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O'Keefe to Resign as NASA Administrator
lommer writes "The Globe and Mail is carrying a story that NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe may be set to resign as early as Monday to begin a position as chancellor of Louisiana State University. On the one hand this could mean the indroduction of an administrator with an engineering background (O'Keefe is an MPA), on the other hand can we really expect NASA to effect serious changes and find a focused direction with leadership changes every 4 years?"
An anonymous reader adds a link to this Florida Today article (also carried by Space.com) which says that "the retired director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency."
NASA is dead!
the retired director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency
Certainly didn't see that one coming.
I thought O'Keefe's aggressive reinstatement of the Prometheus project, his commitment to the CRV, were all right on the money.
This is my sig.
Does that mean that this whole show will now be run by the G-Man?
Elachi is the current administrator of JPL. They expected O'Keefe to resign and speculated that Elachi would be a candidate. Apparently he was offered the job after Goldin left, but he had just taken over JPL and wanted to stay.
Alberto Gonzales for Attorney-General, the man who helped write justifications for torture and ignoring the Geneva Conventions.
Bernard Kerik for Dept. of Homeland Security head, now withdrawn after journalists did the kind of research the White House and FBI are supposed to do and found out he was a combination of cheap crook, personal spy for his boss in KSA, and the guy who spent 1.5 months in Iraq before bailing out (he promised six).
Condi Rice for Sec. State, a woman who as National Security Advisor somehow managed to miss all the reports and test runs that proposed air-based attacks on the WTC and claimed that a presidential intelligence bulletin issued one month before Sept. 11 warning of al Qaeda's efforts to attack within the US was "nothing major"
I can't wait to find out how "qualified" Bush's selection for NASA head is. Watch this person turn out to be one of the individuals responsible for the Challenger disaster, or someone more interested in throwing military toys into space than, y'know, that exploration stuff.
I actually met him once; he is also a really nice guy. While some ideas were not too good, all in all, I think that he did a good job. Farewell, Mr. O'Keefe
So O'Keefe's appointment was enough for you to overlook the Iraq War, our loss of freedoms in the name of The War on Terror (TM), the tanking economy, ...
You probably just lost your karma bonus with that one post.
Look at his posting history. He's got a whole army of employees modding up his posts. He's probably Bill gates or something. With modding on tap like that, karma is not an issue.
I was getting tired of all these people using the old tired "for family reasons" after being pushed out and/or not desiring to be under the recently re-elected Bush regime.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
That's an amazing number of lies for one post. Great work.
I'm English so my taxes don't contribute to NASA, however I'm a big supported of the work they do. Personally I think it's really important to be conducting research and experimentation. I think it's a shame that it has basically come down to America to lead the world in this field, as competition often leads to better results.
I really hope this isn't going to be a backward step for NASA, but instead a positive move.
Lets see what happened on his watch - Hubbel was left to fend for itself, more money was poured into the money pit of ISS, and the X Prize totally stole the show.
NASA - get a mission people care about that can be realistically funded, or sign over the next twenty years to Burt Rhutan and company.
[...], on the other hand can we really expect NASA to effect serious changes and find a focused direction with leadership changes every 4 years?
Funny you should mention that. Isn't that the period of time most statesmen around the world is elected for?
Look a monkey!
Ken Lay
Well, as much as I hate to bring up this movie, that was the excuse given in Deep Impact. I guess Powell and friends see an ELE in the re-election of the Bush regime.
All space missions are quite expensive. NASA has to determine whether a mission will provide more benefits than costs. Fuel costs quite a bit, as well as the training and the parts needed to build a rocket capable of going to Mars. Any benefits? Not many. That's probably why not much has been done.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
NASA is a bunch of chairwarming hacks who want to sit around collecting government paychecks until they're able to retire and sit around collecting government pensions. There are exceptions such as the scientific part of NASA that directs unmanned missions but since so much of NASA's funding is commited to the Shuttle and ISS the agency is effectively paralyzed and sclerotic. The fact that no one lost their job over the Columbia disaster is prime evidence that the agency is terminally fucked.
In order to be effective a new administrator would have to make drastic changes, such as immediately cancelling the shuttle program and ISS and closing down some of NASA's research centers and redirecting the money thus freed up into innovative research programs to lower the cost of access to orbit. Unfortunately this isn't going to happen as it would piss off too many congresscritters and the aerospace contractors who fund them.
So, unless the new director has cojones grande a real mandate for real change from Congress and the Administration and carte blanche in managing operations this change is going to be about as significant as spray painting a turd.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Every single time NASA puts out a request for proposals it sets the criteria for awarding the contracts. It can set the criteria for awarding the contracts to be objective criteria such as "2 manned launches with the same vehicle within the same week" or whatever.
