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

Now there's a great commitee name

[NiteShaed]

"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......

Public perception

[truthsearch]

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.

No way!!!!

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

So let me get this straight. They are saying a Bush appointee with no relavent experience is doing a poor job? Inconcievable!

Re:No way!!!!

[skaffen42]

Inconcievable!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Pedigree

[Billosaur]

Cobb, a 1986 graduate of George Washington University's law school, became NASA's inspector general on April 22, 2002, after working for a year as an ethics lawyer in the office of the White House General Counsel.

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?

Re:The trouble with monopolies

[AKAImBatman]

Kuciwalker is right. NASA has no monopoly. Nearly all spaceflight is actually done by commercial interests. The problem with manned space flight is that it simply isn't profitable at the moment. Thus why no one does it.

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 computers were first built, the Military payed untold millions to have the machines constructed and operated. They didn't reach even the large business market until long after the Military was done funnelling money into the industry.

The same could have been true of the space industry, but it had its throat slit before all the R&D of the Gemini, Saturn, Apollo, and Orion programs could come to fruition.

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?

What deregulation needs to happen? Privately owned spacecraft already fly. Mini-aerospace companies buy space on other people's crafts to fly equipment. X-Prize competitors are working to put people in orbit. I'm actually amazed at how little the FAA has interfered.

NASA to me was always a ploy to keep us aware of communism and the USSR.

Now that's just nonsense. NASA was developed to provide an environment for rocket development that the military couldn't provide. America was already falling WAY behind Russia in rocket technology. Putting aside the PR issues with smaller countries (many of whom might chose to join the USSR if they were perceived as being more powerful), there was the matter of keeping parity in ICBM technology. If that parity was lost, the nukes just might have started raining down.

Back when it was formed, NASA succeeded wildly in its endevours. But it was also given a free hand. Once Nixon was in office, all that ended. NASA was told to shut down operations and begin building a token space infrastructure. We'd fly up and come back down. Just to show the USSR that we still had the technology. Beyond that, he didn't care if space travel just went away altogether.

Re:NASA just needs more money

[Buran]

"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?

Re:The trouble with monopolies

[AKAImBatman]

You almost have to feel sorry for Quayle. He was actually a very intelligent and capable individual, but he couldn't speak in public to save his life. Under Reagan's administration, NASA was given broad powers (led in part by George Bush) to develop a plan to get the space program back on track. Reagan knew it would be expensive, but he wasn't willing to throw away the existing investment in the Space Shuttle. Unfortuntately, Quayle wasn't able to maintain a hold on Congress during Bush's presidency. While part of it was the fact that Bush trusted Congress a little too much (not enough killer instinct there), one has to wonder if Quayle's inability to speak had something to do with it?

Some of his more famous quotes about the space program:

• "Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
• "For NASA, space is still a high priority."
• "[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."

I mean, those are soundbites that make me want to downright cringe. (His best one is his Hawaii bit. Watch the video to get the full experience.) If he spoke in front of Congress that way, it's no wonder they thought they could get away with murder. (Figuratively speaking.)

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.

As far as I know, that's still the case. In fact, the Vice President regularly carries out a lot of the busy work that the President doesn't have time to handle personally. That makes the role an extremely important position and not the "find a dumb guy for the role so he won't take the presidency" role that much of the public believes it to be. :-)