Slashdot Mirror
New NASA Admin Griffin Cleans House
Doug Dante writes "Michael D. Griffin, the new NASA Administrator, has given 20 senior NASA officials their walking papers, in a first purge that can see as many as 50 loose their positions, reports the Washington Post. Included are Associate Administrator for Space Operations William F. Readdy, and his deputy Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael C. Kostelnik (retired)."
This makes me wonder to which extent the bureaucracy is to blame (or attribute) to "entrenched" managers or the whole system. In this case, it is apparently believed that the top layer of people keep an inefficient system intact. The question is: can one change the nature of a system by replacing the managing people in that system?
see a Text Widget
"in a first purge that can see as many as 50 loose their positions"
I hear they are looking for replacements, that know the difference between the word "loose" and "lose".
The new, "tighter" jobs are said to pay much less, however.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Surely NASA should bind and gag you before strapping to you the back of a just about to be launched rocket if they were firing you.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I'd go a step further. Bring in REAL engineers as well as entrepreneurs. Get guys with some ambition and a sense for getting a goal completed. Triage your remaining senior staff and fill it up with young MIT grads.
How about you get thru the current Mars & Cassini missions and GET THE SHUTTLE BACK UP before you sack the leaders of those three programs - two of which are very big loud & public successes (in NASA-land anyway) and the third had better be or else you'll be looking at barely enough authorization funds to make with two large-ish slingshots.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It really doesn't matter what school they graduated from. As long as their background is in engineering, rather than political pandering, then things will improve at NASA. Real engineers practicing real engineering will prevent probes from being lost on a routine basis, and space shuttles from blowing up every so often.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Will the be bringing in real engineers? Real engineers, rather than bureaucrats, are the only way that NASA can be revitalized.
William Readdy, the first person named in the story, is an aerospace engineer. Michael Kostelnik, the only other person specifically mentioned, is a mechanical engineer. Why do you (and a lot of people) assume that NASA is run by bureaucrats, or that engineers can't BE bureaucrats, or that engineers are somehow wiser, nobler, and better able to run the agency than non-engineers?
Kennedy made it the goal of the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade, knowing that someone else would be in the White House then.
It looks to me like Griffin has decided that whether or not the president's new goal was diversion or eagerness, he's going to do his best to get it done.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Does anyone have the political affiliations of the people who were fired?
[o]_O
Actually, they're getting rid of the managers that Slashdotters like to complain about. You know, the ones that don't understand the technical end of things, and as a result end up setting unrealistic deadlines and promising impossible accomplishments. They're getting RID of the political bureaucracy and replacing it with scientists. Oh the shame!
Of course, since you can attribute it as another negative of the Bush Administration, you will. And most of Slashdot will agree.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
While its certainly pleasant to see altruism be attempted, if the funding comes from the feds, not private sector, politics/bureaucracy must be involved. I wish the new administrator well, but I hope he's not so naive to think he can rid NASA of the dead weight of politicos and entrenched senior bureaucrats. No way in hell NASA will ever be free of fed interference when it relies solely on fed money.
I wonder what Griffin, as a genuine no nonsense space scientist would make of the rants that appear on slashdot from time to time among space enthusiasts. If any of the folks who run slashdot can score an interview with him, I have a ton of questions I would like the head of NASA to address. Hey, it's possible right? As a public official, public relations are an integral part of his job. I believe he would have to regard a high profile mob like slashdot as a sort of "constituency" he needs to take seriously.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
I assure you, politicians don't build probes nor space shuttles.
... accidents happen. People make mistakes. it's all part of being human.
Real engineers worked on these amazing technological feats, and
ranting about it, or making ridiculous claims like, no real engineers working for nasa, just discredits any of your other, possibly correct, claims.
Sigs are for the weak.
Perhaps this cleaning of the administration is being done in order to facilitate a more military-centric NASA. There has been much speculation (see References) that the US military will begin to weaponize space. A NASA that is less interested in scientific discovery will of course be beneficial to the Pentagon, as they have the capabilities and know-how to design, implement, launch, maintain and control this upcoming space-based weaponry.
e =technologyNews&storyID=8522373 0 0000e2511c8.html
References: http://www.reuters.com/audi/newsArticle.jhtml?typ
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a4a4e198-c8cf-11d9-87c9-
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7896613/
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Ironic, ain't it.
Ah, but the word "loose" was spelled correctly. Used incorrectly, mind you but the spelling was impeccable.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
I couldn't agree with you more. NASA has $10 million allocated and congressionally approved for competitive prizes this fiscal year, and yet less than $1 million has been allocated thus far. Even DARPA's Grand Challenge in October (autonomous robotic roving) is worth $2 million. Isn't it obvious that the bureaucrat statists and / or the pork barrelers in Congress FEAR this long overdue reform-fortification? Why won't NASA simply fortify its competitive prizes? Do we really need for central planners to decide what numerous competing teams nationwide could if only more of NASA's $16 billion dollar annual budget went to incentivizing them through prize offerings? For more details about this badly needed STRUCTURAL change at NASA: http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes
Sorry, there is no payback in this. It's not like a class action suit, where you put up $1-$2M in real money with a pretty good chance of getting back 20-30X your investment. Space exploration really is hard, and bigger projects are very unpredictable. Nobody is going to spend $100-$500M on a project, possibly competing with several other companies, for a $200M prize (or even $1-2B prize for that matter). These things take years, and Wall Street is going to expect some returns buy the end of the fiscal quarter.
