Space Shuttle: Wheels Stop

“In life, there are no ordinary moments. Most of us never really recognize the most significant moments of our lives when they’re happening.” — Kathleen Magee

One week ago today, STS-135 Space Shuttle Atlantis landed on Earth for the final time.

STS-135 Final Space Shuttle Landing Guest Button.

Last Thursday, I left my Cocoa Beach hotel at 3:00 a.m. to head out to the Kennedy Space Center to meet the space tweeps who would share this historic moment STS-135 Landing Tweetup with us.

I’d never seen a Space Shuttle landing before. This would be my first…and last.

After checking in all our landing tweeps, we boarded the bus around 4:30 a.m. — Zero-Dark Thirty!!! We waited for news of STS-135 Atlantis in orbit. Only at Deorbit Burn could we head out to the landing strip.

Chris our KSC Escort waits for news of Atlantis' Deorbit Burn

Ah the anticipation. But still, it was really, REALLY early. Thankfully, some came well-equipped with Red Bull and Energy Drinks!!

@nutzareus pointing to @sharkb8t Energy Drinks

@sharkb8t is a zombie without her energy drinks!

Many of our friends showed up — some flat, some furry, some human: @CraftLass, @WoodToast, @MouthTheTribble, @Astro_Fuzz, @FlatSamantha, and Camilla_SDO

@CraftLass & her husband @WoodToast w/ space critters.

We received news of Deorbit Burn! WooHoo! Our bus driver pulled out of the parking lot. We were on our way.

Deorbit Burn means NASA Tweetup Bus is moving!

Not long into our journey, we slowed to a crawl in snarled “final landing” traffic. @WiredForFlight and @FlightSoft checked an iPad app to track our progress on the road.

@WiredForFlight + @FlightSoft watching our progress in Landing Traffic.

Once we arrived, we headed to the viewing stands. I was hoping the sun would defy nature and rise early so we could see Atlantis drop from the skies. But no.  Still dark.

Shuttle Landing Tower

As we waited for Atlantis to land, the Expedition 28 crew onboard the International Space Station streaked across the sky at 17,500 mph. What an amazing treat to wave to @Astro_Ron Garan, Mike @Astro_Aggie Fossum and their crewmates 220 miles overhead.

Space Station crossed sky just before STS-135 landing.

Atlantis landed just a few minutes after Station crossed the sky. I expected to cry, but instead, I squealed and giggled. This was my first landing. It was more first than last to me. I felt incredibly giddy.

What a treat to be part of history!

We all boarded the bus again, and said goodbye back at the media badging building. @WinObs rode off into the sunrise on his bike, but before he left, he posed with @Camilla_SDO.

@Camilla_SDO gets around. Here she is with @WinObs.

I headed back to Cocoa Beach to check out of my hotel and grab breakfast with Madi Sengupta and Mary Lynne Dittmar. Next we headed over to the launch pads of our past — Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury. The Apollo pad is well cared for. Gemini and Mercury, not so much. Walking among the ruins, I imagined ghosts of rocket boys with crew cuts and slide rulers who paved the way for the Space Shuttle generation.

Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury launch pads.

One of the highlights of the day: attending the employee celebration with Atlantis post flight! Here is my first view of Atlantis, the star of the party.

Employees salute Atlantis, the final Space Shuttle.

Here she is: Atlantis!!!

Employees sign STS-135 banner.

My "mark" on history.

Thank you Stephanie Schierholz for making the landing tweetup happen. What a glorious day. Sad because it’s the end. But what a wonderful 30 years we’ve had!

Time to head to the airport. On the way, I pulled over to take a picture of space melons. Only on the space coast…!

Space Melons: only on the space coast.

On the flight home, the flight attendant read aloud a note someone gave him, recognizing the last Space Shuttle landing and the end of an era, as well as the NASA Administrator in the front row and other NASA employees on the flight. The passengers broke into applause. Tears streamed down my face. The end. It finally hit me.