The only reason NASA doesn't do so is it would take power out of the hands of the people doing the contract awards and put the power in the hands of mother nature and those who know best how to coax her to perform as desired.
Seastead this.
Changes in leadership don't really make much difference.
Interal reform as such does not occur.
Reform only occurs in the face of an externally imposed crisis.
NASA will be NASA - big, publically funded, inefficient, conventional and hugely discouraging private space travel - until the day it, in one form or another, dies.
--
Toby
Indeed. There's no such thing as a "National Security Advisor". Where do people come up with this stuff?
[o]_O
Privatize. *cough* Give incentives out instead of doing it in-house. *ahem* Replace NASA slowly...
A-Day
Heck, the patriot act has done quite a bit to erase many of our constitutional protections, what's to stop him from amending the constitution to allow "presidency for life" in a time of war?
I could see it happening.
You mean, there was no such thing as "National Security Advisor" until 1953...
From the submitted story:
:-)
On the one hand this could mean the indroduction of an administrator with an engineering background (O'Keefe is an MPA)
This indroduction process sounds painful, and I don't know what O'Keefe has to do with MPA.
Won't somebody please proofread story submissions for the sake of the kids?
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Continuing his pattern of selections of highly qualified individuals to important positions in the Bush cabinet.
Bush sited Nugent's detailed technical work on Double Live Gonzo as proof Nugent was qualified for the position.
Dumbass, if you would look at the ads to the right of the search results in your link you might realize that an M.P.A. is a Masters of Public Administration. Seriously, someone put this guy out of his misery.
So with his push for ultimate saftey he now becomes the directory of LSU's Safe Space program?
They were just waiting for his replacement.
Might as well put a guy who actually went to the moon in the top position at NASA.
My father is a blogger.
Exposed as a creep. Seriously, it's sad to see someone as bright as yourself spend so much energy trying to humiliate a fellow slashdotter. Hopefully your just a kid as I'd hate to think an adult would post such filth.
The parent post's assertion that Bernard Kerik's withdrawal from Homeland Security thread was because of journalists is a blatant falsehood.
In actuality, Trogdor slew the Kerik.
I think you misunderstand - NASA is responsible for a large portion of research dollars in aerospace, materials, and other engineering and science disciplines. NASA should not be about how to get most easily to earth orbit at the cost of research.
Let's put it this way - we've already been in orbit for 20+ years on regular shuttle flights. What did it get us? We were doing reasearch for PERFUME companies. (ok, we were also doing surveillance satellite deployment, repair, and collection, but ignore that for a moment). The reasearch in earth orbit doesn't justify orbital flights.
Of course, despite my opinion, it is part of NASA's mission to get to space and do "stuff" there. Advances in materials and aerospace science and engineering will lead to easier access to orbit. You only get there with research funding, not by cutting research budgets.
What worries me most is that the new director could be the man in charge of the "missile defense" system. It's unsuccessful, unverified, way over budget, and fails most tests until the test criteria are re-written to make a failure a success. This is not the sort of person you want running a civilian research and scientific space agency.
During his entire tenure, he had someone's hand up his butt telling him what to do. He was a Yes men. The next administrator will be no different.
Great, I love your ignorance. "Condi Rice for Sec. State, a woman who as National Security Advisor somehow managed to miss all the reports and test runs that proposed air-based attacks on the WTC and claimed that a presidential intelligence bulletin issued one month before Sept. 11 warning of al Qaeda's efforts to attack within the US was "nothing major" That PDB did not point directly to New York or any specific place, and naturally people continued gathering intelligence even if she didn't order it. So technically it was nothing major because we had no idea it would happen exactly when and where, though we knew if anything would happen it would be bin Laden.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
I thought the direction was quite clear. I guess I was wrong.
People want a mission on Mars... I hope the change will reflect this.
So technically it was nothing major because we had no idea it would happen exactly when and where, though we knew if anything would happen it would be bin Laden.
Over the nine months leading up to 9/11, the Bush administration did literally nothing to respond to the many internal and external warnings it received concerning terrorist threats and cancelled the programs the Clinton administration had in place to target Al Qaeda.
Do you really think there was nothing a national security advisor could have done to improve our national security during that time?
Meanwhile, if you haven't forgotten, New York was not the only target of the September 11 attacks. There were four planes involved. Two went to New York. The others went elsewhere.
The Chancellor Search Committee has invited the Honorable Sean O'Keefe,
Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to
visit the LSU campus for a two-day visit (Wednesday and Thursday,
December 15-16) in connection with our ongoing search for a new chancellor.
Mr. O'Keefe is the only candidate who is scheduled to be interviewed at the
Chancellor Search Committee meeting this week. There will be an open forum
on Wednesday at 4 p.m. in the Energy, Coast & Environment Building
Auditorium, during which the entire campus community will have an
opportunity to meet and interact with Mr. O'Keefe.
