Anyone who pays half cent’s worth of attention to national news these days will know that NASA is getting more airtime than it normally does.  Generally, NASA and it’s employees are content to remain in the national background where they go about their daily professional lives with minimal intrusion from curious outsiders.  This is both blessing and curse.  While they are allowed a relatively quite environment to go about their brainy work, most people outside of NASA have little to no clue what goes on inside NASA.

It’s funny how being at a crossroads will change things literally over night.

Ever since the HSF Committee (aka Agustine Committee) was officially announced in May of 2009, national attention has been focused on NASA, it’s budget, and how it spends said budget on various projects.  Those who are used to this sort of attention (aka those usually not associated with NASA) know that it’s all apart of the process.  When a federal agency asks for what amounts to a pay raise, folks start taking stock of how well the agency has performed in the past and if such a hike in money is warranted.   This can cause a very large distraction for people working in the agency, especially when they are not used to such scrutiny.

This fact has not gone overlooked by group leads, managers, center directors and the folks at “NASA HQ” in DC.  About once a week or so, we the workers at JSC will get some sort of email/briefing/all-hands-meeting/talking to from various members of management at various levels about “staying the course”.  In short, they are telling us that while we may be looking forward to the future, past shuttle retirement, into ISS-only operations for awhile, and possibly (hopefully) developing and launching a new capability in space, we still have a job to do.  Even though the shuttle program is almost 30 years old, each mission presents it’s own unique challenges and hardships to overcome.  There are still new problems to solve (remember the knurled knob in Atlantis?), astronauts to train, facilities to upkeep, and orbiters to process.  All of this work requires a uniquely high level of devotion and concentration.

Make no mistake about it; launching shuttles is not your run-of-the-mill activity.

But as I sit here in the NBL taking part of STS-129’s last practice for an EVA activity, I’m very aware of the cocoon that seems to surround the astronauts and their trainers.  Sure, everyone is aware that Ares I-X is sitting on the pad just a few miles from Atlantis, but it doesn’t dominate their thinking or their ability to focus on the task at hand.  We are dedicated to the work and readying ourselves for the -129 mission.

And it’s just not the -129 crew and trainers that I noticed.  Everyone I know that trains, or works in MCC as a flight controller are supremely focused on the successful completion of the shuttle program.  Staying the course, it would seem, is definitely not a problem with these folks.