Tips for Anthony Rotolo’s Students

Professor Anthony Rotolo asked me to skype with his social media class. They want to talk about how students can be effective out in the workforce through the use of social media. I’m not sure social media will be the coolest, hippest thing around town by the time they get established in new jobs. It might be. Or the next coolest thing might be what they offer to their new employers.

So instead, I offer a few tips on how to affect change in organizations, which I think is the real question.

Get to know your new organization’s culture.

Ask questions:

• What do you want to see changed?
• What does change look like?
• What does success look like?
• What stands in your way?

Sometimes knowledge stands between status quo and success. Sometimes technology stands in the gap. Most of the time, culture creates the divide.

Explore your organization to understand its culture:

• Status quo.
• Incremental change.
• Innovation.
• Some combination of the above.

Your recommendations should reflect the organization’s ability to receive them.

For instance, if the organization is conservative and status quo-oriented, your eagerness to offer change may overwhelm them, causing the organization to shut down the conversation, or worse, shut you out and keep talking with other like-minded folks.

Your goal should be to keep the conversation alive, and to expose them to small doses of change at a time, if that’s all they can absorb.

Always give options:

• Option 1: looks and feels familiar.
• Option 2: feels like home but offers new capabilities.
• Option 3: new look and feel.

Let the organization pick and choose among the options to craft what makes them happy.

Always offer something uncomfortable. If you offer a range from 1-3, the most they can stretch to is #3. If you offer #1-10, #10 may seem so outrageous that they actually pick #6 because it feels so much safer than #10.  But they’ve moved twice as far as they would have had the options been safer.

And now, we can talk specifically about social media. Fire away with questions.

Update:

Maren Gause from Professor Rotolo’s class posted this blog after class: Social Media in SPAAAACE.

Professor Rotolo’s Blog: @Rotolo Blog: Galactic Guest Appearance

Look Who’s Orbiting My Biosphere!

I rarely leave the NASA HQ building in the cold, blustery winter season. We’re a self-contained biosphere, with a cafe and deli, credit union, post office, and dry cleaner. What more could I need?

Yesterday I zapped downstairs to mail a package. Horror of horrors, I found a note in the chair where the Post Office guy should be. He was off taking a class. Rats. That meant I needed to go down to the garage, get my coat from my car, and trudge out into the winter air to the post office around the corner. (I’ve lived in DC for 20 years, but I still have Texas weather  blood. I really, really don’t like the cold. I was annoyed.)

Let me set the scene. I walk across the street, round the corner, and head toward the sketchy railroad bridge I must go under. A car horn blares behind me. I keep walking. I’m not about to turn around. The car horn is quite insistent. It blasts away, getting closer and closer. I look straight ahead and keep walking. In a matter of moments, I realize the honking car could mow me down, so I turn to see what’s going on.

A shiny black Lincoln Town Car — the kind the NASA Administer rides around in — pulled up next to me. I see a figure inside the tinted windows waving wildly. Wait. I recognize that familiar outline.

It’s my DAUGHTER!!!

The window rolls down. Oh my gosh. There she is, all official in her Homeland Security Legislative Affairs Town Car. She’s on her way to the Hill for meetings with Members of Congress. She introduces me to the occupants in the car. We laugh and laugh. Her driver  teases me that I can still get honked at walking down the street. By my daughter, I might add.

Too funny!

As a mom, I walked on air the rest of the day. A momentary glimpse of my gorgeous daughter lifted my spirits. I didn’t mind the cold after all. It was a poignant moment for me. Not that I didn’t realize it already, but this was an opportunity for me to see my daughter all grown up. And then the irony, of course, made me laugh. She has a better ride around DC than I do. I’m walking. She’s being transported. She orbiting right outside my little NASA-sphere.

I’m truly amazingly blessed. One daughter is helping keep our nation safe. The other is helping keep children safe a continent away.

Thank you Postman for taking your class. You gave me an unexpected highlight. Not only did I get a chance encounter with my daughter, but I got to see her in her own sphere of influence. She’s pretty amazing!

