I think the only thing that's new here is attaching the buzzword "privatizing" to something that NASA has done for at least 30 years.
When Congress funds a NASA project they generally agree to fund operation of it for a period of time, say 10 years. If at the end of that time the project is still doing useful science NASA has the option of going back to Congress and asking for authorization to continue operating the project or they can turn the project over to some other organization for operation. The second option is a good thing in several ways: it continues the science mission; it saves money; and it gives more people the opportunity to contribute to advancing space science. In my experience the other organizations have always been universities or not-for-profit labs run by universities.
Now, if NASA was turning the project over to a for-profit corporation, that would be news.
hmm... I'm not a chemist, but last time I checked steel (an alloy of iron and carbon) was a metal, which seems to contradict pretty much all of what you wrote.
that which can be attributed to the government procurement process. IME, all federal govt web sites suck, esp. those used for internal purposes, for which conspiracy theories just don't even make any sense. What they do all have in common is that they are developed by contractors, under the competitive procurement process. Just ask anyone that has had to use fedtraveler.com.
The SR-71 never overflew the Soviet Union. It was used over other nations, most notably China (with Nationalist Chinese pilots) and Cuba. See Jeffrey T. Richelson, The Wizards of Langley, pp. 20-22, 98-100, 138-146. An excellent book, BTW, if you are at all interested in this stuff.
and TRMM and someday GPM. I think the unique angle here, other than cost, is using radar for earth resources sensing. IIRC most ER spacecraft (landsat, EO-1 etc) carry passive instruments.
something that I haven't seen mentioned here yet: the carriers have a terrible track record of releasing any data they have collected on you to assorted Government Agencies, often without a warrant.
The ground system doesn't have to be connected to the internet. The spacecraft has a radio and its listening ALL THE TIME. All you need to know is how to talk to it.
no, the GP post wasn't a little bit of BS, it was almost all BS. Nimbus 7 was a weather and atmospheric science spacecraft. In fact, with today's technology and the user's guide (which was an unclassified document widely available within NASA - I still have a copy on my bookshelf just for old time's sake) it would have been pretty simple to take it over. You can read the introduction to the Nimbus 7 User's Guide here: http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/n7toms/nimbus7tech.html - it was that unclassified. It was a sad day when Nimbus finally died - it was a great program that was responsible for a lot of groundbreaking science, perhaps the most notable thing being discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole.
Now, if I remember correctly, Nimbus 7 WAS built by GE-Astro in Valley Forge PA, which also did a lot of work on classified DOD missions - check out the recently declassified information on GAMBIT and HEXAGON. They had their fingers in both of those programs (perhaps the film return capsules?) which would explain the security at the plant.
Its completely conceivable that even a motivated individual could command all but the most recent NASA science satellites - the only real security they have is through obscurity. However, this is not true about any manned NASA spacecraft or joint missions. Those have had hardware encryption on both the up and downlinks for as long as I am aware of. All NASA science satellites since 2001 have encryption on the uplinks - the downlinks are still unencrypted, so if you had the right antenna, receiver, demods and such, and wanted to reverse engineer the telemetry format, you could.
Last year a major civilian govt agency awarded their IT support contract to HP. Since then HP has been flailing around wildly trying to actually deliver the support they are contracted for and the agency extends the incumbent contractors contract a few months at a time so they actually have support.
Fun fact: the shuttle bay doors are only designed to be opened in space. If opened on earth their own weight would rip the hinges apart. During inspection the doors are supported by huge braces.:D
That's typical for any mechanism of any real size on a spacecraft. Operation in a 1g environment require "g negation" "mechanical ground support equipment" -- the yellow structures in your pictures of the doors. Other common places you'd find this sort of thing would be for operating the antenna booms and solar panels on a typical satellite during testing.
As an engineer in the defense industry you probably also know how long defense systems live and how hard it can be to get upgrades pushed out into the field. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it wasn't technically feasible to encrypt the video stream at the time this system was first deployed and since then upgrading it has never been a priority for anyone with enough clout to make it happen. Now that its on SecDef's radar how long do you think its gonna take before this gets fixed?
Possibly, but today IT is one of NG "core businesses", along with aircraft, missiles and space, land vehicles and ships. NG is currently the 3rd largest defense contractor, after Lock-mart and Boeing. Sometimes when big defense contractors implement civilian systems they really do put the 2nd team on it, because they know where their real bread and butter comes from (hint: 5 sided polygon). Another common tactic is bait and switch: put the A team on the proposal and the B team on the implementation.
Most NASA missions are outsourced, however, a few are built in house. Most recently LRO and LCROSS were built in house by Goddard Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center respectively. Launch services were outsourced to United Launch Alliance, an unholy joint venture between Lockeed and Boeing. The intent of building a few spacecraft in house is to maintain core engineering competency within the agency.