The Chancellor Search Committee would appreciate receiving comments on Mr.
O'Keefe's candidacy for the chancellor's position, especially from those of
you who have an opportunity to meet with him. Comments should be submitted
to the committee electronically via the address chansearch@lsu.edu. Mr.
O'Keefe's resume is available on-line at http://www.lsu.edu/okeeferesume.
Thank you for your interest and cooperation.
Joel Tohline, Chair
Chancellor Search Committee
I would like to be excited and think that things will change in NASA, but I can't help but be a little more the skeptical. NASA is utterly obsessed with safety and conservatism. What they don't seem to realize that there are plenty of people more then happy to throw safety to the wind and risk their life, and that obsessive conservative (not conservative in the political sense) policies lead to people getting bored and not bothering to shill out money. X-Prize like adventures is what leads to breakthroughs and advancement. Just imagine the sort of things that would have been accomplished if one of the X-Prize teams had been handed a billion dollars. It would be a lot more interesting then a handful of grounded behemoths and a massive bureaucracy shaking at the knees at the prospect that someone might have to risk their life to move forward.
I hope something changes, but I have a feeling that Russian saying is more likely to offer a better explanation of what is to come:
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Please, we prefer the term "Administration." Regimes are things that have the capability to be changed. We believe we have neither the necessity nor the capacity for change.
Thank you,
The Whitehouse
I'm also British. I'm an astrophysicist, and my work revolves around XMM-Newton, an X-ray space telescope satellite made and operated by the European Space Agency which your taxes do pay for (thanks!).
Of course, science is international so the ESA is usually a collaborator with NASA rather than a competitor. I hope this new administrator does everything possible to keep the spirit of international scientific collaboration alive, rather than playing along with a wild goose chase to Mars...
Heh...he said for the sake of the children.
Your cold has gone to your brain. Effect was correct.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
"effect" is correct in the sense used.
sPh
From all reports, O'Keefe was a MAJOR backer of Nuclear Space Initiatives. I only hope that continues under a successor, because I hate to break it to you people, but nuclear- either nuclear-thermal or nuclear/RTG powered ion- is the best solution for in-space propulsion.
What the heck is an MPA? I think you mean that O'Keefe is an MBA.
Just because someone is a professional manager, doesn't mean that they can't manage a technical or scientific organization
Remember that the Manhatten Project was lead to success by General Leslie R. Groves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Groves, who while also an engineer, who was the moral equivalent of an MBA. Yes, they wouldn't have gotten their without the techies like Feyman, Fermi, or Oppenheimer, but they also wouldn't have gotten their without Groves.
As an engineering manager who can hack a compiler as well as I can hack an operating plan or rolling four quarter outlook, I am distressed by the number of techies who can't (and don't care they can't) understand the difference between an operating and capital expenses (and why I can't spend 10K this month on a contractor, but I can spend 120K on a new server setup that has an expected life of 36 months).
You might not like it, but finance and accounting are the way score is kept and things are communicated in the world of business. An engineer or engineering manager who can't speak this language is at as big a disadvantage as the techie who can't program.
Yours,
Jordan
The immigration status of household help employed by prospective high-level government officials has been an issue in the past decade, beginning in 1993 when former President Bill Clinton's first pick for attorney general, Zoe Baird, was forced to withdraw after admitting she employed two undocumented workers and did not pay required employee taxes for them.
Yep. All of those are short term items. If we don't get off this planet soon, we will never have the chance because we will nuke each other. The probability of nuclear war approaches 1 at time goes to infinity.
Note: A local news station is reporting that O'Keefe will be interviewed on Thursday by LSU for the chancellor's position.
MPA stands for Master of Public Administration as O'Keef's biography confirms.
a world in progress...
Likely the number one benefit of a manned mission to Mars: radiation shielding. Currently the only way to protect people from the solar radiation on that long trip is to put them behind massive metal sheets, tanks of water, tanks of the astronauts' waste, etc. All very heavy, which increases the fuel necessary to reach Mars and MOI. Benefit #2: minerals. Lots and lots of minerals. Benefit the third: land surface area nearly the same as that of Earth. Fourth: likely better propulsion systems and/or fuels. Fifth: it's not the ISS as well as any number of little and not so little things i can't think of right now because i'm not a futurist. Just think about the lunar missions. The benefits of those missions were not just political and social.
I worked on the ISS program. My dad worked in the space program since Gemini. We both worked for large aerospace companies.
The Shuttle and ISS are amazing pieces of technology, and much has been learned by designing them and operating them. I don't think those facts are debatable.
HOWEVER, the ISS and the Shuttle are qualified failures. Desite their amazing abilities, they are grossly inefficient in terms of dollars. The money could be better spent.
