Bruce Curley

The Class Clown Still Belongs at NASA

Retained We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize an the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win and the others, too! President John F. Kennedy FUN (fun)n. (ME. fonne, a fool, foolish, or fonnen, to be foolish) 1. a) lively...play or playfulness: amusement sport, recreation, etc.; b) enjoyment or pleasure: 2. a source of cause of amusement or merriment, as an amusing person or thing, adj. (Coloq.) to make fun: play or joke... Websters 1970, p. 565

[Include original photos from my collection to accompany the piece.] I suggest that rather than being a liability, the class clown in an asset worth encouraging and rewarding, especially at NASA. Raising and using class clowsn is what we, as Americans, excel at. Moreover, the pursuit of happiness that the class clown personifies, which we alone among nations enshrined in our very Constitution, might be just the solution to the current dulldrums at NASA. Before you dismiss the idea outright, think back to the class clown you knew in the one institution all Americans share: high school. What ever happened to him or her? Did the dire predictions of the teachers pan out? Well...if the class clown I knew in high school is any indication, they often go on to great success in life So what does this have to do with NASA? My premise is that the class clowns of the world (of which many test pilots by nature are jokers I would suggest that NASA encourage, rather than discourage, this aspect of their personalities) are critical to the to the recovery of NASAs mission. When you consider the level of creativity demanded by NASAs original charter, these class clowns are even more critical. Not that class clowns do not face adversity in life. They do. The class clown I knew in high school grew up in a household where his father, a successful media personality, died young, and his mother was an alcoholic. The women he married had serious medical problems. Yet, he went on, despite the predictions of teachers whos laughter disrupted their classes and who therefore often and openly stated that he would go anywhere in life, instead started a business that made him a multimillionaire. He still laughs as much as he always did only now he has enough money that he does not have to worry about his laughter upsetting the authorities. You see, the extraordinary ability of the class clown to laugh and have fun, rather than causing them to get into trouble when they graduate often turns out to be a tool that helps them advance in their varied careers. I believe that this same class clown attitude
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Bruce Curley

was very much part of Gemini and Apollo but was cut from the space program like a wasteful line item once the securacrats and careerists took over NASA. If NASA is to succeed in its mission as so eloquently stated by President Kennedy, and recently expanded upon I the National Space Initiative (of which I made a modest contribution as a contributing member) then, I submit, fun must become part of NASAs internal corporate culture once again. A case in point. Recently I was a consultant with a major satellite and telecommunications research and development lab on the I-270 space corridor in Maryland. The guy in the office next to mine was an electrical engineer charged with responsibility of developing a way to make a remote controlled robot fix anything that broke (malfunctioned) outside a spacecraft in space. So...did he sit there and carefully read al the technical literature in the field in an effort to find a satisfactory answer and then attended endless meetings and conferences to garner all the latest research and findings in the field? How did he find a satisfactory answer to the thousands of questions posed by the enormity of the task? did he attend endless meetings trying to debate the thousands of questions posed by the task? No. Instead, he spent hours joking with his cube mate about all the things that tickled his funny bone. The flirted with a women who stopped by his office 12 times a day. He made calls to friends and laughed and laughed. He even ripped through dozens of magazines (the most current research in any field) and read two or three thick texts on the subject. When I have visited NASAs headquarters in Washington, D.C., I have not seen anyone like the cut up I am describing. My guess is that, even if they make it by the rigerous selection process, they are weeded out or quickly leave on their own. After all, an engineer like Joe at NASA must always quantify, justify, test and prove any answer up through a number of layers as a matter of policy. In contrast, Joe the Engineer in my example was an electrical engineer given a problem that his counterpart in NASA might also be given: to design an arm to aid in the repair of space vehicles. It is a classic problem with a classic NASA solution, one that would be a textbook case for following NASAs strict procedures and policies. In some ways, such a system is bass ackwards. It forces the engineer to define the problem, task, project and possible solutions before it can be solved. And since what we are dealing with here is, after all, SPACE, for which we lack the vocabulary, intellectual tools, insight, experience, knowledge and capacity to begin to know what it is we are dealing with. The people most intimately connected with the discovery of space will be the first to tell you we are merely tapping at the outer doors of its fast store of information. So, how do you fit all of that into a neat little proposal with all the NASA-correct buzz words. To illustrate further with my example of Joe the Engineer who was given the job of designing a robotics arm for a specific space task. when last we saw he was flirting with the woman who always finds a reason to stop by his office many times each day. In
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the middle of something she is saying, he leaps out of his chair and states to his office mate, Tom, give me a hand with this! Keep cutting up this cardboard into 12 and 18 inch strips! Joes movements movements accelerate and he is now frantically sketching out drawings in front of him and dozens and dozens of cardboard components into a shape that only he -- in the tradition of other thinkers like Einstein or Van Braun -- at this point truly understands. In his mind, a space ballet is now dancing. What eventually emerges after two hours of arranging and rearranging these cardboard pieces is a highly detailed mobile are with almost a hundred cardboard components suspended from the ceiling. Later I learned that Engineer Joe arrived at the answer to this task where all his superiors failed. He accomplished this stunning feat without writing a proposal. He held no meetings. No overbearing bosses came down on him asking when he would submit a proposal, thereby fulfilling another milestone. Joe the Engineer, the class clown, who had been cutting up and goofing off while others in this large aerospace and satellite corporation were busy writing workplans and attending meetings -- many billed at cost plus rates --kept writing workplans and attending meetings as Joe solved the most difficult part of that contract. where others were building the arm from the viewpoint of earth and looking at its function from an earth perspective (a natural if wrong approach often taken with these kinds of problems), somewhere in between the laughter and flirting and reading Joe realized the unique conditions of outer space were the orverriding consideration. Therefore, he designed an arm that functioned in space from above, under space conditions that live astronauts will face someday when they are actually using it to make repairs. His space ballet works because he saw what those in the NASA audience only witness. Where is the necessity of laugher to t he discovery of new space hardware and software found in NASA these days? To my mind, NASA because a victim of its success before the Challenger disaster and the securacrats won. They codified behavior at NASA so thoroughly that when you walk into NASA headquarters it looks more like a building built in the former Soviet Union than one devoted to an American space effort. If some in NASA protest that the morose atmosphere in the agency is due to the lingering aftermath of Challenger, dont buy it. Challenger or no Challenger, NASA has been in a funk for years. The Challenger only put a massive flood light on it. So why are the astronauts in this famous Mercury 7 photo smiling so wide and so deep? Because they have just been selected to go into the heavens! Because they have just realized a career goal! Because they cant believe they get paid to do what they do for a living! Because they just circled the earth from space and lived to talk about it! Because they helped their nation realize its potential and helped make their children grow up in a much safer and prosperous world! Because they saw Gods good creation more intimately and closely than 5 1/2 billion others. Because they looked out the window in a spacecraft (which the ever-so-serious- scientists of NASA had questioned the need for) and saw that earth, their all-consuming home of so many years, was even more beautiful and dear from space than it was from ground level! And most of all, because the space program was fun at that time in NASAs history!
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Bruce Curley

