Thursday, August 30, 2018

Thoughts About Changing NASA in Particular and Science and Tech Fields in General

All, I have written a good bit about the needs for various kinds of reforms in science and technology fields.

On Sunday, August 26, 2018 the Washington Post had two pieces in the Business section that might get more people to thinking about things like this. One was an article by Christian Davenport titled The change agents pulling tradition-bound NASA into the future. It is a very interesting article about the kinds of changes NASA needs to go far beyond their current accomplishments. One company trying to lead the space industry toward more accomplishments is SpaceX led by Elon Musk. There is a piece by Jena McGregor titled Elon Musk is the ‘poster boy’ of a culture that celebrates ‘obsessive overwork’. This article appeared first in the August 26 edition of the Post.

The more one learns about people like Elon Musk, the more doubtful one can become of their ability to actually produce the kinds of changes that they talk about. Exhausted people do not perform that well. They make bad mistakes. Think, for example, the Challenger disaster.