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NASA Clamping Down On ISS Crew Reports?
TOTKChief writes: "After stories of air quality problems and other fun glitches on ISS, NASA Watch is reporting the following: 'NASA Seeks to Suppress ISS Crew Reports.' This is from a status message sent out to NASA and contractor ISS program office Staff: 'Notes from today's staff: The Ships Log, sent down almost daily from the ISS crew, will no longer be available on the web due to legal concerns with the freedom of information act. A process will be put in place to make them available to those who need it, IMC, Flt control team, etc.'" Considering the huge advances made in astronaut safety since the space program began, it would probably be comforting to hear about problems being solved in space rather than brushing them over with silence. And when there are problems, doesn't the public have the right to know? (Whose dollars put those folks up there in the first place?)
There's a big difference between witholding information for national security, which is what the amusing hypothetical examples you cite are, and witholding information that may merely be embarrassing to the government. The first is legal, and the second is not. What NASA is doing is a case of the latter, and their FOIA doublespeak doesn't help their credibility one bit. I hope they get some new management soon, but if not, the budget "clampdown" that the AC alluded to earlier is in order.
Fine by me. I want people to think about this. I'm not saying that I'm right--hell, I'm an engineer and I should be wrong some of the time, because otherwise peer review is useless to me...
MMQ's? Most people who would have such an attitude don't have enough technical knowledge to complain. Outside of the areas that I work in, I know that I sure as hell don't. Something could happen to the station bus, and I'd be like, "Ummm, okay." Now, fsck up EXPRESS Rack or the Vacuuem Exhaust System/Waste Gas System, and I'd know.
Actually, we do. The process of building space flight hardware demands it. You build something to spec and drawings. You test it. It fails--and let me tell you, no matter how well you design the thing in the beginning, it will fail. [I know, I design tests to break things. I usually piss off the design team.] You document how and why it failed for two reasons:
So yeah, that's why you open up everything. It's also why you document everything. The other thing to think about here is quantity. Ten of something is a lot in space stuff. We have four work STS orbiters. We've had five operational. Each is very different, although they were derived from the same initial design.
Tell that to the guys who worked on Apollo, eh? They had an unrealistic deadline and met it with four months and eleven days to spare.
Micromanagement can be a huge problem. NASA has cut management back too far in some areas and not enough in others. The communication pathways stink. Happens on the commercial side, too--our payload's commercial [the first commercial one, actually, so we're breaking new ground all the time...].
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-- Geof F. Morris
If this is the International Space Station, shouldn't it be possible to end-run around Dan Goldin by getting these logs from one of the other space agencies? Russian, Canadian, ESA, etc?
For those of you who don't have the time to read, before spouting off about what you are guaranteed, here is a small portion of items you are not guaranteed by the Freedom of Information Act
(1)(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
(2) related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency;
(3) specifically exempted from disclosure by statute (other than section 552b of this title), provided that such statute (A) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue, or (B) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld;
(4) trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential;
(5) inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency;
(6) personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy;
(7) records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information (A) could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings, (B) would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication, (C) could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (D) could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source, including a State, local, or foreign agency or authority or any private institution which furnished information on a confidential basis, and, in the case of a record or information compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation or by an agency conducting a lawful national security intelligence investigation, information furnished by a confidential source, (E) would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law, or (F) could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual;
(8) contained in or related to examination, operating, or condition reports prepared by, on behalf of, or for the use of an agency responsible for the regulation or supervision of financial institutions; or
(9) geological and geophysical information and data, including maps, concerning wells.
When people say they are using the FOIA to refuse information, they may have meant to say that they are using the FOIA to show they are not required to give it to you. Give NASA a break. They give a lot of great info that they could easily justify not giving, but when it comes down to it, they are scientists who are excited and happy to talk to people about their work.
... no one can hear you scream without prior written approval!
I can see your point, but i disagree.
There is also a point about 'airing dirty laundry'. Now I DO NOT agree with just sealing all the logs in a vault and only those on a need to know can look at them. But at the same time the world isn't perfect. Glitches happen. You you want your neighbors to be able to know EVERY detail of your life? No - of course not. At some point freedom of information becomes an actual hinderance to getting the job done because of all the second guessing and 'monday morning quarterbacks' that are out there. For some jobs, it is important from getting from A->Z, not every last stupid little detail (and foulup) that took you to get there.
You develop payloads for the spacestation right? When you deliver your payload do you document every foulup, screw up, bad design decision, backtrack, and everything else that went wrong during the project? I doubt it. You produce the final thing, the specs, how it has passed the requirements, etc etc. Why doesn't NASA get the same treatment?
Saying this is 'tax dollars' or 'international' is just a cop out. People can't do their best work when the work under a magnifying glass.
(I personally do my BEST work when i have a boss i don't see for weeks at a time. It's the micromanagement types that want a status every 12 minutes that kill productivity).
j
The Ships Log, sent down almost daily from the ISS crew, will no longer be available on the web due to legal concerns with the freedom of information act.
