Maybe I’m bitter, but f*ck ’em
NASA was forced to postpone its highly anticipated Artemis I mission Monday following a leak in engine 3 that was not detected in the last wet dress rehearsal due to testing being cut short because of a separate hydrogen leak.
The issue was identified around 7:30am ET and the launch was officially scrubbed at 8:35am ET. Now the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the event are heading home without seeing the first stage of the epic moon mission kick off.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told DailyMail.com that if NASA would have conducted the engine ‘bleeding’ process in the last wet rehearsal the world may have seen Space Launch System (SLS) take off.
‘It’s one of many engine-related things that happens during the countdown,’ McDowell said.
‘I am skeptical they will try again on Friday, I think the delay is likely to be longer.’
Maybe I’m bitter, but fuck ’em.
I know some good people at NASA but they seem more and more to be few and far between.
Under Obama, NASA launched big unto DE&I hiring practices.
Second, what I saw a whopping shitload of from New hires were wannabe STEM influencers.
These are young people, usually but not exclusively women, with Twitter and Instagram handles that contain “space” or “rocket” and are constantly posting about “I fucking love science,” “#WomenInSTEM,” and every other space or STEM trending thing while taking selfies in front of various pieces of NASA equipment or memorabilia.
Their goal is clear to go viral and use their NASA job as a launch platform to science celebrity with sponsors and a monetized social media presence.
I applied to work at NASA.
I was rejected.
I still don’t know why.
Me at the job interview: “You’re looking for a metallurgist who knows additive manufacturing and friction stir welding of aluminum lithium alloys. I’m a PhD PE in materials engineering. Here’s a paper I published on FSW and a copy of my dissertationon AM of aerospace grade titanium alloys. Also, here is my 8 years experience on failure analysis of aerospace grade aluminum alloys.”
Them: “But do you have any experience with rockets?”
Honestly, I published in the topics that were in the job description. I didn’t even get past the recruiter.
I actually hope I was passed over because I’m a white guy and didn’t check certain DE&I boxes, because the alternative, that my credentials and experience weren’t good enough to even talk to some NASA engineers would be a kick in the dick I’m not sure that I could handle.
But SpaceX is launching rockets almost weekly and but NASA has spent 7 years and billions of dollars and can’t get one rocket to launch on time.
We launched Apollo from scratch and put a man on the moon in less than ten years, with pencils and slide rules.
Their Instagram models and check box engineers couldn’t get Artemis off the ground on a first go with 50 years of rocket science, CAD, FEA, and computers.
You can’t serve two masters. Either your goal is space flight or your goal is public perspective and building a brand.
You can’t do both.
Maybe I’m bitter, but fuck ’em.
I’m just ashamed as an American that is seems to be way our country falls.
From NASA to the DOD, we can’t accomplish goals anymore and the rest of the world is watching us do that.
