Today’s the day NASA targeted for announcing 2016 NASA grant recipients. Their goal is to announce by 3:00 AM Eastern, midnight Pacific.
They updated their site earlier today to report they are working on finalizing the review process. As always, they appreciate our patience. There have been times in the past where circumstances required a little extra time to deliberate beyond the originally targeted deadline.
A link to the recipient page should be posted to http://robotics.nasa.gov/ once they are ready to announce.
Didn’t they announce the grant recipients the Monday after the targeted date last year? (I remember being informed that our team received the grant on a Monday, but I may be mistaken…)
Welcome to the real world. “On time” is sometimes taken as a four-letter word. “When I want it done by” suffers the same fate, particularly when “when you want it done by” happens to be “on time”. The NASA grant announcements have been late before; they’ll be late again. Next you’ll be expecting Champs closing ceremonies to end on time.
And BTW, if, as your earlier post seems to indicate, you think that the NASA folks should be working over the weekend on this… Let’s just say that getting me started on that will result in a very long post or PM, at the end of reading which you’ll probably be feeling rather beaten up, and I’ll be almost certainly feeling pretty lousy myself for writing and sending it. Suffice it to say that working weekends–on top of your normal work week–is something to be avoided if possible.
That is so wrong.
I’m absolutely certain that some evenings and weekends were spent evaluating the 600+ proposals. The end-game (who does/doesn’t get a grant) is very challenging and handled by very few dedicated and committed individuals. They know the NASA grant is make-or-break for many teams and need to make hard decisions. Be thankful for those NASA people who care about all the FRC teams (not just their own).
BTW, many NASA people routinely work on evenings and weekends for their “day jobs.” They are professionals and will do whatever it takes to get things done right.
I’m not saying they should work on the weekend…just rephrase that they are “working diligently” over the weekend. Also I learned a long, long time ago to not write such strict deadlines if I know there’s a possibility I can’t hold up to them. I’d be happier if they wrote, “Sorry, we’ll have the results early next week.”
"NASA will review submitted applications and inform teams of their selection via the NASA Robotics Alliance Project (RAP) web site (http://robotics.nasa.gov). It is our plan to announce selections no later than Friday, November 6, 2015, 23:59:59 (PST). Please note that this is our current best estimate for the announcement date. The date may have to change due to circumstances beyond our control. If this should happen, a revised estimate of the announcement date will be posted on the RAP web site as quickly as possible. "
Current Best Estimate. That should be all you need to know.
Fact of life: It happens ALL. THE. TIME. Even with diligent work. I could probably locate a bunch of articles about something getting delayed without even thinking about it. They write the deadlines, and they try to meet them. But maybe something* doesn’t quite come through, so they have to figure out where to push or cut to either get it through or do without it. It happens. It doesn’t mean they’re not working diligently, it may just mean that you can’t see them working diligently.
*Could be anything: Congressional budget crunch (and the ensuing government shutdown) stopped the grant process cold a couple years back. Could be that somebody didn’t supply something quite right and they’re waiting for it to be fixed (unlikely, as in this case that’s virtually an automatic denial). Could be a key signatory to release funds has the email saying he needs to release them sitting in his inbox along with 1000 other emails that he hasn’t gotten around to, and he’s on vacation or dealing with a crisis elsewhere. It could be ANYTHING delaying, and most likely it’s out of the control of the team that’s working on the grants. Internal politicking comes to mind as a likely source of delay, but it certainly isn’t the only one.