Flying to the moon and Mars is a great, super-fabulous endeavor. Hanging out in a space station for a year is amazing. But there is no point in doing it as a rah-rah feel-good exercise. Honest scientific, commercial, and military goals should be set first, and only in the light of these goals should we see if it makes sense to pursue these manned missions.
The people of NASA aren't the problem - it's the mission that Congress has given them. With nebulous goals like "let's go to the moon", congress is forcing NASA to squander the tax payer's money.
Some things are just to grand to fit into a "cost-benefit" cookie cutter. Apollo was one. Going to Mars is another.
Those are the events people thousands of years from now will remember about our time.
Not Bush. Not bin Laden. Not even names like Adolf Hitler of Josef Stalin or Albert Einstein.
Neil Armstrong - first human to walk on another celestial body. That's an event for all time.
What else happened prior to June 2001?
What did O'Keefe accompilish?
:)
1. Adressed cost over runs on the space station. Cancelled crew escape ship and I think multipuspose modules if I recall. Anyhow, there were 5B in cost over runs.
2. Gave NASA a unifying mission. I think the proposal for a "systems of systems" open architecture to get to the moon and mars is a great idea. Its about time nasa had a more agressive mission. Use robots and people to accomplish the mission.
3. Cracked heads on nasa safety. Though, I think the public needs some education that space flight will never be as safe as a armored school bus.
4. Told the robotics people to go fix hubble. Oops, we need astronauts after all. But we all still like robots.
5. Got nasa's budget increased when most federal programs were cut.
I think the next administrator should have more technical expertise because the decisions in the near future will require that knowledge. Where as, O'Keefe had to deal with 5B cost overrun cluster.
The next administrator should build on the current vision so *something* gets accomplished. Most of all, scientists and engineers can be a herd of cats. So, break out the bull whip when needed.
Makes you wonder how some presidents manage to get anything done. Focused direction indeed.
I nominate Richard C.Hoagland for the post.That will shake up the politicos.
Geek Hillbilly
Well.. the technologies NASA develops have long been used in military applications anyway, but does this mean that the oh so lame "star wars defense system" is back on the books? Well it looks like we can expect a few things from NASA now. 1.) That more tax dollars are going to be wasted in the usual outrageous NASA contract style. & 2.) Bush will probably get some kick backs out of it... or there will be a Haliburton contract involved.
regardless it appears that the idea of peaceful relations atmosphere space as usually had, will be a thing of the past. Hello New World Order eye in the sky part 2, total control. If that chimp in office decides to send some nukes to space then we know were screwed because odds are that it will end up not making it, mmm nuclear bits everywhere... and global warming run amuck.. on the positive side, Bush would have a realllllly hard time denying global warming exists after that stunt.. assuming we lived to see it. Also florida would probably no longer be a problematic election state.
Bit like the probability of you guys electing a decent president...
Yes, it was reasonably rare (I think?) in 1993 but it's more common now? Then again, only other example I can think of is Linda Chavez.
If Rumsfeld drops out, guarantee it's because he had undocumented works on the payroll, and not for any other reason.
[o]_O
But with Peak Oil almost upon us, if not already, will Bush the oil man help turn us around to use other energy sources in time? Kinda hard to fund off-planet missions when an increasing portion of the world is embroiled in resource wars.
i thought, therefore i was...
NASA's building a warship capable of going toe to toe w/ a Goa'uld mothership?! o_O
Who's supplying the hyperdrive?
[o]_O
One news source has Bob Crippen as a candidate.
Oh, please God, make it be true...
I dunno. I just like the phrase "Faith-Based Space Race."
Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
Sounds pretty concrete to me. Who've you been listening to?
Compared to "inspire the next generation of explorers", that's nebulous? (current NASA mission statement). NASA's 1958 mission statement had some reasonably concrete content, referring to science and technology transfer, and "To explore, use, and enable the development of space for human enterprise." But "go to the moon" seems significantly less nebulous than any of those - you can't do it by just sitting around on this planet and thinking about it, for instance...
Energy: time to change the picture.
"to begin a position as chancellor of Louisiana State University"
Only a short drive away from Michoud!
Let the conspiracy theorists chew on that one for a while.
People want a mission on Mars
People being who? You and your limited edition Seven-of-Nine poster? The only opinion the american public can decide on in regards to space is that it's far away and hard to get to.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
guys, im the candidate. I barely finished high school and i only punctuate and capitalize sometimes...
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
sub miles for km's, Certainly for ss1,probably for the shuttle orbit hights as well.
(congratiulations, you just hit mars at a couple of hundred m/s)
I wonder if he was the one behind the X-4000 debacle? If so, maybe that's why he's being pushed out.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Missile Defense? Finally someone heading NASA with experience in nearly blowing up spacecraft!
--
make install -not war
A classic bean counter. Did he ever believe in space exploration? Shouldn't NASA have a leader that believes in its mission?