Flat Stanley: Out of this World Tour

Guest Post by Stanley Lambchop

Hi! My name is Flat Stanley. I belong to Nathan Woolverton, Beth Beck’s adorable nephew. Nathan’s class has an assignment to send me on an adventure. I’ve always wanted to go to space, so I asked if Nathan’s aunt Beth would take me to work with her. She works at NASA, you know. So, Nathan’s mom popped me into a mailer and here I am. I’m flat, you see, so I don’t cost much in postage to get from Texas to DC.

"Flat Stanley" book by Jeff Brown, 1964

Beth told me you might not know who I am. Really? Wow. I guess I better tell you a little about myself. I was born in 1964. My real name is Stanley Lambchop. My younger brother is Arthur. My dad gave me a bulletin board that fell on my bed, squashing me flat. Hey. Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I kinda like it. I’ll never grow bigger or older than I am now. How cool is that?!? AND, I can slip inside an envelop, fax or email to go ANYwhere I want. I’m getting to see much of the world.

But Nathan is special. He sent me on an out-of-this-world adventure. I dare you to top this! I’ve been sending Nathan email pics of my adventure. I have to write a journal too, so Beth thought a guest blogpost would let all of you enjoy my incredible experience. Now my class journal can be a virtual learning tool. Note: In case you’re wondering, I’m dictating my comments to Beth. I haven’t quite mastered typing on a keyboard with my flat fingers.

Fellow Earthings, prepare to get VERY jealous.

First of all, you should know that the weather in DC is very cold, icy and snowy in the winter. But while I’ve been up here, Nathan and his class have seen two snowstorms. Quite amazing — since he lives in warm sunny Texas. We had to shovel our way out before Beth and I could drive to work. We were both sweating inside our snow clothes. It’s hard work!

Washington DC: I helped shovel snow.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management allowed federal government workers to telework or take vacation time off — just to keep thousands of drivers off the snowy roads. Beth had a meeting, so we drove in to work together. You know NASA is a government agency, right?

Here I am at NASA!

Here I am at NASA! Woot!

I came to visit on an important day, NASA’s Day of Remembrance, when NASA honors fallen heroes who’ve given their lives to the cause of exploration.

I learned about NASA's Day of Remembrance.

I toured the building. I found astronaut Deke Slayton’s spacesuit right down the hall from where Beth works. Deke was was one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts, selected in 1959 (before I was born). He was the only member of the Mercury Seven not to fly. He was grounded because of a problem with his heart, but he ended up flying in space in 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz test Project — the first time the U.S and Soviet Union worked together in space.

Here I am with Astronaut Deke Slayton's spacesuit.

I met Robonaut Centaur. Pretty cool dude. He rolls around on a rover base. He’ll help astronauts who are working on the surface of another planet. He’s kin to Robonaut 2, robo-humanoid STS-133 crewmember launching to Space Station on February 24.

I met Robonaut Centaur, cousin to STS-133 Robonaut2.

Here I am hangin’ with my new peeps, the RoboTwins: Robonaut 2 and Robonaut 2. They were duking it out over who gets to launch onboard STS-133 Space Shuttle Discovery on one of the final missions in the Shuttle program, scheduled for February 24.

Hangin with my peeps: RoboTwins

I inspected a Space Shuttle up close and personal. It’s really high way up at the top. Check it out!

Here's my Tank Top View. Original photo by NASA's Bill Ingals.

Here’s what a bird would see when a Space Shuttle launches. Pretty amazing, don’t you think? I can’t believe we’ll only have three more launches EVER in the history of mankind.

Only three more Space Shuttle launches EVer!

The only way off this planet, until we come up with another solution, is by rocket propulsion. “Beam me up, Scotty” only works on TV and in movies, sadly. Hopefully some of you out there will come up with a cool new mode of transportation, like dream transport or spacial folding techniques. (I just made those up, but who can predict what breakthrough might happen in the future.)

Once we get off the planet, though, we can see sights like these. Come along for the rocket ride.

Isn't Space Station amazing?

The International Space Station orbits 220 miles over Earth, circling the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of 17,500 mph with a international crew of six.

Another view of Space Station.

