Use #askNASA Hashtag to Send Your Questions About the NASA FY2013 Budget

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

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DataChick’s Magic Math Formula for Estimating a Task

Image via Wikipedia

Some people recommend you do fancy planning, figuring out all your tasks and estimating how long each will take, adding them all up, then adding a planning factor of 2-4 times that number to come up with a good estimate. Doug Lane (@thedouglane | blog ) even blogged about his experience in getting that estimation technique to work.

But if you really want to nail it (and look like a miracle worker), use Karen’s magic math formula:

1) ask your gut how long it really thinks it will take.
2) double that*
3) increase the unit of measure by one.

So applying this formula: If you gut says “2 hours”, double that to 4 hours…then increase the hours to days. This brings you to the more reliable figure of 4 days.

* if you have a particularly bad boss or project manager, you may need to increase the multiplier for more reliability.  Perhaps you could add up all the times in a 24 hour period you think of quitting and use that as your boss factor.

You will thank me one day.

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