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Courtney Stadd took over the Office of Commercial Space at the Department of Commerce shortly after Malcolm Baldridge, then Secretary of Commerce, died after a fall from a horse. Stadd had previously been working at NASA.

Baldridge had established the Office of Commercial Space in response to difficulties he had with NASA accepting private overtures at a Commercially Developed Space Facility (CDSF) aka the Industrial Space Facility (ISF) -- a man-tended orbital laboratory, entirely financed by private capital -- which would have been in orbit in the late 1980s if NASA had merely signed on as an "anchor tenant" -- procuring space on the laboratory as a customer -- as would have been allowed by Reagan policy and later law.

If you notice at this link another individual with close association to Stadd is Scott Pace. Scott Pace has involvement in this story of the Baldridge-era Office of Space Commerce as well.

The CDSF era was a time of misguided political activism on my part (I now know direct technology development to be far more revolutionary and threatening to the would-be "powers that be"), and I had sent a letter to the National Space Society's "Space World" editor. The letter concerned the appropriate division between private sector and public sector responsiblities. I made reference to patent law's distinction between technology (patentable) and science (unpatentable) as a guideline. Courtney Stadd had recently hired Scott Pace to work under him at the Office of Commercial Space. As someone who watched the tragic demise of the CDSF at the hands of NASA interests in teh wake of Baldridge's death, and who had actively supported the ISF, I complained to the Secretary of Commerce that I Pace should not be retained due to the potential conflict of interest represented by his participation with the various organizations surrounding the National Space Society. According to verbal reports to me, the letter of mine on patent-law-guided space commerce policy was being submitted for final publication when Pace appeared in the offices of the NSS where the editors of the NSS's "Space World" were making their deliberations. Pace rather boldly asserted that they shoudl not publish my letter and spoke of the fact that I was trying to get him fired in the same context -- as though that were somehow justification.

In this light, it is interesting that Courtney Stadd is now in line to become Goldin's successor:

Intrigue Swirls Around NASA Chief Goldin, Possible Successor

By Steven Siceloff, FLORIDA TODAY posted: 11:10 am ET, 04 October 2001

NASA Chief Rallies Troops After Terrorist Attacks

NASA Spells Out its Space Commerce Agenda

CAPE CANAVERAL - Two NASA memos issued last week look for the most part like any of the dozens that have flowed from the agency. But NASA Chief of Staff Courtney Stadd signed them instead of Administrator Dan Goldin.

It is unusual for sweeping directives such as the travel restrictions released last week to carry anyone's name other than the administrator's. The incidental change offers a glimpse into the intrigue that has swirled around Goldin since last November's election.

Agency observers and White House officials have long seen Stadd as an administrator candidate.

Those views gained intensity in late August and September. Then the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 pushed the government into a war footing. NASA issues plunged to the depths of the White House's to-do list.

Stadd holds considerable sway over NASA since he was appointed by the Bush administration, said Federation of American Scientists analyst Charles Vick.

"I think a lot of responsibility is falling on his shoulders," Vick said. "This administration doesn't give a blast about NASA now, and didn't before the events of Sept. 11."

Howard McCurdy, a space policy professor at American University in Washington, D.C., said Goldin faces an unusual situation: plural leadership of a federal agency.

Instead of a single man at the helm, the White House has Goldin and Stadd to run NASA together. "This is a 70-year-old technique in Washington," McCurdy said.

Vice President Al Gore was sufficiently interested in space during the previous presidency that a deputy NASA administrator was not necessary, McCurdy suggested.

While not dismissing McCurdy's suggestion, Goldin press secretary Glenn Mahone said that Stadd's Chief of Staff position is next in line after the vacant Deputy Administrator slot.

The new initiatives are not a sign of a power shift at NASA, but rather a sign that Stadd is comfortable with the agency and the role he has held in it since January, Mahone said.