Flat Stanley on Top of the World

Moon tour: Nope. No cheese!

Sun: Man, this place is HOT!

Mars, the Red Planet. Humans could live here in the future.

When humans travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere, they need protection from the harsh environment of space. Either a spaceship or spacesuit — to provide air, cooling and heating, and other essentials. Our atmosphere provides a radiation shield, but once we go further out, we need to provide protection. On the planet’s surface, whether Moon or Mars, we’ll need a hardshelled suit, like the one I tried on. But I don’t think it fits. Do you?

I'm trying on the Mars suit. It's a bit big.

Maybe someday we’ll have bio-shields or exo-skins that protect us without a spacesuit. Maybe Nathan and his classmates will come up with a technology breakthrough that NASA can use.

Highlight of my visit: I met a real live astronaut! Really. I promise. Not only is Leland Melvin a spaceman, he’s also the Chief of Education at NASA. He really likes kids. You can tell. He stopped a meeting to pose for a picture with me. Cool dude!

Here I am with astronaut Leland Melvin!

Leland spent over 565 hours in space during two Space Shuttle missions: STS-122 in 2008 and STS-129 in 2009. He also played football in the NFL with the Detroit Lions in 1986, as well as the Dallas Cowboys and Toronto Argonauts, until injuries kept him off the field. Good thing for NASA. Don’t you think?

Maybe someday I’ll go live on Mars. I don’t weigh much. I don’t eat anything. I don’t need radiation protection, or even a spacesuit, for that matter. If Robonaut can be part of a space crew, I think a flat boy should have the chance. Leland and I are buds now. Maybe he can put in a good word for me. Hmmm.

I hope you liked my space adventure. I learned alot about NASA. I hope you did too.

Oh, and you can Facebook me, if you want. I have my own page. But for now, I need to get back to Nathan’s class. Time for me to get into the mailer, so Beth can get me to the post office. When I get back to Texas, I’m going to make sure Nathan asks his mom to let me watch live views from Space Station on the NASA TV channel on the web. You can too.

NASA discovered alien life after all!

LAUNCH: We know WHY. Do you?

Last week, we held our West Coast LAUNCHpad Salon with the LAUNCH team to talk lessons learned from two successful events, LAUNCH:Water and LAUNCH:Health; and start planning LAUNCH:Energy. The Cazneau Group, one of our implementation partners, hosted the Salon at their offices in Sausalito, California. Great conversation, great setting, great food. But best of all, great common goal — to bring about positive change to our home planet, one innovation at a time.

LAUNCH: Accelerating Innovation for a Sustainable Future.

NASA, USAID, Department of State, and NIKE joined together to form LAUNCH in an effort to identify, showcase and support innovative approaches to sustainability challenges. We’d been working on the LAUNCH concept for six months or so before having a program mature enough to bring in partners in December of 2009. In 2010, we successfully hosted two forums at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now we look ahead to”what next” — as in LAUNCH:Energy.

During our two days together, the LAUNCH team sifted through what makes our LAUNCH brand unique. We’re still working through the process, but what really resonated with me was the concept of LAUNCH as a Fellowship of Innovators. We joked about the ONE RING to RULE them ALL….and who got to wear it, but in essence, that’s what LAUNCH is. We’re an ever-expanding fellowship of cutting-edge thinkers — though not at all in a Sauron kind of way, for all you Lord of the Rings fans.

Each of the LAUNCH team founders is an innovator in his/her field of expertise. We came together to create an innovative program called LAUNCH, which selects ten innovators to interact with 30+ LAUNCH Councilmembers, who are thought leaders in their fields. Together, we’ve become a Fellowship to help propel promising innovations forward to make a difference addressing some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Pretty cool, huh?

After returning to the office, a colleague shared with me a TED presentation by Simon Sinek: “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.”

Simon says (wink) that others “don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it.” He talks about why the Wright Brothers were successful. They were driven by a cause, they wanted to “change the course of the world.” And they did! Just like we want to accomplish with LAUNCH — to accelerate innovation for a sustainable future…and change the course of the world.