People should consider not only that space exploration generates a lot of valuable discoveries (useful on Earth as well as in space), but also that every dollar spent on NASA recycles through the US economy many times over.
The immediate focus of NASA should be on cheap, reliable transit to orbit followed closely by on-orbit construction of nuclear-powered space exploration vehicles. Let's hope the next administrator can get focused on these goals.
"his commitment to the CRV"
I'm guessing you mean CEV. The CRV (Crew Return Vehicle) was insane and was cancelled. They were going to spend millions and millions to build a new mini Shuttle whose sole reason to exist was to sit on the ISS and serve as a lifeboat in the event of an emergency. Only thing it did was make it possible to get the ISS manning up to 6-7 people so they could actually do research instead of just maintain the bloody mess. Could have been done way cheaper with an extra docking port and a second Soyuz capsule. It was just another sign of the sickness that is NASA's manned space program.
As for the CEV(Crew Exploration Vehicle) it is a better idea than CRV but I am willing to predict Boeing or Lockheed will win the contract, they will spend billions and billions of dollars, on one design after another(like ISS and space planes), the schedule will drag on for ever and the program will be cancelled around the time they have to start bending metal or launch something. The proposed schedule is already ridiculously long. They are just building a glorified new capsule like America and Russia have been building for decades and it will take longer and cost more money than Apollo did before its done.
Again, please, please, just let Burt Rutan build it. He is competing for it through T/Space but its a given a giant consortium lead by either Boeing or Lockheed will get the contract and they will just transfer huge sums from tax payer pockets to their bottomlines and not build anything worth a damn.
@de_machina
The Delta Four launch scheduled for Saturday had to be postponed. The good news is the next window isn't 2 months away, it's Tues. afternoon (the 21st) if they decide to go for it. The D4 Heavy version is the first version of the D4 to use three main booster rockets, forming a booster theoretically capable of servicing the ISS at much less cost to orbit than the shuttle. While the "multi-barrel" design is just becoming operational, regular Delta IVs with the same engine have entered successful service in 2003.
l ta4heavy.html/
e lta4/delta4.htm/
The Delta IV Heavy is staged from Nasa's pad 37B, which last saw service as the launchpad for the Saturn 1B Apollo missions.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/delta/d310/041201de
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/delta/d
The Delta 4 Heavy supports payloads of up to about 50,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit (i.e. the International Space Station). It can put about 29,000 pounds into Geosyncronous orbit 22,300 miles above the planet, or 22,000 pounds to the moon, or about 17,500 pounds to Mars.
The IV Heavy's possible successors, clustering more first stage rockets, include a 7 tube design with MORE lift than the Saturn 5.
Who is John Cabal?
*shh* It's called the X-303.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"the retired director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency."
How does this fit in with the supposed parallel goals of Bush's long-term space-defence plans and his statements regarding putting a man on Mars?
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Yes, and Clinton's administration did nothing for 8 years in response to multiple actual terrorist attacks (first WTC attack, the USS Cole, etc.). Dreaming up policies that are not executed is doing nothing. Put down the Kool-Aid and realize that before September 11, 2001, the political impetus to combat terrorism simply did not exist. In the great appeal to mass emotionalism that is democracy, this unfortunate fact meant that neither president was prepared to take any real steps to solve the problem of terrorism before 9/11.
Or afterwards. What nations were invaded and what organizations now have firm presences in said nations? What has been the benefit gained from destroying international opinion by that odd direction? What has been gained by isolating the US and severely weakening its actual global political position by demonstrating the stark limitations on its capacity for waging or even contributing to justified wars?
"Well, do bear in mind that NASA Administrator is basically a political job. Jim Webb didn't know diddly about the technical issues, but he was still probably the best Administrator NASA ever had, because he knew where the bodies were buried in Washington."
Quoted from the the one and only Henry Spencer (1993)
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
It's about time! Look how many screwups NASA has had under his supervision. Not to mention the fact that NASA, which you would think would be a really organized organization, doesn't have very good control over its money. This organization seriously needs to be fixed, and someone new is just the person to do it.
Fuel is an insignificant item on the total cost of a space mission - typically less than 1%. The biggest recurring cost is payroll for the standing army of technicians (and their managers). This number is particularly high because it's divided by a pretty small number of launches per year. Another huge cost (if you care to count it) is the development cost, amortized over a small number of launches.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
"NASA - get a mission people care about that can be realistically funded, or sign over the next twenty years to Burt Rhutan and company."
That's easier said than done. Why should science be subject to the whims of the masses? The general public has never been able to determine which scientific research is important. And of course, realistic funding is completely subjective, and quite complex.
