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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."
"The complaints are being reviewed by the Integrity Committee of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency."
Experts at weeding out and disposing of integrity and efficiency wherever they're found......
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
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.
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If NASA weren't shortchanged so much on budget, there wouldn't be any of these problems. The original Viking landed successfully on Mars, but the budget for that was ~1 billion dollars -- back then! Not coincidentally, the 250 million (in today's dollars) craft from a few years ago crashed. I think the bureaucracy should be fixed, but also you then need to pump some cash into there, so we get more cool consumer spinoff products.
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NASA is a monopoly, one that is in a unique situation that is very hard to debate in terms of allowing more free market competition. I understand that the market doesn't like spaceflight because there doesn't seem to be a profit -- yet. Of course, when computers were first built, there wasn't much room for profit but it is my opinion that the competitive atmosphere of the computer market did more to facilitate cheap and common PCs than any government body did.
When you have a monopoly, you'll have corruption and laziness. There is no one else offering your product for possibly less money, or at a higher quality, or with more choice. The customer is stuck with what you decide to give.
It's funny to me that it is the IG that is under investigation. My experience with my state's own IG shows that it is probably more common than not to see shortfalls in those who "police the police" but yet are paid by the "police" they're "policing."
If no one here is willing to deregulate spaceflight and offer NASA some real competition, how does anyone foresee proper market policing of NASA's spending and development? In the open competitive market, companies fail all the time when they try to take advantage of the consumer. The biggest failures in the open competitive market are usualy companies that are given some monopoly status or public funding (Enron, etc) or are given some form of government power to manipulate the way they report their business financing (Worldcom, etc). There are rarely failures of companies that make truly competitive products at competitive prices.
I wonder if spaceflight would be different if we spun it out of the federal budget and allowed it to be funded directly by states or even world organizations. Could NASA exist solely on donations of the wealthy and the poor, and could NASA exist on its own without any taxpayer allotment?
If not, I would argue that we don't need it right now. NASA to me was always a ploy to keep us aware of communism and the USSR. Sure, some good things came out of NASA, but how many of those things might have come to the market cheaper and quicker without it? We'll never know, but I do know I can see what we've spent over the decades, and I'm not sure that I can accept future spending when we know it is getting wasted by bad management of this monopoly organization.
So let me get this straight. They are saying a Bush appointee with no relavent experience is doing a poor job? Inconcievable!
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
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?
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In space, chairs are a hell of a lot easier to throw.
I'm not sure about that the shuttles have enough lifting power to take mr Ballmer up there though.
Recently surfaced allegations also suggest that Cobb made personal use of the shuttle.
Unknown host pong.
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?
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All rockets are equiped with a self-destruct. If the launch facility loses control, then the rocket explodes.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Now there's something that inspires confidence...
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.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
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Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
The system is designed to cause the vehicle to destroy itself and not just shut down the engines, just to correct anyone who may not be sure about that from what you said. It has been used on many launches, though only once on the Shuttle (to destroy the Challenger boosters, which survived and were flying around randomly because there was no longer any guidance coming from the orbiter's computer systems). Valuable evidence of what had gone wrong was destroyed in the process, but given that millions of people were at risk if the boosters turned around and started heading toward populated land, the safety officer executed his or her responsibility to protect those people.
That is why the boosters just appear to randomly blow up in post-explosion footage.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Dorms...
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