Wright Brothers Glider

In his TED presentation, Simon Sinek also talks about the Law of Diffusion of Innovations, where 2.5% are Innovators, 13.5% are Early Adopters, and 34% are in the Early Majority. He claims that Innovators and Early Adaptors are comfortable making gut decisions driven by what they believe about the world vs. what product is available for their use. The Early Majority won’t try something until someone else tries it first.

Law of Diffusion of Innovation

With LAUNCH, we’re in the business of accelerating innovation. We operate right in the middle of the 2.5% zone on the curve. We look for innovations (and their innovators) to nurture, refine, and then showcase to Early Adopters (the LAUNCH Council). We started inside Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle and built out. We know WHY we created LAUNCH. Then we figured out HOW to implement the concept, and WHAT the product is.

Simon Sinek: Golden Circle

Once you strip away the Innovator selection and presentation prep, the Council selection and event logistics, the Accelerator follow-up post forum, what’s left is the LAUNCH Fellowship of Innovators. We’re creating space at the far left of the Diffusion of Innovation curve where we can live and play. It’s the place where we believe we can make biggest impact on the future of this world. That’s WHY!

Todd says, "Innovators, We want YOU!"

Here are a few pics of West Coast LAUNCHpad Salon that I snapped with my iphone. Enjoy! (We certainly did.)

 

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Crosspost on GovLoop and OpenNASA.

Space Taxi

I took a taxi this morning to my meeting with Jess3‘s Adam Zuckerman and Ben Slavin in their new DC offices. The taxi driver and I started chatting.

What a delightful little man.

I learned he came to DC from his home in Nigeria. He speaks two languages: English and Yoruba, a dialect from his home state. We talked about Africa, a topic near and dear my heart with my daughter Steph living there. I learned that Nigeria is a former British Colony. Each of the states has a different dialect.

He completed his graduate studies in Electrical Engineering at Loyola University in Maryland. When he found out he couldn’t work here in the field without an American citizenship, he applied for citizenship. Now, he’s a proud U.S. citizen.

I asked why he was driving a cab. He has a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering, for heavens sake.

He quit applying for jobs. The process was so painful for him, it made him cry. He told me even NASA turned him down!

As he pulled up to the Jess3 address, I encouraged him to try again. He balked. No way. He said he was done. Finished. He didn’t want to cry anymore. I suggested he try USAjobs.gov, where he can sign up for job categories and agencies and receive email alerts when jobs open up. Nope. He wouldn’t hear of it. He never wants to cry again. The pain was too great.  His wife has a good job in the government, so he can be happy for her. She’s a citizen now too.

I got out of the cab. My parting shot: “If you don’t keep trying, you let them steal your dream.” Unthinkable!
I let the taxi driver in on a secret: being at work sometimes makes me cry. The job hunting process is merely good preparation for when he gets hired. He laughed, and drove off.

You’re probably wondering point of this story. Here’s the deal: I’ve been feeling pretty discouraged about my life now that I’m back from South Africa. I’ve had trouble finding value pushing paper and fighting bureaucratic fires at work (not that I ever did, come to think of it). The 15-minute conversation today with a Nigerian-born-American-citizen-Masters-level-Electrical-Engineer taxi driver showed me that I can make a difference here, as well as in Africa. A simple conversation. A simple encouragement. A refusal to let dream snatchers succeed.

Life is about dreaming big dreams, having the guts to make them come true, and refusing to accept defeat. And that’s what we do at NASA. We make the impossible possible.

Thank you taxi driver from Nigeria. I hope to see you working at NASA someday soon. Or, maybe you’ll bypass NASA altogether and drive your taxi to space. Hey, it could happen.

Castles and Foundation Stones

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” Henry David Thoreau

Karlstejn Castle outside Prague: home of the Holy Roman Empire.

Debbie Weil came to NASA recently to interview me for a book she’s writing about Social Media and the over 50 crowd — and yes, I totally fit into her demographic. She asked how we’d been able to make such headway at NASA with a number of groundbreaking projects.

My answer: by doing all the hard work to put solid foundations in place to support them.