Scaled Composites? They're air guys for the most part, not space. And they might not even have the right stuff. As one Scaled employee told me, "The America's Space Prize seems to be too small award for too large a project." Asking Scaled to handle a large scale vehicle development project is like asking your resident teenage hacker to handle the networking infrastructure for a 500 node corporate computer network. The kid might be able to build a great low-cost PC quickly, but throw him a large project and he'll just buckle under the stress and seriously compromise the project due to a lack of experience and cockiness. Rutan alone being made NASA Administrator would be quite different though from signing "over the next twenty years to Burt Rhutan [sic] and company".
And be advised, you shouldn't get too enamored of celebrity engineers. The engineers you never hear about on CNN/Slashdot (both have about the same aerospace news quality) are probably a more impressive bunch than you think.
I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but he was one of the honchos named in the Clint Curtis affidavit posted in the ./ politics page. Wayne Madsen has an article relating to it here:
0 60 4Madsen/120604madsen.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/12
I also want to quote Yang enterprise's recent announcement on his allegations:
"Yang Enterprises, Inc. Responds to allegations of participating in development of vote manipulation software prototype
Dear Sir or Madam,
As outside general counsel to Yang Enterprises, Inc., please be advised that Yang Enterprises, Inc.'s response to the allegations of Mr. Curtis is as follows:
(1) Mr. Curtis's allegations are categorically false; and
(2) Mr. Curtis is a disgruntled former employee trying to harm a former employer by lying and making false allegations.
Thank you "
Wow, what a well thought out response. I wonder why it took them a week to come up with such a brilliant legal defense.
BTW Curtis was no disgruntled employee, he stayed on for an additional 6 weeks after he resigned and was thrown a big goodbye party, all of which has been documented. Something stinks.
Yeah, he was probably referring to the CEV instead of the CRV. However, you're somewhat mistaken about the Scaled Composites X-38 CRV as being insane. The CRV was a project to create a simple, low-cost vehicle capable of returning crew from orbit. The vehicle was designed using already-existing technology and off-the-shelf equipment. Although the most immediate use of it was to serve as an ISS rescue vehicle, it could have been modified later on to serve as a general-purpose means of ferrying crew to and from orbit. Scaled Composites did an excellent job of producing the airframe,
As for the CEV(Crew Exploration Vehicle) it is a better idea than CRV but I am willing to predict Boeing or Lockheed will win the contract, they will spend billions and billions of dollars, on one design after another(like ISS and space planes), the schedule will drag on for ever and the program will be cancelled around the time they have to start bending metal or launch something.
Yeah, I'm personally also worried about one of those companies winning the contract. My hopes are on t/Space, but I'm not sure if they'll be able to compete head-to-head yet with the aerospace dinosaurs. Hopefully t/Space will at least be able to compete for the 2008 fly-off.
Indeed. Lets have the professional administrators doing the science and the professional scientists doing administration. That sure ought to improve efficiency.
Face it, a good administrator knows how to listen to the people he's in charge of, and let them make the decisions about things he's not an expert at. His job is to facilitate their ability to do their job and manage relations between his bosses and his employees in the way causing the least friction, keeping both eggheads and moneymen happy, if he's good at what he does.
While there are good science trained administrators and good administrator trained scientists, they probably werent very dedicated to those fields if they chose another path advancing in the hierachy, making the training irrelevant compared to the other skills required.
Shh, in my fantasy it's called Enterprise.
It's unlikely I know, but I hope the next Administrator decides invest in the Russian's Kliper proposal.
If NASA projects really are bid on by external companies, why haven't the Russians put in a proposal for the Crew Exploration Vehicle ? Is the contest "limited" to US only companies ?
Seems to me the most sensible thing for NASA to do is go back finish and finish the old X20 Dynasoar project and build up from there.
Surely you mean a warship that'll start the Earth-Minbari war?
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Despite the customary idiocy displayed in most of the posts, O'Keefe's departure is not that significant. Nor is the departure of several of Bush's cabinet members. Four years is a long time in that kind of environment, given the workload and the fact that we are't talking about people in their 20's or 30's.
Most important, typically, is the financial loss many suffer. These jobs pay better than our jobs, but the people in them are usually accustomed to making a lot more. O'Keefe seems to be a possible exception.
Don't forget, the major budget and policy decisions in any federal department are made in the White House. The President determines NASA'a course, not the NASA director.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Probability of nucular war approaches 1 as Bush approaches his second term.
What's with *everyone* at the highest levels of the US government resigning this month? What do the rats know about the sinking ship that the rest of us should know?
If you want humanity to move into space, don't look to NASA. They were great in the 1970s, but sadly, they're just another federal bureaucracy now, albeit with a more interesting mission than, say, the social security administration. You should be doing whatever you can to encourage space development by private enterprise. That's where it's going to happen. Not with a billion dollar per launch semi-reusable ship with a 2% chance of seven fatalities and a complete loss of the vehicle on every launch.