"concerns with the freedom of information act". What kind of bullcrap is this? How can you use the FOIA to block information?
They better have a good reason behind this. Whether it be for the crew's safety, or whatnot. I can see the concern if the logs include confidential information, but even in that case you can censor it.
and they can signal us by rotating the solar cell arrays back and forth in case they get in trouble.
short flash, short flash, short flash
long flash, long flash, long flash
short flash, short flash, short flash
Quick, to the space shuttle!
Captain's Log - 1/10/2001 - 10 A.M.
* Checked air intake regulators - all normal.
* Checked heat regulation unit - replaced regulator.
* Visited by spaceship full of martians - played chess with them.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
I want to let you all know why I submitted this. It's important, and I think you'll agree if you think about it.
We bitch here all the time about open source, free as in [speech|love|beer|money from a wrecked Brinks truck], etc., but we do this with the computing industry for the most part. When it's not about computing, it's about us as consumers.
Guess what: we are all consumers of the U.S. space program, whether or not we're Americans. I work on an international payload for ISS, one that has potential benefits that will help us all in medicine, optics, etc. Countless medical and science advances have come from space-related endeavors.
We want freedom of information. We want knowledge. We crave knowledge. Getting access to the ship's log is cool three ways:
I find that, all too often, people my age [early 20's] are going into aerospace for money and for a desire to keep things like STS 51-L [Challenger] from happening again. These aren't socially positive things, really. We should be in this to innovate, not maintain the status quo. NASA is doing a great job of the latter at this point, as humans remain parked in LEO except for those nice little day trips to the moon.
Keith Cowing is going to file FOIA's to get access to the logs. I think we here on /. should do something similar. Write your Congresscritter--they just got elected, remember? Write Bush, whether you voted for him or not, and tell him to get off his duff, select a NASA Administrator, and make damned sure that it's someone that will believe in opening up information to the public. And, if you're not an American, pester your local politicos--remember, this is the International Space Station.
End of rant. I am highly pissed at NASA PAO, but like that's new or somethin'. It's not like it's a national security interest anymore, boys...
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-- Geof F. Morris
They're doing this because Shep keeps saying interesting stuff without the PAO filtering him down to an acceptable level. You can thank him for forcing the issue on a station name, for instance, and calling it Alpha during radio communications. This forced Dan Goldin to acknowledge it as station Alpha, something he was really trying to avoid.
What they DON'T realize is that Shep can just start transmitting using the Ham radio setup, so they can't keeo him down.
Go Shep!
I couldn't find it online, but read his report on the Challenger disaster sometime, its in his book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Its down right scary how NASA management makes its decisions. Management believed that there was a 1 in 100,000 chance of a problem with the shuttle, Feynman showed it was more like 1 in 100 and that the only system on the shuttle that was reliable was the computer software and it was getting info from badly designed and likely to fail sensors. Because of the whole design process it lead to problems never being fixed, even when the solution my have been simple. Just replace the failed part with a new part that will fail again later.
I recently finished reading a book called "The Hubble Wars" detailing the successes and failures of the Hubble Space Telescope problem. Seeing this story today makes clear that there are still several big problems involving NASA:
1) The semi-technically literate people who are interested enough to want to hear the gory details also appreciate that any project NASA takes on is by nature very complex and will have some problems. By withholding information NASA alienates those who are likely to be it's staunchest supporters.
2) There have been in the past and probably still are some real project management shortcomings at NASA. With the Hubble project (at least according to the text mentioned above) the central problem was lack of coordination between development teams. Finding out about successes and failures as they happen allows the paying public to react properly to applaud the successes and require improvements. Which brings us to the next point...
3) The federal legislative bodies tend to be punitive in reacting to NASA shortcomings. The attitude seems to be "You cost us a lot of money, we don't get a lot of immediately practical returns, so if you screw up you're history". Instead, the attitude could be "You're very expensive, but we value the eventual returns. Due to the complexity of your work, we will tolerate some mistakes. But if we see the same mistakes a second or (heaven forbid) a third time, then expect a management shakedown".
Personally, I am fascinated by all things technology and therefore am pro-space exploration, etc. The curiosity of the great ones and the hurculean efforts put forth by the minority are what has put at least part of the world into a new standard of living. Quashing the curiosity and freedom of the most daring hurts everyone.
IT keeps the astronauts fit and entertained, adds nutrients to their bland space food, fights off robot monsters, detects and removes tumors, replenishes thinning hair and freshens the air.
Lady astronauts appreciate IT's ability to reduce painful monthly bloating and erase microgravity cellulite eruptions.
IT is the ISS crew's silent confident, biomechanical jack of all trades, and Tickle-Me-Elmo all in one.
Soon, we'll all know about IT, and will feel gratitude toward NASA for preserving the surprise.
Stefan
Since it is not mentioned in the article above or on NASAWatch, here is a link to all of the Status Reports that have been posted to the web. The most recent one is from January 3rd.
This is not a Fugazi