FUN IS A GO, NASA! It always has been and, given the right people in the right places at NASA, always will be. Allow those employees to laugh! Allow those astronauts to cut up and enjoy what they do and they will reward you a thousandfold, as they already have. Allow your contractors to keep guys like Joe the Engineer on the payroll. Although they do not submit hundreds of proposals and workplans, and although they laugh and flirt and joke on the taxpayers nickel, they arrive at the kinds of breakthroughs that are going to lead to human settlements on other celestial bodies. I say this not to be flip but as a man who pulled his car over on I-270 and wept bitterly when the news on the radio announced the Challenger explosion. I wept for the astronauts, their families, for the nation and the world, and for my own son Joshua who was 2 years old at the time. It was a bitter and painful tragedy ad a biter and painful time. Somewhere, in the pain at that time, I remembered a guy I had known in the Air Force. He was a class clown named Timmy who helped get me through some of the hardest training with his wit and humor. One time in particular, a Colonel jumped all over him for doing his snake dance, which, Timmy maintained, attracted women. When the Colonel saw him doing the snake dance in a training room, he called him front and center and chewed him out. When the colonel asked Timmy to explain his histrionics, and barked, Why cant you be more serious, Lieutenant?! Timmy immediately answered, Sir, life is too serious to be taken seriously, Sir. What the hell is that supposed to mean?! the Colonel barked back. In tense situations like this it helps to crack jokes, Sir. The doctors say... Oh, the hell with it, Lieutenant. Return to your seat. The Colonel never got it. Timmy was excellent at what he did but he laughed constantly and some in authority saw that very laughter as insubordination. Although many of his superiors wrote Timmy off, he served as an Air Weapons Controller on an AWACs with great distinction in Desert Storm. The Colonels dedication to the mission, if admirable, allowed very little room for laughter. So, too, if you were to examine the corporate culture of NASA prior to the Challenger disaster. The laughter and joy of Gemini, Mercury and Apollo had long since been replaced by the tedium of the routine, and space exploration should never, ever be undertaken as routine. My point here is that in the aftermath of the Challenger explosion and its attendant negative publicity, NASA tightened up dramatically in hopes of avoiding such a disaster again. That is good. What is unfortunate is that this same organization-wide clamming up has led NASA to also deemphasize that these seven dedicated and accomplished professionals, although they did not complete their mission, lived full and wonderful lives that were full of laughter.
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Bruce Curley

If you look at the Challenger Seven in their pictures before the flight, they are laughing and joking. Let us go beyond the accident and keep their smiles uppermost in our minds, for it is those smiles that will blossom into thousands and millions of smiles for generations as yet unborn for whom the Challenger Seven will mean so much. Remember, too, the charismatic smile of a young president as he stands with his shock of auburn hair lifted in the wind. As he stands before his follow Americans and knew how hard the effort to get to space was going to be but who saw more clearly than others at the time how necessary, how important, and how fun that task could be. Like the Challenger Seven, I choose to think of this most enthusiastic space President, John F. Kennedy, not as a victim of a successful assassin, but as I remember him from the top of my fathers shoulders. It was 1960 and my father took us to the Cheltenham Shopping Center outside Philadelphia to see presidential candidate Kennedy. Although I was only five at the time I can remember it like it was yesterday: the campaign workers handing out campaign buttons and literature and working the crowd, those buttons and hats on everyone, the excitement of the people. And then the future president spoke to people whom he had never met before in that rich voice with the long, flat As about the America he saw for them. Among the topics he addressed was an idea that could not have been further from most peoples minds in that crowd: the space program he intended to undertake. He did so with wit, humor, intelligence and joy that make my now-late father, a factory worker, understand the importance of the space program for him and his children. (How many working Americans currently see a connection between the present space program and their childrens future?) President Kennedy gave a little boy a dream about space that remains with me still and which I try to communicate to my little boy every chance I get. If President Kennedy were alive today, I think he would still be telling us that FUN IS A GO! Even if he could never have imagined at the time what great events he was touching off with that enthusiasm, he knew somewhere deep down how critical it was that that program retain the excitement and joy it had at its beginning. for me, I look at these photos to remind myself of how much fun space travel was...and can still be. If I were to pass anything on to NASA and its contractors it would be this: Life is too serious to be taken seriously! Who knows how many space program breakthroughs are in that truth. Just ask Joe and Timmy.

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