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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."
Many of us who pay attention already have a somewhat negative view of NASA. Monolithic, slow, expensive, etc. I think this investigation will change public perception. Now the general public may view NASA as bloated and poorly run. It'll be interesting to see the repurcussions.
BTW, "President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency"... that makes me giggle. They have it backwards. They should council the president.
Developers: We can use your help.
So he is steeped in the fine tradition of White House integrity and ethics. My question, why did it take this long for this investigation to happen?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
NASA's safety issues go beyond the Bush administration.
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and the theft of an estimated $1.9 billion worth of data on rocket engines from NASA computers
While I usually keep out of the argument of whether or not copying data is theft or not in the piracy debate, how do you value the data at $1.9 billion if it's government data?
I'm all for funding NASA quite nicely, but were they going to sell their data? Shouldn't the information fruits of NASA's labor belong to the people of the nation that paid for it?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
It's likely that in the near future we will continue to see the advances in space exploration/travel move increasingly to the private commercial organizations. A privately run company is always going to be far more efficient than one that must deal with political issues constantly such as NASA.
Unfortunately even the huge amount of private funding available cannot compete with the funding the federal government could offer. Maybe the government should start dumping that money into grants and funding for private space ventures, or even offer NASA for sale to companies that are actually accountable to shareholders to do things effectively.
That being said, NASA's funding is extremely small, most small tech startups have more money to work with.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
"At least triple Congressional salaries and beef up the pension"? They already get ridiculously cushy pensions as it is -- FOR LIFE -- and get more than enough from their lobbyists etc. Who the hell needs two homes anyway? I do just fine with my single one at 1000 sq. ft. We really need to go back to true citizen-legislators.
Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders" is an interesting read because it's largely about one idea of what reconstructing the government (and improving and simplfying it) would be like assuming the "high command" were taken out all at once, so normal succession procedures couldn't be carried out. In the book, the President decides to replace most of Congress (read the book for what happened to them - I won't spoil it all!) by having ordinary people, like farmers and regular working people, serve in Congress. He does this because he felt that the Founding Fathers intended legislators to be selected this way (and I agree). The system has gotten as messy as it is because it wasn't ever meant to be handled by career fat-cat politicians.
As for the space program -- actually, yes, NASA does need more money -- the current bug-riddled Shuttle we have now would have been much safer and capable had the budget not been slashed in the first place, and so many great programs get killed because some idiot somewhere thinks they have a better plan for the money, and so much more gets spent to fix the stupidity. For example, the X-38 Crew Return Vehicle that would have allowed a full seven-person crew to return safely in the event of an emergency was killed -- after flight testing was going very, very well -- and now the seven-person ISS is stuck with two-person crews because the Soyuz -- a second-hand technology (though very well made; I'm not slighting it in that way) we have to ram special funding bills through to use, which is totally unacceptable! -- can't handle more right now! (though yes, Soyuz TMA is designed to carry three).
We need to fully, and properly, fund what we're doing. None of this compromise crap. It just comes back to bite us in the ass.
The latest casualty of this stupidity: the methanol-fueled engines the CEV was intended to use. Too expensive.
So why not rename it CV?
i am a soviet space shuttle
Believe it or not, one of the most outspoken opponents of the "boldly sit where no man has sat before" space policy was Dan Quayle. I read about half of his memoirs years ago and I remember he related that over and over again he had to fight with people that wanted NASA to never do anything again and to slim down its existing projects. Remember "space station freedom"? He watched it slowly get dismantled and stripped down to a much less ambitious project, while arguing all the while that we needed to do more than just have a space station, but that if we were going to have one, we shouldn't build it so "on the cheap" that it couldn't even do what little it was designed to accomplish.
Interestingly enough, Quayle said that up until his time the Vice President was considered one of the main administration officials in charge of NASA. I don't know if that's true any more or not.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Dorms...
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
2. Let each state determine that state's method of electing or appointing and unseating senators. I think the ideal would be a lifetime appointment by the governor with legislative approval and with recall by a 2/3 vote of the legislature.
3. Representatives still elected directly, but limited to a single 6 year term. Stagger the elections so discontent with a particular party's policies can be felt every two years.
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No, keep the Senate as is - 6 years elected by the people.
As for the House, turn this chamber into a public service like jury duty. Citizens from each district are chosen AT RANDOM for a 6 month term. You can only serve once in your life. Randomly selected regular people couldn't do worse that the idiots we elect to the US House.