"It isn't any signal," Mahone said. "Courtney now has his footing in the agency. It's a growing process."

But other NASA watchers said leadership at NASA has been diluted for lack of interest.

"There is a growing perception that Dan is going to be an administrator for life," said John Pike, director of the Alexandria, Va.-based thinktank Globalsecurity.org. "This should have been taken care of in the spring. It's indicative of the unusually low priority that NASA has been accorded. Now it is even further from the front of the stove."

The White House plucked Stadd from his commercial space business as a liaison between Clinton Administration holdover Goldin and Bush's staff. "There's certainly been a view that Courtney was providing the adult supervision during the transition to a new administrator," Pike said.

Uncertainty is something agency employees have had to deal with for months. It faces a $4.8 billion cost overrun in the International Space Station program and shortfalls in the space shuttle program. The agency also must find a new director at Johnson Space Center in Houston and a new administrator.

I'm just after the karma now... Nasawatch has a rumour about shuttle commercialisation too... no background there so here's the text:

Word has it that Ron Dittemore, Space Shuttle Program Manager at JSC, will be holding an all-hands meeting today to discuss "shuttle commercialization". According to NASA sources, Dittemore will be discussing an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) concept that has
been developed that would operate the Space Shuttle program. This concept has been under development for the last 9 months. Dittemore will
reportedly pitch this concept as being seamless as far as civil servants are concerned with equivalent benefits, significant sign-up bonuses, and guaranteed job security. Dittemore has reportedly expressed personal interest in heading this new organization.

Behind the scenes there is little interest among Dittemore's crowd in actually saving the government money. Rather, this is simply seen as a way to lower the number of federal employees involved in America's civil space program.

Update: Note from someone@jsc.nasa.gov:

"Mr. Dittemore spoke about a "concept" where a private company would run the Space Shuttle Program. It was not commercialization, but "privatization". It has nothing to do with saving money. It will probably cost the government more money. He said it was in the interest of safety.

Since NASA cannot hire new people and grow them to be managers/engineers, there is no one to run the program safely in the future. That is true since most of the shuttle program folks came from MOD which is mostly all contractors now. This "concept" will work only if all the right people
with the right job skills needed to run the program safely, accept the offer to move over. Highly unlikely. We are talking about mission operations, flight design, flight directors, astronauts, program/project managers, ground operations, aircraft operations, launch operations, etc. Only the civil servants in the Engineering Directorates appear to be spared from this excercise in futility. He said it would happen in 2 years. That's unbelievable, the way the government works!"

There's a fair amount of history- this was a waste and even adding "legitimate science" (which just duplicates what SOHO does) isn't enough to consider it a reasonable project.
It was merely a means to deliver a daylight side webcam of earth.
Sheesh
Check out NASA Watch

...the original low cost (one of its purported selling points) has ballooned to the point that criteria used to justify the cancellation of other missions should be invoked - yet won't be for fear of offending the Vice President.

...it is refreshing to have someone in a high government position (such as the vice president) who stays up late at night thinking about these things - and (apparently) has the technical ability to understand the concepts involved. If only Mr. Gore had translated this interest into practice and NOT supported a cut in NASA's budget 7 out of 8 years in a row.

FWIW, I think it's a pretty cool idea. It is supposed to stream back a continuous feed of the Earth's sunlit side to be accessed via the Web. If nothing else, it would be a neat screensaver. :)
I just don't think the fact that it's being mothballed can justifiably be used as a political football against the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (tm). Better projects get stuffed at NASA hourly.

> We've heard things like this before, but not as strongly worded

Well, really, we have. And that was 2 years ago. And not much has changed - except a couple more Mars probes have been lost, and the budget has gotten a little smaller. Sigh...

In our media driven society, I'm amazed that space.com didn't include any pictures of the Mir2 design. Of course, if RSC couldn't afford to make any computer renderings, this might limit the media material available.

