NASA Inspector General Under Investigation

pinkUZI writes "Apparently, the FBI is investigating reports of NASA Inspector General Cobb doing a poor job with safety inspections and 'retaliating against whistleblowers.' Complaints have been filed by current and former employees." From the article: "The complaints are being reviewed by the Integrity Committee of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency. The complaints describe efforts by Cobb to shut down or ignore investigations on issues such as a malfunctioning self-destruct procedure during a space shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center, and the theft of an estimated $1.9 billion worth of data on rocket engines from NASA computers."

Comments

Re:Self Destruct?

[WindBourne]

All rockets are equiped with a self-destruct. If the launch facility loses control, then the rocket explodes.

Re:Self Destruct?

[Detritus]

From the article, the backup command destruct system for the shuttle was malfunctioning. Normally this would result in the range being declared red, unable to proceed with a launch due to lack of a working backup system. For the range to be declared green, able to proceed with a launch, there is a long checklist that says what equipment must be working properly, allowable weather conditions, etc. The article says that some AF general waived the requirement for a working backup command destruct system so that the range could be declared green and the launch could proceed. Whether he had the authority to do that, and whether it was a good decision, are probably being questioned.

The purpose of range safety is not to protect the astronauts or the shuttle. It's to protect the public from a launch vehicle that has malfunctioned. If a launch vehicle is doing something that could result in a hazard to the public, like heading for downtown Cocoa Beach, the range safety officer terminates the flight by using the command destruct system. Contrary to popular belief, the destruct system doesn't "blow up" the launch vehicle. It is designed to terminate powered flight. This is often done by detonating linear shaped charges that are attached to solid rocket motor casings and liquid fuel tanks. The idea is that the launch vehicle, or its pieces, will then follow a ballistic trajectory and impact in a safe area. The range safety officer has computer systems that continually show the predicted impact point of the launch vehicle if all engines failed or the flight was terminated.

Re:Private/Commerical Structure

[cnkeller]

That being said, NASA's funding is extremely small, most small tech startups have more money to work with.

Um, huh? NASA's FY06 budget, across all missions, is about 16.5 billion. It goes up by about 1.5 billion over the next 4 years. I'm going to avoid getting into whether this is enough money or not. I work at a NASA center and I have my own views of how money is spent & allocated.

If you can point me out a tech startup that is seeded with a 16 BILLION dollar budget PER YEAR, please post because they must be doing some seriously cool things. I'm not even sure that Microsoft, arguably the worlds biggest software company (or is it Oracle now) has that type of yearly operating budget.

Re:Private/Commerical Structure

[Big_Al_B]

Apparently, the 2005 MS operating budget was about $15B on revenues of about $39B.

Thanks to th'interweb:
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/050826/msft10-k.html