UK Appleby Castle Knight. Copyright 2002 Beth Beck

Sometimes the best tool for breaking new ground is a pickax. Sometimes it involves diplomacy. Sometimes it requires creative negotiations. Most often it requires stubborn determination and an extremely thick skin. Body armor comes in handy too — for all the slings and arrows of opposition.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
and by opposing end them.” — Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Making dreams come true takes a good deal of sweat, blood and tears. Ask any entrepreneur how many hours he or she works, or how many ideas crashed and burned along the way.

Sometimes putting the legal, budget, and procurement processes in place to create a project seems to take longer than necessary. Yes, it usually does. That’s what Red Tape is all about. But the fact that we get anything through the federal bureaucracy at all can be nothing short of a miracle. So rejoice when we make it through to the other side. Cobbling together political will to make change happen can be exhausting as well, but it’s absolutely, positively essential for success of any new project.

Foundation building is grueling, hard work — whether it means digging deep into the rock, or building up stone by stone, block by block. Better the house built on rock than one built on shifting sand.

“But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 23-27

So whether you’re building solid foundations of character or projects, my hat’s off to you. I’ll be right there beside you, slugging it out to make this world a better place.

Here’s to castles in the air, and the foundations that keep them there!

 

LAUNCH: Innovation Matchmaking

Vestergaard Frandsen LifeStraw

On Friday, the New York Times Opinionator blog featured a story about “Green Strategies for the Poorest.” The author, Tina Rosenberg, talks about the carbon credit model used by Vestergaard Frandsen for the LifeStraw products, and how they got the idea from Manna Energy. In the carbon credit market, entities that reduce carbon emissions can receive credits that can be sold as offsets to offending (think polluting) entities.

“Use of carbon markets could be a breakthrough.” Tina Rosenberg

What the Opinionator story failed to point out is HOW Vestergaard Frandsen and Manna Energy connected in the first place — LAUNCH: Water!

Our LAUNCH:Water sustainability forum in March brought together these two great forces for good: Vestergaard Frandsen and Manna Energy. Mikkel Vestergaard served as a LAUNCH Council member and Ron Garan’s Manna Energy was selected as one of the ten LAUNCH innovations. Mikkel liked Manna’s business model and signed them to a contract shortly after the LAUNCH:Water forum.

I feel like a proud parent. I hope this is one of many success stories that will start bubbling out of the innovation soup pot – LAUNCH.

So what are LAUNCH sustainability forums? What makes them unique?

We think the magic is the process itself.  We created LAUNCH as TED with teeth – an innovation mashup.

First, we identify ten innovative, disruptive ideas that show great promise to make tangible progress toward solving sustainability challenges our society faces here on Earth.

The sustainability issues we face on our home planet mirror what we face when we leave the protection of our Earth’s atmosphere. The hostile environment of space forces us to be creative in how we support human life on short and long-duration missions. On Earth, we may take it for granted that our resources will be available when we need them. But can we make that assumption?

We hosted the inaugural LAUNCH:Water in March, and just recently hosted LAUNCH:Health in October. We give each Innovator the opportunity to present a 15 minute overview of their innovation to a diverse group of thought leaders.

LAUNCH Process:

Our LAUNCH team works closely with each innovator prior to the Forum to ensure the presentation tells a compelling story.

LAUNCH team prepping Innovator Dieterich Lawson

We provide each innovator with a slick video to help sell their stories. NIKE brings in a team to film each Innovator’s story, which becomes part of the Innovator’s portfolio, along with the Forum presentation.

NIKE LAUNCH:Health film studio

The presentation to LAUNCH Council is U-streamed live so the general public can participate virtually. The U-stream videos are archived on LAUNCH.org.

Innovator David Van Sickle, Asthmapolis

Following the presentations, we facilitate small group impact rotations where LAUNCH Council focus on each innovator one-on-one (or ten-on-one, to be more precise).

Impact Rotations where LAUNCH Council delve into Innovations

Streamlined, solution-driven impact rotations are the heart of the problem-solving conversations at LAUNCH.

With five 30-minute impact rotations for each Innovator, our LAUNCH Council give insightful comments and recommendations about where they see each Innovation fitting in the market, and how to best proceed on the path toward success.

LAUNCH:Health Innovator Aydogan Ozcan told me LAUNCH was worth more than a year of technical conferences rolled up in one weekend. He couldn’t believe the thought leaders around the table were willing to focus total attention on him for two+ hours, when he normally had to wait next to an elevator just for the chance to speak to them for a stolen minute at a typical conference.

We’ll keep working hard to improve the process. I look forward to more stories in the news about the difference our innovators are making in the lives of others as the years go by. Through the LAUNCH sustainability forums, I get to be an Innovation Matchmaker. Not a bad title for my business card. Hmmm. Time to reorder….

Vote: Etsy Space Craft Contest

We do really cool things at NASA. One of them is a creative Space Craft Contest with Etsy, the place for homemade coolness. You can take part by voting for your favorite 3D and 2D entries.
The public voting period opened on Friday, November 12 and will run through Friday, November 19. You will have to register to vote, but the registration is painless.

To encourage you to go look for yourself, here are a few interesting selections you can vote for. The assortment and creativity is astounding (and quite amusing…see Shuttle hat at the bottom).

Etsy received over a thousand entries. Each is made by hand with tender loving care. Take time to review the entries and send the winner to one of the last Space Shuttle missions.

Time’s running out. You have until Friday to vote for your favorite Space Craft!

Crosspost on OpenNASA.

World Changers

I’ve been reading “The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World” by Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund. Visionary founder of Manna Energy and Fragile Oasis (and Astronaut) Ron Garan told me about the book.

The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz

The Blue Sweater is a heartfelt, heartbreaking story of Jacqueline’s incredible journey to create economic independence for poverty-stricken African women, and her relationships with survivors the Rwandan genocide in the mid-1990′s. I find the story both uplifting and discouraging. Uplifting because of the author’s success in creating innovative investment strategies to help relieve poverty. Discouraging because I don’t feel I’ve done enough in my life to help others.

All my life, I’ve wanted one thing:

To Change The World!

I want to make a difference. To contribute. To make life better for others. Most days, however, I feel lucky just to survive the drama created by others, and smile in the midst of it. I often forget to be thankful for my job, a roof over my head, reliable transportation, running water, electricity, plumbing, and food. Think of all the people around the world who don’t have these basic necessities we take for granted.

Though I always thought I would be a missionary or serve in the Peace Corps or do something noble and extraordinary, I’ve somehow served my entire career as a federal bureaucrat. We bureaucrats take a great deal of abuse in the press, but I see the role differently than most. In my mind, Civil Servant = Missionary for Public Good. No, I’ll never be a Jacqueline Novogratz, but at least I can help create Public Good — even in tiny quantities.

Take our LAUNCH sustainability forums, for instance. We recently hosted the LAUNCH:Health at the Kennedy Space Center.

LAUNCH:Health Group Portrait with Space Shuttle Discovery

For me, LAUNCH is an opportunity to make this world a better place while demonstrating the relevance between life on Earth and the extreme environment of space.

We created LAUNCH as a problem-solving conversation around disruptive innovations that might make a difference in our world. The LAUNCH forums give thought leaders a venue for evaluating creative ideas among peers and joining in collaborative, solution-driven discussions.

Here are tweets about our LAUNCH:Health Innovators.

One of our LAUNCH Council, Simon Waddington, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Burrill and Company, had this to say of the LAUNCH:Health experience.

“An extraordinarily productive event where innovators have an intense interaction with a diverse, high level mix of companies, entrepreneurs, agencies, marketers to produce high impact feedback at no cost to the innovators.”

Maybe someday we’ll have a Blue Sweater story of our own about the LAUNCH Innovators we’ve helped propel toward success. Maybe someday we’ll see real change in how we live our lives on Earth because of what NASA brings to the problem-solving conversations. Maybe, just maybe.

And in this very tiny way, I get to help change the world – one innovation at a time!