Of my other space news sources, Spaceflight Now didn't have any information on this and NASA Watch is down this morning. Obviously, the news sources don't put a lot of stake in Mir2 ever getting beyond a few press briefings.

Russia can't even afford to meet it's ISS commitments. Every module of theirs beyond the Service Module (Zvezda) is delayed indefinitely. If Russia doesn't get moving on their Science Power Platform they may never be able to do meaningful science on their side of the station. This could also hamper their commercial asperations such as the Enterprise module.

Russia needs to get off their nationalistic bent and concentrate their efforts on what is there rather than trying to one-up the rest of the world.

I'd have to disagree with you. In the time the ISS has been in orbit, there was a major issue with the software that endangered the entire mission. After a module had been added to the structure, the ISS software was not updated with the new weight and center of gravity for the structure, causing a near-miss with a piece of space debris. Check NASA Watch for more information, specifically the letter from Sensenbrenner, the ranking chair of the Committee on Science, to Dan Goldin.

Other systems on the ISS are apparently flawed also. Astronauts have reported many problems with the systems designed to do inventory management, waste disposal, etc..

I'd have to disagree with you. In the time the ISS has been in orbit, there was a major issue with the software that endangered the entire mission. After a module had been added to the structure, the ISS software was not updated with the new weight and center of gravity for the structure, causing a near-miss with a piece of space debris. Check NASA Watch for more information, specifically the letter from Sensenbrenner, the ranking chair of the Committee on Science, to Dan Goldin.

Other systems on the ISS are apparently flawed also. Astronauts have reported many problems with the systems designed to do inventory management, waste disposal, etc..

The Russian Duma, being of a significantly more nationalist and less realistic bent than the Kremlin, is continually attempting to ignore reality with respect to their space program. Check the link at http://www.nasawatch.com to Pravda, where an official communication of the Duma has already asked for the RASA (Russian Aeronautics and Space Administration) chief's head for allowing their station to go down.

Other interesting points to take away from their communique:

* They absolutely refuse to consider the possibility that they didn't have the money to keep Mir operational or even in a safe orbit.

* They already want a new station. Never mind that there were only four core modules built: The MIR core module, now half-melted in the South Pacific; the training module, sitting in Star City and needed for ISS training; the Zvezda service module (which is an updated MIR core module); and the mock-up, sitting in a museum (not sure which). Remember how much trouble getting Zvezda built was?

* Remember how like pulling teeth it was to get the money for Zvezda out of the *very same Duma*? They want the nationalism and prestige of a space program, but they don't want to pay for it. They want to pay for MIR 2 by "letting the Americans pay our share of ISS costs". Let's think about this a second... we just found out that *we* are overbudget, we are stretching *our* contribution out to who knows when (2007 for completion now? 2008?), and they want us to pay their whole share, so they can throw up a competing station? On what planet do these people think they are living on?

* They are concerned about insane things like "we can't use the ISS for military purposes". (Exactly how did they use Mir for military purposes? Skylab? Salyut? Spy satellites and commsats are *so* much more cost efficient for military use that this isn't even funny.)

The general Russian thought on ISS comes down to something like this:

RUSSIAN DUMA: What happen?

RUSSIAN MISSION CONTROL: Someone set up us the re-entry!

RUSSIAN MISSION CONTROL: We get signal from Houston.

RUSSIAN DUMA: What!

RUSSIAN MISSION CONTROL: Main screen turn on.

AMERICAN MISSION CONTROL: How are you gentlemen!!

AMERICAN MISSION CONTROL: All your space stations are belong to us.

RUSSIAN DUMA: What you say??

AMERICAN MISSION CONTROL: You are on the path to insignificance.

AMERICAN MISSION CONTROL: You have no chance to economically recover make your time.

RUSSIAN DUMA: Take off every 'MIR 2'.

RUSSIAN DUMA: You know what you doing.

RUSSIAN DUMA: Move 'MIR 2' for great justice.