Wow, between this and the budget changes, I'm starting to think that I might actually entertain the hope that I might have to eat my words; When Dubya announced his space initiative, I said it was just electioneering and it'd never get off the ground. I'm still not installing Hope v2.0, but I may just get it ready.
Maybe the new director won't have his head up his rectum and will see the sense in saving the Hubble telescope. The robotic mission isn't a sure thing and would only extend Hubble's life by a few years if it worked since it would render future servicing impossible. The risk to the astronauts in servicing Hubble isn't much greater than in going to the ISS, and even the ISS isn't safe (what with air leaks and roaches eating all the food!). Face it space ISN'T 100% safe and the astronauts know the risks and accept them (much the same as fighter pilots, ground force troops, policemen, mine workers, etc). SAVE HUBBLE!
So O'Keefe is on his way out of NASA. Great!
Never has a bean-counter done so much for the
devolution of a government agency. He spent
tens of millions of taxpayer dollars at NASA
on video conferencing equipment, but wouldn't
spend the 1/2 million dollars for an independent
safety study regarding the deblating of shuttle
foam insulation. And so risk averse that he
would rather send an untrained robot to do an
astronaut's job (- repair Hubble Space Telescope)
at the cost of billions directed to defense
contractors. Of course, in the grander scheme
of things, the DoD would much prefer advancing
robotic technology, rather than the "pure space
science" that the HST represents. I fear that
NASA's days as a civilian space agency are truly
numbered.
I will be curious to see how quickly O'Keefe
can run LSU into the ground, judging by his
track record. IMHO, just more proof that the
"Peter Principle" is still alive and well.
Public Administration is a science. My father earned his Ph.D. in the field about four years ago. I helped compile a lot of the information used in his thesis, and wrote software to handle a lot of the data analysis used in it. Yes, it's a statistical science like sociology and meteorology, but that doesn't make it any less difficult or demanding a field than electronics engineering or particle physics. For the curious, his thesis was an analysis of the benefits and risks of private vs public depot management for the US DoD. And know, I have no idea what the results were, sorry.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
That's the real show-stopper.
Even if Orion wouldn't have worked (we won't know), the show-stopper is the low energy density and specific impulse to be obtained by chemical rockets.
The trade-off is F(money, performance, power, safety). If the energy-density were ~10^6 higher (==nuke) the engineers could design a craft with simpler systems and include several of these 4each purpose w/o going into complicated hacks to save every gram.
This would result in much safer and much cheaper crafts.
Working for necessity's mother.
"So it is truly discouraging. Bush got re-elected so that at the end of the next four years can see how horribly wrong they were and that the Iraq war was a bad idea. Expensive lesson."
in 4 years 'america has won the war on iraq! vote guiliani for president, because guiliani stopped two of the 15 aircraft sent do destroy new york city on septembre 11th, 2001 including the one with the nuke! fuck those muslims! how dare they try to nuke american soil! our economy is booming! and now for the commercial
Don't feel secure at work as you'd like to? hoping to retire? && give money to citibank! && in the case of an accidental firing*, you may be able to claim, 50,100, or even 300,000$. don't let your children's future get filled with risk! give money to Citibank ! *conditions apply. all money given to citibank is the property of citigroup, and citigroup will not pay anyone any claims if they so see fit. citigroup does not give money to terrorrists and homosexuals. *endcommercial*
look at those protestors! all of them supporting giuliani! isn't america beautiful? One Nation. One Homeland. One President...One News Network. MSFOX.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
because I mentioned the mars program exactly as many times as the republicans and media corporations will in 2008.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
You're right. I did mean CEV, not CRV. If Rutan can get the contract, that would be cool.
This is my sig.
The perfect administrator would have the management skills *and* the science/engineering knowledge to atleast have comprehension about the technical issues.
What if the scientists give you a choice between a yahdeedoda and a blableeblue? Do you know what a yahdeedoda or a blableeblue is? What is the right choice for the billions spent? Well, I guess we need a degree in blabla to even make the correct choices. Is the administrator going to goto Boeing or Hughes or contractors to get the opinion? I wonder what kind of spider web they would weave?
For me, NASA is like a dog that won't hunt.
Burt Rutan's methods work. I couldn't help but smile when I saw Virgin's corperate logo on an engine pod!
I'd say the people that administred the X-Prize can do the job; They have a track record that gets results.
Straight from my father, a NASA HQ geek heading up the office of earth science program executive:
"He wasn't picked for a Cabinet level post, so...giving up his $180k/yr job in D.C. for $500k/yr back home in Louisiana!"