No, those prizes are for rich folks with nothing better to do and corporations who have a few million in pocket change they'd have to pay taxes on, so they "fund a team" and hope for some good press.
NASA needs to go back to its roots. If you look at the real technical departments at Goddard, some of the smart folks are still there. So is the atmostphere. That spark thats left is going to need a lot of oxygen and some carful tending to earn back NASA the "rocket scientist" moniker, but I think it can be done, and I think Griffin has a chance.
By the way - Griffin has been a Mars mission fanatic for a LONG time. Heck, it was part of the final he gave when I took my graduate class in space vehicle guidance an navigation from him a decade ago. He's one smart guy (and a PITA as a professor, though a nice one). Given enough time, I think he's got a good shot at turning NASA around. If he can't do it, there's not much chance of it happening.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Really, I'm not completely sure better is even a problem per se. I'm not working on the shuttle project or anything, but I don't really thing that the things aren't getting brought to the attention of people in charge.
Really, I say, swap out for better decision makers and let loose anyone that can't be deprogrammed from the don't tell the king bad news, it pisses him off mentality.
If you could take an objective non-engineer and graft them physically to a stone cold righteous logic wielding geek in the know, I think it would all work out in the end. Any engineer in a management position for a succifient period of time will eventually slip down the dark side of bureaucracy .
More? Most of what NASA does is research for the Air Force (missiles, planes, etc), and the Shuttle was used primarily for lofting spy satellites.
Did you really think that we lit off the Shuttle just to take a bunch of plants and gerbils from 4th graders to space to see how they grow? Not quite. The military is known for doing all sorts of trickery, including deployed structures and whatnot to hide what satellites look like from telescopes and other satellites. One of the first steps towards covertness was the whole "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" routine, with silly little useless experiments from school children and whatnot (spacelab provided much of the data we needed for long term effects of weightlessness in space on people, btw).
Please help metamoderate.
First of all, Bush isn't defunding NASA. He is, infact, doing the opposite. He increased NASA's budget 5% last year, and plans 2 more 5% increases in the next 2 years. Far more than Clinton can claim.
Bush's budget request for Project Constellation, the product of his "brave speech," is $6.6 billion over the next 5 years.
The CEV, part of Project Constellation, will have the concepts from the major contractors completed and sent to NASA by the end of this summer.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-01-13 -bush-nasa_x.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/14/tech/mai n593063.shtml
I would like you see your source on that these men were engineers and that they're being replaced by businessmen. I would find it hard to beleive that a man with a doctorate, 5 masters, and 1 bachelor degree in sciences and engineering would purposely sabotage NASA.
I recommend you get your news from a source other than democraticunderground.
I don't know specifically about their affiliations, but if you trust the article, page 2 says:
In principle, this sounds like a very good thing. Apparently, he's kicking out people whom he believes were hired more for their political affiliations than their competance. Before taking this as it's written, however, can anyone comment on any political affiliations of Griffin himself? For all we know, and as I think you're implying, his definition of competance might be synonymous with republican.
Flamebait? I will be damned. Listen: the reason why the people are being canned at NASA is because the budget is shrinking, and because Bush says one thing while he does another: No Child Left Behind, in which he dumps the funding onto the individual state; Clear Skies, in which pollution controls are dismantled or the enforcement defunded; Healthy Forests, where the lumber companies are given carte blanche and free roads; pumping up patriotism for the armed forces while cutting funding for their retirement, their wages, and their medical care; disassembling bankruptcy laws while declaiming concern for struggling families... the list can go on for hours. Not that Americans hear anything about it on the news.
DO NOT USE YOUR MOD POINTS, BUSHITES, TO SHUT PEOPLE UP.
NASA is being defunded and beheaded by Bush and his brain trust. I doubt very much Bush even knows about the process, being who he is and limited as he is in capacity to understand detail.
Modding this as "flamebait" is like saying a man forced you to riot, rightwingers. If the truth upsets you, too bad, but mod points are for keeping people on topic and legal, not for smothering the voices telling you the truth.
This is what happened to ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN. Everyone is terrified to mention obvious truth because the right wingers are ready to Ratherize anyone who defames the Leader or points out that their worldview is bullshit. And BTW, Rather's report was correct: Bush bugged out, never got sent to Vietnam as a normal punishment, and walked away whistling, his Daddy's friends cleaning up after him. It's the Texas Way. Deal with it.