This is so close to the typical Duma member's thought patterns that I can't decide if it's funny or not....

Your friendly neighborhood nitpicker,

Allen Bryan,

Once again, Space.com shows up a day late (Nasawatch.com reported this a day earlier), with misleading headlines ("Pluto mission saved"), and a misleading, incomplete article (see spaceflightnow.com article).

I swear, Space.com is looking more and more like they are graduate students at the Bill Gates School of Business.

So costly that NASA literally couldn't build a spare, so this is only a one shot deal.

<rant>

It is not particularly uncommon in this program. Was there a backup to the Service module which delayed the program two years? (The ICM could have been, sort-of, but was never built.) This led to the first two modules, Zarya and Unity, exceeding their 500-day lifetime in orbit; what would have happened if they had failed?

And what about the space shuttle? More than thirty shuttle flights are required to build the station; at a 1/450 estimated failure rate, according to the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, there is a 7-odd percent chance of another Challenger before it is completed - and the tight schedule surely is not going to help. If that happens, how does the program survive, with the Russians almost too broke to produce enough Soyuz even for the normal operation of the ISS?

That said, who won't be happy to learn that, according to NASA Watch, the Destiny lab's software wasn't even validated before launch? Or that there is a catch-22 with its avionics (computers and stuff need cooling to operate, but they need to be up to start the cooler systems)...

There is another issue: the project also depends on hundreds of hours of EVA (spacewalking), which the US lacks experience at. I don't have a reference handy, but IIRC one of the proposals to replace the space station Freedom program had been dismissed as too risky because it required way too much EVA time, and that was still less than what the ISS needs.

There is always the argument that the space program is indeed risky, but the prize is worth the game. I would agree with this, if the prize was space colonization, or at least common access to space. But this is not what NASA is after; see the jaundiced view they have about the Tito flight to ISS (set up by MirCorp and the Russians). According to the Space Frontier Foundation, " NASA is clueless about how to efficiently and fairly run this facility. They're not interested in anything but their own budget, people and programs." Space science, then? A manned facility is not really adapted to that (life support systems, people bouncing around, degrade the quality of microgravity) except for studying the effect of weightlessness on the astronauts themselves, which has already been done well enough on Mir.

There is an article from the Economist about the "waste of space" the ISS is.

</rant>

And yet, I crave for more coverage of the ISS operation, more pictures of the beautiful thing they are building up there... I was at my window a few minutes ago as the ISS was passing overhead (cloudy sky, didn't see anything but I tried), and I'm following the EVA thanks to the Spaceflight now live coverage. I can't help dreaming about that 2001 double wheel giant station, and what moved me most in recent years was reading old newspapers from around july20th, 1969. Go figure...

The Thiokol guys knew their audience: NASA PHB's like shiny, pretty pictures. If you've looked at NASA documentation [just check out NASA Watch], you'll see that they like this to be the way they get information. Hell, on the ISS Flight Plans, they have a NASA-distributed traffic light icon that is red, yellow, or green for the overall flight based on the overall flight criteria.

Tufte's conclusions are correct in many ways, but NASA's bureaucratic whims are as much to blame. For one thing, the entire STS system wasn't designed to launch below 40F. Yet they did anyway. The O-Rings were just one of many things that could have failed...in fact, the primary O-ring on one SRB failed on the fifteenth shuttle flight--at a launch temp of 53F--and that sparked the study and discussion of what happened with Challenger.

First, the "holy war" stance is adopted by someone who lists their Web site as "www.ihateapple.com"? Pardon me for saying this, but, "Pot, meet kettle."

Does Taco want /. to be print media? I doubt it. That means a lot of things, and I think Taco doesn't want to meet those "standards", if you call them that. I know that I don't consider TOTK.com Sports, which I run, or NASA Watch, which I really enjoy reading, to be "print media", but it doesn't hurt either in my opinion.