Doesn't get much simpler than that. Not the recognition he wants, not the money he wants, so not the position he wants, when he can triple it working elsewhere.
it would be dope as hell (and highly unlikely but remotely possible) if dad got the job. pity it's appointed by the president.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
OK I stand corrected on CRV. I wasn't following it at the time but if Scaled Composites did it, its A-OK with me. Lets consider the possible reasons for cancelling it:
... err ... composites on a new spacecraft, something they rarely do any more.
A. It needed to be designed to launch people in to space too. The one way'ness is the thing that made it look goofy and like a waste of money.
B. Lockheed and Boeing were pissed because they were being threatened by someone bending metal
C. It was outside the Shuttle's power structure.
@de_machina
I was gonna make this post.
Kerik allegedly took kickbacks from some taser contract and he and his brother allegedly got do-nothing jobs for $100k a yr from a mobbed up construction company.
the retired director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency
Will someone please inform Bush that NASA does NOT need to become any more militaristic then it already is?
EXPLORATION, NOT DEVISTATION!
He spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars at NASA on video conferencing equipment, but wouldn't spend the 1/2 million dollars for an independent safety study regarding the deblating of shuttle foam insulation.
That's because a bean counter considers papers and contacts vitally important, and nasty physical things like foam unimportant. Those engineers will fix it all anyway, right? You paid (say) Morton Thiokol for all that foam anyway, right? As far as an administrator knows, his ass was therefore covered. But at times, he's unsure. So, it's time for another fucking meeting. Get on the conf call, folks.
"What? The shuttle disintegrated over Texas? Better hold a conf call on that. Gotta make sure our asses are covered."
To an administrator, a telephone is a thousand times more useful than an engineer. And that's where it ALL GOES WRONG!
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
A. Yeah, I actually thought the same way you did until a couple of months ago, when I did some reading up on it. Pouring massive amounts of resources into a vehicle which would be useful -only- as a space station rescue vehicle is silly.
B. Yup, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
C. Quite possible.
Also, I think the fact that it was billed as a rescue vehicle rather than an eventual shuttle replacement was a major factor.
With Bush, Inc. in charge, you can always rely on their ability to come up with something worse. It is notable that the proposed replacement is interested in the anti-missile, missile system (another name for the ill-fated corporate pork-fest known as star wars). This sentence; "the retired director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency." sends chills down my spine.
This is the same group that took money for Malaria and made it seem like new money for AIDs assistance for Africa. Then the pay-out gets stretched to beyond the administrations tenure. Like the "Iraq Rebuilding" that has only managed to spend about $250 million.
So look the NASA to put on a dog and pony and end up doing pentagon research assignments.
Another interesting tidbit I just heard from a man who wrote a book on why the Challenger accident was a result of the NASA's decline, is that NASA comes out of the same funding category as Welfare.
I don't know, can it get any more cynical than to pit the dream for the stars against a kid getting fed? Believe me, either it will be a ill conceived, money-wasting affair to get to Mars that pulls funding from serious research projects that have a real benefit (best case) or NASA will work on anti-missile, missile systems that fail to consider that ICBMs were the threat of the last two decades. Does anyone in the Bush brain trust bother to read? OK, now that is a rhetorical question.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
There's an article on Salon (not exactly an unbiased source, I know) about Kerik; apparently he had a lot of "dirty laundry", and this was likely just an excuse to avoid what could have been a very embarassing media focus on the new cabinet member had he actually been appointed.
That's great in theory...
But, in the real world you need to have an understanding of the subject matter you're administering because your underlings can't suddenly fill you in on all the background to make a technical decision. Your also going to have underlings that lie and / or fudge the numbers so you need to understand what there doing as a sort of sanity check. So sure IF your job was to facilitate then sure you don't need to know what's going on, but in the real world you need to dig for information otherwise you just delegated your job to someone else.
I think Bush will ask the governator, Arnold over in California to take over, due to his experiences on mars
But seriously folks, I weep for this country. People are dropping left and right from this administration, and Bush is trying to fill our CIA with yes-men. We are in serious trouble, won't somebody save us?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Earth sized Minibar? Where do I get one of those?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Duh, our friends the Asgard of course =)
Doesn't the probability of any event approach 1 as time goes to infinity?
Not that I disagree with you.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
I've had supervisors who understood programming, and supervisors who didn't.
Therefore I consider it important that an administrator understand the subject matter of the agency that he is administrating.
You can make all the theoretical arguments you wish about why this shouldn't be necessary, but experiment shows that it is, so it that's your theory, you need to fix it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Please don't take this as a troll, but I don't see where your point is at odds with mine? I don't disagree with you, a working knowledge of the subject is important for any leadership position. I was just arguing that discounting someone merely because their expertise is in administration is just as bad as promoting someone to management just because they're a good programmer. (Having been once put in a team-leader position, where I most definitely do NOT belong, I can speak to the 2nd half of that syllogism from experience...)
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge