Working at BDM was certainly a very different experience than anything I had ben prepared for as a reserach scientist. I began work on June 17, 1991 as the Senior Staff Scientist. I got an office with no window, and had to buy a complete wardrobe and tie selection to wear every day to work. So much for jeans, shorts and T-shirts!
During my 20 month stay, the tempo of work never really changed. People always seemed to be running around to meet some deadline for delivering one product or another to our main client, NASA's Astrophysics Division. There would be weekly calls from someone at NASA Code SZ to me or one of my collegues about some new brochure, briefing book, viewgraph or poster that was needed to summarize or advertize what NASA had been up to. The BDM staff were young and ambitious. Even the secretaries were far more alert and competent, it seemed, than the sleepy government workers I had endured at my previous employ. They were also far more curteous, and I became friends with them easily.
So what was it like being an astronomer at a place like this? First of all, I found it an absolute joy to be working with an entirely different mixture of personalities for the first time in my life. I made several very good friends at BDM, something which I had been unable to do as a postdoc at NRL for some reason. Apart from having to get used to wearing a coat and tie every day, I enjoyed being their only resident astronomer/educator and found that I was accorded considerable respect in this capacity.
Daily work centered around specific Tasks to which you were allowed to charge your time. As an astronomer, my first task was to look through a report written by a committee that described what NASA was plannng to do in gravity research. I dove into this on my first day, and by the end of my first week, I had emersed myself in a review of general relativity; something I had wanted to do for 5 years but had never had the time. I turned-in my comments, and then went on to the next 'assignments'.
Typically, my time was spent writing text for a variety of NASA publications. These were always reviewed by NASA SZ staff and we would get lots of editorial comments back which sometimes necessitated our re-designing from scratch the entire product. We would have weekly meetings with one of the NASA clients to go over current progress, text and illustration revisions and new thoughts about how to make the brochure/poster etc more effective.
In terms of using my research competence in astronomy, there were very few opportunities. Although I was an astronomer, NASA had its own stable of experts that it hand selected for advise. I participated in a number of Management and Operations Working Group meetings ( MOGS as they were called) but sat in the back of the room while the 'big boys' discussed the issues of the day. I did have a handful of opportunities to strut my stuff, if I might use that colorful aporism!
Soon after I arrived at BDM, I was asked to become involved in the design of a brochure which was to explain what the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer was to do for astronomy. I reviewed all I could on the properties of the so-called local interstellar medium, and spent several fun days at the Goddard Library rummaging through articles on the subject. The outcome of this was that I constructed a detailed model of what the 'Local Bubble' looked like. The graphic design people took my sketches, and from this created what would end up being a heavily used illustration on NASA posters, brochures, and it even graced the pages of Sky and Telescope magazine...all this of course without crediting me. You see, contractors are not allowed to attach their names to a client's work in this way, and it is even considered by some to be an unprofessional request. As a scientist, this was a rather foreign attitude.
My next adventure was to provide a technical critique of a 'gift' that the Department of Defence was preparing to give to NASA if they wanted it. They had a program called StarLite, which was a 4-meter, segmented mirror, laser 'cannon' which was to fire an infrared laser beam at a test target 50 miles away as part of the StarWars missle defence program. It would cost several billion dollars to fly, but when it had served its purpose in a second experiment, DoD wondered if NASA might want to use it and thereby share in the cost of its development. Once I understood how it worked, it wasn't too hard to see that the thing would make a lousy infrared telescope.
During the late summer of 1993, I was asked by Dr. Stachnik to look into how to evaluate the scientific productivity of space missions. This led me into the dark recesses of counting paper citations for a handful of prime missions which had long lifetimes. This work allowed me to spend several weeks at the Goddard library working in my shorts and T-shirts, with more than occasional opportunities to read journals which I had put aside reading for many months.
Then in the Fall of 1993 I was asked by NASA's Astrophysics Division to put together a booklet which would introduce the discoveries made by NASA in astronomy, as part of the human exploration of space. I was to use all of the best pictures I could find, write a sweeping and 'heroic' dialogue about he wonders of space science and discovery, and portray NASA as having made significant contributions to the advancement of astronomy during the last few decades. I wrote the outline in a few days and I was soon asked to start writing. Soon there was a deadline imposed, and I was to give a presentation of the first draft to the SZ Division on ....
The writing was a lot of fun and I pulled out all the stops in communicating enthusiasm to the reader. But then the revisions came. The first draft was critiqued by another astronomer and by the head of the Division himself. The outline was changed, text was shortened and it seemed like this idea was to become just another 'designed by committee' product. I finally presented the outline to the Division, but before I could get much beyond generalities, one of the members asked why SZ needed such a document in the first place. His question snowballed into splinter discussions about...
Soon after December, what had started out as a rush to develop this innovative booklet by January for the head of the Division, completely ran out of steam as its very purpose came under increasing attack. For me, it had been enjoyable to imagine such a booklet being produced by NASA and create the first draft for it. It would, however, be my last major job for NASA before leaving for COBE.