But the best thing is that Taco's comments made me read this blurb, and in reading it, I've come to realize more clearly the problems with DNS. That's enough for me.

We're not all mindless Taco ditto-heads, ya know.

Here is an excerpt from the summary:

Several internal NASA studies have shown that the shuttle program's workforce has been affected negatively by such downsizing. In particular, the shuttle program has identified many key areas that are not sufficiently staffed by qualified workers, and the remaining workforce shows signs of overwork and fatigue. Moreover, the program's demographic shape and skill mix jeopardize the program's ability to "hand off" leadership roles to the next generation and achieve a higher flight rate to support assembly of the International Space Station.

So, although the stance of management has changed about tactical decisions, the budget just isn't there to support the workforce needed to support the demands of the Shuttle at the flight rate needed for Station assembly.

Does this issue have its origins in the Shuttle program or in the Station program? Probably a little of both. Station is probably not really paying its way, but Shuttle probably is not demanding the resources needed for high flight rate operations either.

My hope is that the new NASA Administrator (whoever that may be) will examine and address this issue early in his tenure.

I say, let Tito run NASA from space, and send Goldin to swab space fungus from the walls of Mir in preparation for deboost.

I say, let Tito run NASA from space, and send Goldin to swab space fungus from the walls of Mir in preparation for deboost.

Finally a space article that didn't come from cnn...

Kudo's

To bad Space Elevators are the Super Dense Optical Storage Devices of Space Industry. A Red Herring.

suggested Space News Site's spaceflightnow
SpaceDaily
NasaWatch
SpaceWeather
Nasa
It's ashame that SpaceOnline bit the dust and was absorbed by space.com, along with SpaceViews

If you want some real action become a Nasa click worker at http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/top
Maybe Slashdot will even do a story on it...

I wait with herring baited breath

Doubt full,
All shuttle flights launch from Florida (Can We say brother Jeb.)

All US manned flights are directed from Houston Texas (Can we say his home state)

To much pork...

The only parts of NASA to get axed are Dan Goldin and GoreSat

A full announcement is expected next week from NASA -- wouldn't it be nice if they would simply release news as it happens rather than create News Happenings?

Of course it would, but that would mean that NASA would understand good PR. No, they like to hold things close to the vest, preferring pomp and circumstance to timely news. NASA's still stuck in the Sixties as far as their public relations shop runs.

Anyone who's read NASA Watch for some time knows how clueless NASA's PR shop is. But they were getting better under the late Brian Welch, who, I feel, was working to improve the immediacy and efficacy of NASA press coverage. Welch was instrumental in the Dreamtime work done on ISS, and really had a thing for using Webcams on stuff. He initially opposed Keith Cowing's press accreditation efforts, but I really do feel that Brian "got it".

But in this era of "faster, cheaper, better", NASA PAO seems to be still thinking "slower, costlier, bad theater".

Until such issues become solid legislation and real attempts to strip our liberties rather than conflagaration to get square middle class votes, and on that day we should fucking fight like a heavyweight champion - until then let's consider what's truly important. Neither of the candidates during the debate apart from scurillious scaremongering had anything intelligent or definite to say about the supposed "culture of violence". It's just hype

The next president will appoint 3 supreme court justices.

What the candidates' position on space exploration might be.

A fossil fuel crisis is looming. Our demands outstrip what's needed. Next president has the power to declare areas in Alaska a national monument to prevent oil drilling. May I remind you that the only the only single remaining natural salmon runs in the US is now in Alaska.

These are some of the issues I don't think have been highlighted enough in favor of assurances to people about their money. What's more important to me is which candidate is equipped and intelligent enough to understand that science governs progress at this point in time, and is prepared to understand it's appliance.

Actually, only a hundred launches seems about right. We sometimes forget in our post-spacerace society exactly how complex, difficult, and downright dangerous these missions are.

Yeah, this is #100. FYI, the originally-predicted failure rate for STS launches was around 2%. STS-51L (Challenger) was one. I get nervous with every launch these days, some because of that value, the other because I work on a payload to go to ISS and know that STS explosion==me out of a job.

That's why every single mission-that's right, every one- has its own mission patch (by the way, you can see STS-92's patch at this location. They call them "missions" for a reason: they are as intricate and dangerous as any military action. The slightest mistake can cost billions of dollars and even irreplaceable human lives, as has already been demonstrated in our history.

Stupidly, there's a movement afoot at NASA Public Affairs Office (PAO--I refer to it as the "Perfect Asshole Office") to even kill mission patches. Consider NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's desire to eradicate the NASA "worm" logo. Specifically, this link, which states in part:

"Astronaut mission logos are an important part of NASA activities. They should continue to be used as they have been, since they are an established form of visual identification for a particular mission. However, in terms of media awareness and overall visibility to the public, the use of the 'meatball' should take precedence over the use of mission logos."

I mean, this is really just a Mickey Mouse agency. -sigh- Yet I work as a contractor.

Actually, only a hundred launches seems about right. We sometimes forget in our post-spacerace society exactly how complex, difficult, and downright dangerous these missions are.

Yeah, this is #100. FYI, the originally-predicted failure rate for STS launches was around 2%. STS-51L (Challenger) was one. I get nervous with every launch these days, some because of that value, the other because I work on a payload to go to ISS and know that STS explosion==me out of a job.

That's why every single mission-that's right, every one- has its own mission patch (by the way, you can see STS-92's patch at this location. They call them "missions" for a reason: they are as intricate and dangerous as any military action. The slightest mistake can cost billions of dollars and even irreplaceable human lives, as has already been demonstrated in our history.

Stupidly, there's a movement afoot at NASA Public Affairs Office (PAO--I refer to it as the "Perfect Asshole Office") to even kill mission patches. Consider NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's desire to eradicate the NASA "worm" logo. Specifically, this link, which states in part:

"Astronaut mission logos are an important part of NASA activities. They should continue to be used as they have been, since they are an established form of visual identification for a particular mission. However, in terms of media awareness and overall visibility to the public, the use of the 'meatball' should take precedence over the use of mission logos."

I mean, this is really just a Mickey Mouse agency. -sigh- Yet I work as a contractor.

http://www.nasawatch.com/humor/shut tle.ads.html

It looks like this story was leaked by Nasawatch/SpaceRef or Space.com prematurely. It was supposed to be embargoed until the International Astronomical Union actually made the announcement on Monday. Naughty naughty.

Well, I guess the cat's out of the bag now, so here's a list of all the sites covering the story in addition to Nasawatch/SpaceRef.

The news will get much better on Monday, when all us space news sites can actually post the real story and provide all the details. Stay tuned.

• BBC News
• CNN Space
• Discovery.com
• Space Chronicle

And of course, my own coverage at Universe Today:
Astronomers Discover Nearby Extrasolar Planet - August 4, 2000

Fraser Cain

Not only that but Nasawatch is way cooler. :)

Nasawatch has some more good coverage of this.

I remember when NASA use to try to squeze every ounce of life out of it's probes, Just look at the history.

Neptune and Uranus where secondary objectives for voyager II if it survived that long.

Pioneer 10 and 11, first probes to cross the asteroid belt, visit jupiter, and visit saturn. They continued obtaining data from them long after the jupiter and saturn(pioneer 11) flybys. Pioneer 10 expired in the mid 90's (launched 1973) and they are predicting pioneer 11 (launched 1972) to kick the bucket anyday now. It is still returning usefull data, though it has no budget!

Pioneer 6, launched in 1965 is considered NASA's oldest operational space craft, I know it was still running in 1996, I think it is still running...

Pioneer Venus launched in 1978 was designed to last a year, they kept it going until 1992.

The Viking missions, launched in 1976, they kept them going till the landers died in the mid 80's.

