Thoughts About Last Week's Conference

"Charles J. Divine" wrote: I enjoyed last week's conference. I learned some interesting new things and saw some old friends.
But it was depressing to consider how little progress we've made toward our goal of a space based civilization. It's obvious we underestimated some problems (and failed to even consider others -- e.g., politics).
I had the same feeling several months ago and started www.InnerTransit.org so that engineering work could be done outside of NASA. Which resulted in creating SOFA which can be found at the same url.
I don't believe that fixing NASA is possible. The whole purpose of the agency is make its current political boss (President of the USA) look good. They can't have a goal that is not motiviated by the need to get the President reelected. I have been reading "Dragonfly" which is about the US-Mir program. A good read for understanding the politics of it all. You are just wasteing your time if your goal is to change NASA. Better to focus your time on something like a SOFA project.
... I think we need to try some reforms in our conferences. For instance, I really don't get the opportunity to truly consider the various ideas and research presented until I receive the proceedings. I suggest the following: Earlier announcement of the conference and invitation to participate. Posting of papers to the Web so that people may read the papers before they come to the conference. Instead of listening to papers being presented, we can discuss what we have read. Sounds like what my Sunday School class is supposed to do. The result is that none of us ever do it so we always end up discussing what we are reading while we are reading it. I once sat through a Sunday School class where the teacher and several student who had read the material proceeded to run the class as a discussion. It was very disconcerting.
Mitchell James
mejames@...
http://www.InnerTransit.org (homebase for collaborative engineering)