Anyone that thinks outsourcing is going to improve the US position in space is seriously deluded. Until someone comes up with a way to make a profit off of space beyond cost-plus government contacts there will be no real commercial space programs.
according to SecDef Gates, currently the Army is the only service that uses the stop-loss program. As of January, 13,217 soldiers had tours extended under the stop-loss policy.
The Marines have met their recruiting quotas for the last several years, as has the Air Force. The Army has not.
Even stateside internet access from the barracks is direct to an ISP (you usually dont get a choice which one) and paid for monthly by the individiual troops, who can do whatever they want with it. On the "corporate" military network what you are allowed to do has always been regulated. While the "corporate" network is primarily For Official Use Only, some personal use (email, web browsing while "off duty") has always been allowed. All this regulation does it tighten up what is considered acceptable personal use.
not really. the minuteman vehicles have been available for a while for civilian launch vehicles as the minotaur. OSC basically takes a minuteman that the AF is throwing away, cleans it up a little and resells it to the govt for $20 million. Go free market!!
correct. It sounds like a job for the National Archives (http://www.archives.gov/) to me. Why is NASA doing it themselves? Because NASA invented Not Invented Here.
(Going into Iraq under-armored was provably and specifically the fault of the military, not the politicos. The Army refused to learn from Mogadishu years before.)
This is just not true. The Army Chief of Staff's manpower and TOE decisions were overruled by Rumsfeld and his staff.
I work in space science and engineering, and the two most widely used computing tools used directly by scientists and engineers are Matlab and Excel. FORTRAN is still used, but it is used by _programmers_ to solve numeric science and engineering problems.
The only problem I have with Matlab is that it is proprietary. I tried Octave but it just wasn't quite good enough -- there were some things that worked in matlab that broke octave.
I wont say any more about excel, other than it is the most widely used computing tool by engineers, other than maybe powerpoint:)
Slashdot Mirror
not new at all.
I think the only thing that's new here is attaching the buzzword "privatizing" to something that NASA has done for at least 30 years.
When Congress funds a NASA project they generally agree to fund operation of it for a period of time, say 10 years. If at the end of that time the project is still doing useful science NASA has the option of going back to Congress and asking for authorization to continue operating the project or they can turn the project over to some other organization for operation. The second option is a good thing in several ways: it continues the science mission; it saves money; and it gives more people the opportunity to contribute to advancing space science. In my experience the other organizations have always been universities or not-for-profit labs run by universities.
Now, if NASA was turning the project over to a for-profit corporation, that would be news.
In 1991 the FBI was probably still using TELETYPE, as in 5 bit codes, 50 CPS.
hmm... I'm not a chemist, but last time I checked steel (an alloy of iron and carbon) was a metal, which seems to contradict pretty much all of what you wrote.
that which can be attributed to the government procurement process. IME, all federal govt web sites suck, esp. those used for internal purposes, for which conspiracy theories just don't even make any sense. What they do all have in common is that they are developed by contractors, under the competitive procurement process. Just ask anyone that has had to use fedtraveler.com.
I've been here a long time, and I can't say that I ever remember conversations being rational - although they are occasionally coherent.
quoted for truth
...or was this a bit of a power-play between different branches of the government not sharing or not wanting to give up control over something.
More likely it was different mission capabilities.
bwahahaha
You've never worked for the US Government, have you?
The SR-71 never overflew the Soviet Union. It was used over other nations, most notably China (with Nationalist Chinese pilots) and Cuba. See Jeffrey T. Richelson, The Wizards of Langley, pp. 20-22, 98-100, 138-146. An excellent book, BTW, if you are at all interested in this stuff.
HST was not built in Danbury. HST was built by Lockheed in Sunnyvale. The primary mirror was ground (incorrectly) in Danbury by P-E.
Surry has a long history of building successful low cost spacecraft, going back into the '80s at least. Maybe farther. Google UOSAT-1
and TRMM and someday GPM. I think the unique angle here, other than cost, is using radar for earth resources sensing. IIRC most ER spacecraft (landsat, EO-1 etc) carry passive instruments.
something that I haven't seen mentioned here yet: the carriers have a terrible track record of releasing any data they have collected on you to assorted Government Agencies, often without a warrant.
The ground system doesn't have to be connected to the internet. The spacecraft has a radio and its listening ALL THE TIME. All you need to know is how to talk to it.
no, the GP post wasn't a little bit of BS, it was almost all BS. Nimbus 7 was a weather and atmospheric science spacecraft. In fact, with today's technology and the user's guide (which was an unclassified document widely available within NASA - I still have a copy on my bookshelf just for old time's sake) it would have been pretty simple to take it over. You can read the introduction to the Nimbus 7 User's Guide here: http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/n7toms/nimbus7tech.html - it was that unclassified. It was a sad day when Nimbus finally died - it was a great program that was responsible for a lot of groundbreaking science, perhaps the most notable thing being discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole.