The Skylab rescue, instead of writing it off they salvaged the derilict space station.

They salvaged and repaired Solar Max with the shuttle, to bad they where to cheap to launch a reboost mission to keep it going later (under the NEW NASA)

And finally the (Orbiting Astronomy Observatory) OAO-3 copernicus. Launched in 1972, it was kept going until the early 1990's. As the Gyro's failed (one by one) the control software was modified to handle first only 2 working gyro's, then only 1 working gyro.

Which btw. is what happened to GRO, it now has only 2 working gyro's. GRO was designed to be serviced by the space shuttle (just like solar max, and hubble). NASA acknowledges that they can modify the software to safely control/re-enter with 1 or 0 operating gyro's.

This is a waste of tax payer money, and a direct effort by the NEW NASA to distance itself from the successful programs of the OLD NASA.

Did you hear since the VP is in charge of the space program that Al Gore invented outer space ?

TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken

While I vent some deep links to nasawatch
comments on the crash
likely excuses by NASA
FAQ on why to crash
SpaceflightNow crash status

Quoting from his article "And in a March 9 internal memo from JPL director Ed Stone, which UPI has obtained, space workers are warned that "the days ahead may at times be difficult."

As first reported on NASA Watch On November 8th NASA did indeed know that there could be a problem with the thrusters. Here is an excerpt of the press release; "The NASA investigation board, chaired by Art Stephenson, director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., found that cold temperatures could affect the performance Mars Polar Lander's descent engine, which begins firing at about 2 kilometers (about 10 miles) altitude during the descent to Mars surface. As a result of the finding, a team of engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has developed procedures to warm up the engine system prior to firing. In addition, the team has analyzed descent engine performance at a range of temperatures to assess its predicted performance upon arrival."

The report on the Mars Polar Lander to be relased shortly will no doubt tarnish NASA's reputation in the short term. The repercussions of the last two failed Mars missions could set back the exploration of the solar system 5-10 years. While perhaps it is time for some serious reorganization at NASA we must not let these setbacks stop us. NASA's budget is small and has been shrinking for some time. If the U.S. is to lead the world in space exploration then a stronger committment is required by government.

Marc Boucher

As always with anything to do with Space, if you want the latest information on this issue, be sure to check Spaceref.com and NASA Watch. In this matter, I believe NASA Watch was reporting a possible engine problem back in November - although there was no corroborating evidence at the time. The fact that they knew about the problems with the MPL was reported yesterday.

Certainly, some heads are going to roll in NASA, and hopefully the blame gets placed where it should be - on the shoulders of whoever decided to cover this up. Also, blame should apparently be placed on the folks at Lockheed Martin (the company that I believe built the engines on the MPL) who must have known there was a problem with their engines.

The biggest problem is of course the budget for NASA, which has been steadily decreasing over the last few years. I think it is ludicrous of us to expect NASA to launch missions like these without a proper budget for development, manufacturing, and testing of the equipment. In this case, apparently the money was simply not there to afford a complete test of the whole landing proceedure - which would have made it obvious that the engines were not going to work and that the censors for shutting them off would not work either.

OTOH, it is also criminal for a project of this magnitude and expense to go ahead with a known flaw that will prevent its success, and those responsible should be called to the mat for their explanations.

Sadly, this will probably put space exploration back several years, and the blame will probably end up on the shoulders of good people who didn't deserve it.

• 7 March 2000: Latest news in the Boeing lost tank saga Editor's note: word is spreading fast at NASA MSFC that Boeing may have actually sold the two ISS tanks at a surplus property sale for $50. The tanks cost NASA $750,000. Stay tuned.

Here's the URLs:

The Nasa Watch site
Boeing's missing tanks not explosive
Pay for the snafu
Space Station parts go in trash
Workers Seek Space Station Parts

There's a photo-illustration of what the Pizza Hut rocket will look like at Pizza Hut's page.