Sometimes in the mornings while eating my cereal, I turn on the Today show. Twice in the past month I’ve watched Katie Couric interview actors, and twice I’ve felt the need to yell at the screen, “SHUT UP KATIE COURIC!” She is so annoying. A month ago she interviewed Hugh Grant, and it was the most awkward interview I’ve ever seen. She asked inane questions and giggled a lot while Hugh Grant sat there trying to answer her stupid queries and looking extremely uncomfortable. This morning she interviewed Alan Alda about his role in The Aviator and barely let the poor man get a word in edgewise between interrupting his sentences, sentences that I would have liked to have actually heard, with stuff like “Oh, speaking of The Aviator, I interviewed Cate Blanchett yesterday, she was just so articulate and so wonderful, don’t you think so? Or did you get to work with her, I mean, you don’t have any scenes together…” and “Did you know anything about Howard Hughes before doing this movie, no? Did you know he invented a bra, giggle giggle?”
Shut up Katie Couric! Jesus.
Anyway. I had an excellent run last night thanks mostly to the 50 degree weather. I’ve come to the conclusion that 50-60 degrees is really ideal running weather. Of course, it only actually reaches 50-60 degrees for maybe 4 months of the year in Houston, which explains why this is a sucky running city for me. If I’d moved straight here from Georgia Tech instead of to the beautiful weather of northern California, I doubt I’d have ever started running at all. The moral, then, is thank god for northern California.
Carter told me about his dad’s/Dr. Green’s blog a few weeks ago but I’ve been lazy about posting a link. However, his latest entry about the wonders of TiVo, and the last sentence, “I’m putting a Tivo sticker on the window of my VUE” made me laugh, and thus his blog deserves a link. The Greens are such a blog-saavy family! (Even if one of them has turned into a blog slacker since he moved.) If my own dad turns up with a blog, I’ll know things have gotten out of hand.
Last night I made the mistake of bringing up potential future NASA administrators (specifically, the Air Force Lt. General who used to head Missile Defense) with someone who apparently thinks it would be awesome if we (NASA) were more closely linked to the military. Yeah, that conversation was fun (she says sarcastically). If someone thinks flying military missions would be more fun than flying ISS and science missions, I can’t help but wonder why they’re working for NASA and not the Air Force or Navy. Hell, there’s a reason that NASA is not part of the DoD, people. It’s the country’s civilian space agency. We’re supposed to be exploring, not launching spy satellites. Going to Mars, not acting as the DoD’s lackey. I don’t have a problem with the DoD coming to NASA if they need data from our satellites or assistance with launches, I mean, intergovernmental cooperation is a good thing. Yes, NASA will always be linked to the military. The Army launched the country’s first satellite, some military research groups were incorporated into NASA when it was formed, their test pilots become our space shuttle pilots, we share tracking resources, we flew DoD missions in the early 1980s, etc etc. But there’s a reason NASA was created completely separately from the DoD. We cooperate with them, but are an independent agency.
And to that end, I think that naming a very recently retired (only since July) military man whose previous job was managing a very controversial national security/defense program sends a very mixed message about what the administration thinks NASA should be doing, and sets a very bad precedent for future NASA leadership.
Finished.
HURRAY FOR DR.GREEN!!! You made the Sarah Listings!!
I can sympathize partly with the DoD supporter (at least from what you’ve written here). I don’t want NASA to become a part of the DoD, but there are certainly areas where we can cooporate without becoming “lackys”. And, I think that the idea of completely separating civilian and military space endeavors is a pipe dream. It would be great if we lived in a world where we didn’t have to consider military defense, but we do not live in that world. Space, after all, is part of our world whether we would like that to be true ideally or not. Until we can abolish the need on the ground, space will ultimately require the same posture. The quickest way to demilitarize space is to demilitarize Earth.
Also, from a purely technical trajectory perspective, I think DoD missions are often much more interesting than what is required for science.
Hey Jen, I don’t disagree with anything you said. I agree that military and civil space programs cannot be completely separated, I’m not arguing that they should be, and I understand that there are many areas where we can (and should) cooperate.
I also understand that there are aspects of military missions that are most interesting to flight controllers.
But I don’t think that alone is good justification for flying them, and any hints at the “militarization” of NASA really worry me. Maybe it’s a fundamental mission thing — I feel strongly that NASA should be in the business of exploration. Let’s face it — the DoD doesn’t put a lot of weight on exploration unless it’s applicable to national security.