South by Southwest: What Works or Doesn't: NASA vs.Our Current President & Co.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

What Works or Doesn't: NASA vs.Our Current President & Co.

Photo credit: STS-115* "old hand" Astronaut Joe Tanner* is shown, in this NASA image, during an EVA that resumed assembly of the International Space Station (ISS).
Regaining a decent perspective is, for me, the advantage of an abiding interest in "space." Since 2000 when things in the federal government took a wrong turn, I have been contrasting the lack of success in the current leadership in the White House and Congress, with the successes in solving problems at NASA.

With all that is going on in an occasionally tense world, it is heart-warming to learn that at NASA tension can also solve a problem. This is what I mean: deploying the newest set of solar arrays on the ISS is being successfully accomplished using different methods. The use of the "high-tension" setting in the unfurling mechanism, along with taking time for the wings to warm half-way through the sequence, is allowing the panels to fully unfurl without sticking together.

NASA learned valuable lessons from the problem-plagued deployment of the first solar panels some years ago, done in low-tension mode. And they changed the proceedures used in this flight as a result, and it is working. Astronaut Joe Tanner helped problem-solve in 2000, and he is back again as a valuable asset during this mission.

No such luck in the White House or the Pentagon. Leadership's conduct of the wars in the Middle East remains essentially the same as before, whether it is working or not. Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld are experienced leaders. But they remained stuck in the neocon fantasy of years ago, now discredited because is has not worked. Today's reality of high tensions among the factions in Iraq and Afghanistan make for death all around. There seems no pause that will warm relations enough for nation-building to proceed. And tensions between Iran, the U.N. and the U.S. over the Iraq war and Iranian uranium enrichment remain high.

*References:

STS-115 feedlink from NASA
From Tanner Bio at NASA - "Tanner’s third mission was STS-97 aboard Endeavour (November 30 to December December 11, 2000), the fifth Space Shuttle mission dedicated to the assembly of the International Space Station. While docked to the Station, the crew installed the first set of U.S. solar arrays, in addition to delivering supplies and equipment to the station’s first resident crew. Tanner performed three space walks totaling 19 hours 20 minutes. Mission duration was 10 days, 19 hours, 57 minutes, and covered 4.47 million miles."