Now, if I remember correctly, Nimbus 7 WAS built by GE-Astro in Valley Forge PA, which also did a lot of work on classified DOD missions - check out the recently declassified information on GAMBIT and HEXAGON. They had their fingers in both of those programs (perhaps the film return capsules?) which would explain the security at the plant.
Its completely conceivable that even a motivated individual could command all but the most recent NASA science satellites - the only real security they have is through obscurity. However, this is not true about any manned NASA spacecraft or joint missions. Those have had hardware encryption on both the up and downlinks for as long as I am aware of. All NASA science satellites since 2001 have encryption on the uplinks - the downlinks are still unencrypted, so if you had the right antenna, receiver, demods and such, and wanted to reverse engineer the telemetry format, you could.
Last year a major civilian govt agency awarded their IT support contract to HP. Since then HP has been flailing around wildly trying to actually deliver the support they are contracted for and the agency extends the incumbent contractors contract a few months at a time so they actually have support.
Fun fact: the shuttle bay doors are only designed to be opened in space. If opened on earth their own weight would rip the hinges apart. During inspection the doors are supported by huge braces. :D
That's typical for any mechanism of any real size on a spacecraft. Operation in a 1g environment require "g negation" "mechanical ground support equipment" -- the yellow structures in your pictures of the doors. Other common places you'd find this sort of thing would be for operating the antenna booms and solar panels on a typical satellite during testing.
As an engineer in the defense industry you probably also know how long defense systems live and how hard it can be to get upgrades pushed out into the field. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it wasn't technically feasible to encrypt the video stream at the time this system was first deployed and since then upgrading it has never been a priority for anyone with enough clout to make it happen. Now that its on SecDef's radar how long do you think its gonna take before this gets fixed?
Possibly, but today IT is one of NG "core businesses", along with aircraft, missiles and space, land vehicles and ships. NG is currently the 3rd largest defense contractor, after Lock-mart and Boeing. Sometimes when big defense contractors implement civilian systems they really do put the 2nd team on it, because they know where their real bread and butter comes from (hint: 5 sided polygon). Another common tactic is bait and switch: put the A team on the proposal and the B team on the implementation.
Most NASA missions are outsourced, however, a few are built in house. Most recently LRO and LCROSS were built in house by Goddard Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center respectively. Launch services were outsourced to United Launch Alliance, an unholy joint venture between Lockeed and Boeing. The intent of building a few spacecraft in house is to maintain core engineering competency within the agency.
Anyone that thinks outsourcing is going to improve the US position in space is seriously deluded. Until someone comes up with a way to make a profit off of space beyond cost-plus government contacts there will be no real commercial space programs.
according to SecDef Gates, currently the Army is the only service that uses the stop-loss program. As of January, 13,217 soldiers had tours extended under the stop-loss policy.
The Marines have met their recruiting quotas for the last several years, as has the Air Force. The Army has not.
I would but I have no mod points today.
Even stateside internet access from the barracks is direct to an ISP (you usually dont get a choice which one) and paid for monthly by the individiual troops, who can do whatever they want with it. On the "corporate" military network what you are allowed to do has always been regulated. While the "corporate" network is primarily For Official Use Only, some personal use (email, web browsing while "off duty") has always been allowed. All this regulation does it tighten up what is considered acceptable personal use.
not really. the minuteman vehicles have been available for a while for civilian launch vehicles as the minotaur. OSC basically takes a minuteman that the AF is throwing away, cleans it up a little and resells it to the govt for $20 million. Go free market!!
correct. It sounds like a job for the National Archives (http://www.archives.gov/) to me. Why is NASA doing it themselves? Because NASA invented Not Invented Here.
(Going into Iraq under-armored was provably and specifically the fault of the military, not the politicos. The Army refused to learn from Mogadishu years before.)
This is just not true. The Army Chief of Staff's manpower and TOE decisions were overruled by Rumsfeld and his staff.
I work in space science and engineering, and the two most widely used computing tools used directly by scientists and engineers are Matlab and Excel. FORTRAN is still used, but it is used by _programmers_ to solve numeric science and engineering problems.
The only problem I have with Matlab is that it is proprietary. I tried Octave but it just wasn't quite good enough -- there were some things that worked in matlab that broke octave.
I wont say any more about excel, other than it is the most widely used computing tool by engineers, other than maybe powerpoint :)
WFC3 went thru a full thermal vac test last summer, right before SDO went into the SES.