and needed extra inspection. It is 10 years old and does not have all the improvements that newer tanks have.

If all the systems, people, software, facilities, and other components check out, the launch is scheduled.  So today, the official go ahead was given for the scheduled date.

All of this makes me think of larger application production rollouts.  I’ve been part of many readiness reviews, both formal and informal.  However, this usually with my methodologist or project manager hat on, not very often with a data architect hat.  I have a feeling that this is because the normal issues I would raise as a data architect (missing requirements, incorrectly implemented requirements, etc.) would be dealt with much earlier in the process, such as during a normal development quality control test.

Where problems usually arise late in the production cycle are when someone incorrectly sets data, not data structures incorrectly.  In even the most dysfunctional shops, most organizations have come to understand that allowing people to make ungoverned structural changes is a huge risk.  However, I have not seen nearly enough of the type of controls and monitoring for reference and master data, especially things like reason codes, reference codes (Customer type, Product type, etc.)

What I can appreciate about NASA’s Flight Readiness Reviews:

1. Documented.  Everyone knows ahead of time what their job is, what is expected, what the quality standards are.  They agree to it up front. There are manuals, checklists and checklists of checklists.
2. Expected.  No cowboy engineer thinks that he can make a quick change just before the launch and force the change to be accepted because it’s too late to undo it or too late to miss the date.  No one says "we don’t have time for the FRR.  Just put ‘er into production".
3. Formal. The review is scheduled.  It has assigned tasks.  Everyone, even external parties, know that it is coming and understand the role it plays.  There’s a press conference for the results.  There are probably even signatures.
4. Open. As far as I can tell, the results of each check is shared openly.  Even the "fixes".  The results are published.  Media can ask questions and the live results were tweeted throughout the day.
5. Reflective.  The review concentrates on failures, damages, problems and issues of previous flights.  These issues aren’t swept under the rug in hopes they don’t happen again.
6. Risk-based.  There are issues documented.  They are assessed against risk and probably cost.  Time is of the essence, but it isn’t the only discussion.  Risk is inherent in the space program. Understanding it and mitigating it is the name of the game.  Avoiding all risk would mean no space program

Of course, the reason NASA has such a strong governance process for shuttle flights is because lives are at risk, as well as a huge pile of money.  This doesn’t mean that our own application systems can’t do harm.  I tweet regularly about data breaches, customers who are harmed financially and businesses that are lost due to poor data policies.  Often these failures are due to poor governance. 

Even if you project does not have a formal readiness review you can have your own personal process.  I have many checklists and tests I run on data models and scripts I generate.  These are my own readiness reviews. I share them with team members. There’s a reason why NASA has readiness reviews and there are important reason why you should, too.

Related articles

Image via Wikipedia

In addition to being the 50th Anniversary of the first man in space, today is also the 30th Anniversary of the first Shuttle launch. On April 12, 1981, Columbia crew John Young and Bob Crippen launched into orbit on the Columbia.

STS-1 landed two days later at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

You might remember that some orbiters (shuttles) took off in Florida and landed in California, then were carried on the back of a 747 back to Florida.

I was in high school when the STS-1 launch happened.  It’s hard for me to fathom that the Shuttle program has been in place for my entire adult life.  As I previously posted, some of my earlier work was done on facilities that were involved in the applications of the shuttle program.  At the NASATweetup I’m planning on attending later in the month, well be watching STS-134 launch.

Look for my future post on the "business keys" of launch numbers.  I guess I see data modeling challenges everywhere.

Image via Wikipedia

Today marks the 50th year since Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.   This milestone, achieved by the Soviets, led to the space race to put men on the moon.

Like many complex projects, this mission wasn’t without its problems.  According to The Guardian, the Russian Space Agency will be declassifying and releasing documents today about technical glitches that happened leading up to the launch, including shorted out sensors, a door hatch problem and a pencil that floated away.

While I understand why data is sometimes released years and decades later than it was originally collected, I’m always taken aback by delayed release of such information.  On my projects, it seems we are always working on getting data to people faster.  In the case of classified data, it seems there are two different performance metrics: right now and 50 years later.