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NASA Investigates Possible Sabotage by Worker
mytrip writes "NASA said today it is investigating suspected sabotage of a recorder placed on the shuttle Endeavour for delivery to the space station where it will track physical stresses on the orbiting lab."
There have been several incidents at NASA that could only be caused by sabotage. None know to make it to the pad.
;)
Of course, why is this happening? Who would do it? At this point it just looks like a group that wants NASA to fail.
I blame Thomas Dolby.
Actually, It doesn't say much more.
"The U.S. space agency NASA on Thursday confirmed it had discovered the apparent sabotage of a noncritical component of the international space station due to be carried up by the space shuttle Endeavour. It launched an investigation after finding cut wires in a piece of computer equipment intended to transfer data from station sensors to the ground, the agency said."
That's about it on the topic.
It still has the feeling of "Wha? I don't get it.". Either NASA is deliberately playing down a more serious issue, or we have some very incompetent saboteurs. Or an employee who had a momentary temper tantrum at whatever piece of equipment was in front of them.
Dr Smith works for a subcontractor now? That Jupiter2 gig must have finished.
Not only that, but his even newer job at Scaled Composites doesn't seem to have worked out, either . Not to joke, though. Looks like some people died today out in the Mojave at that facility.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
As far as I can see, Scaled Composites and Xcor are the only tenants at Mojave using nitrous. SC in the HTPB hybrid from SpaceDev http://www.astronautix.com/engines/spaybrid.htm , and Xcor in its 15 and 50 Lbf motors http://www.xcor.com/products/engines/2P1_N2O_ethan e_rocket_engine.html . The latter wouldn't need a truck load of the stuff. SpaceDev is working on a lot more hybrid projects than just SC's, but their test own stand is at Capistrano. SC is both secretive about its running projects and notoriously bad about updating it web sites about what it does announce, but by now they should be ramping up for testing the motor for SS2.
This certainly throws a wrench into the "hybrids are so much safer" works. Very bad for the two dead and four hurt, I'm just hoping Rutan wasn't among them.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I have to disagree. Yes, NASA's job is to push the envelope and make mistakes. But Challenger and Colombia weren't really mistakes. They were failures in management, not unknowns in engineering. In both cases engineering recognized the threat, tried to get management to take action, and was shot down.
This is especially true of Challenger, where it was fairly clear to all who were in the know that the Shuttle was not tolerant of low temperatures, and management had a long history of redefining problems into successes because previous missions had survived them. When the O-rings would burn a third of the way through, management would say that this meant they had a safety factor of three! This for a component which was not supposed to erode at all. The company in charge of the booster company said that they had grave reservations about launching on that day but were told to shut up and be a team player. They didn't stick to their guns, and then seven people died.
Colombia was a lot less clear cut. Ice falling onto the wings seems like an obvious problem but it wasn't so clear at the time. Engineering did see the really big chunk come off and suggested asking for images from the spy satellite people, but management didn't want to listen. It's not clear that anything could have been done by then anyway since they were already in space, but nothing was tried to even identify the problem, much less rescue the astronauts.
I believe there is a fundamental difference between pushing the envelope and occasionally killing people by doing so, and overruling the objections of your engineers and the strong data backing them up which says that you might kill these people if you launch in these temperatures, and then killing those people because you launched in those temperatures.
There are certain things you never do in this world. Hold lit firecracker in your hand. Knock over a beehive. Watch news stories about celebrities who do things to be Media Attention Whores (MAWs).
But if there is anything that you never EVER do if you want to live, it is f*ck with a nerd's computer. If you f*ck with a NASA nerd's computer, you are dead where you stand.
Whoever this person is who has attempted to tamper with so much as a peice of recording equipment has attempted to tamper with an international construction project, possibly in an effort en expand the authoritative powers of the first world nations who are playing Chicken Little and shouting "The terrorists are coming. The sky is falling. Everybody panic!"
By compromising NASA's security, they have infringed upon the freedoms that they claim outsiders are taking from up when it is the people from within who can't keep their hands off of things they know they shouldn't be messing with.
NASA has had its share of scandels over the past year that are far more trivial compared to breaking into a laboratory owned by one of the most reviered organizations on the planet.
Even the sleeping giant gets bit on the hand by it's own dog. This dog has teeth, and tommarrow we will use them.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
This really isn't funny, the employee of a subcontractor tried to sabotage a space station. This is huge, what this idiot did could have taken the lives of Astronauts. And while it may not be a treasonable offense, it is extremely disquieting to me. And it makes me wonder how many such incidents have gone by unnoticed. I need to know if this man or woman was a crazed Evangelical, a North Korean spy, or just a terrorist.
The subcontractor reported the damage themselves, so it wasn't like NASA employees caught this.