George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.
Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.
The resignation came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was preparing to review its policies for communicating science to the public. The review was ordered Friday by Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, after a week in which many agency scientists and midlevel public affairs officials described to The New York Times instances in which they said political pressure was applied to limit or flavor discussions of topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, particularly global warming...
Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA's public affairs office in Washington last year after working on President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee, according to his résumé. No one has disputed those parts of the document.
According to his résumé, Mr. Deutsch received a "Bachelor of Arts in journalism, Class of 2003."
Yesterday, officials at Texas A&M said that was not the case...
Mr. Deutsch's educational record was first challenged on Monday by Nick Anthis, who graduated from Texas A&M last year with a biochemistry degree and has been writing a Web log on science policy, scientificactivist.blogspot.com.
...Mr. Deutsch played a small but significant role in an intensifying effort at the agency to exert political control over the flow of information to the public.
Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews on the threats posed by global warming.
Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch's credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.
"He's only a bit player," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. " The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That's what I'm really concerned about."
"On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed," he said. "The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That's the big issue here."
Even with the elimination of the obvious incompetents, open science will not occur with Michael Griffin at the helm of NASA. The man is a Star Wars minion of Rumsfeld and DynCorp/ CSC. Unlike the Heritage Foundation stooges, he's intelligently evil.
Despite his promises to his peers that enabled his appointment at NASA, he's looting the science budget for Star Wars-related projects.
NASA wants to divert money from its science programme to help pay for billions of dollars of projected space shuttle cost overruns, says the agency's chief, Mike Griffin. The cuts mean several key science missions will be delayed indefinitely and have sparked criticism from space enthusiasts and law makers.
Griffin and other NASA officials announced the cuts on Monday during a press briefing on US president George Bush's 2007 budget request to Congress. In the proposed budget, NASA would receive $16.8 billion in 2007, an increase of 3.2% over the amount Congress appropriated for the agency for 2006.
NASA removing $2 billion from the science budget over the next five years to help cover projected cost overruns of $3 billion to $5 billion to fly the shuttles safely until they are retired in 2010.
Redistributing NASA's budget this way represents a turnaround for Griffin, who in September 2005 specifically vowed not to take "one thin dime" from the science budget to pay for human spaceflight.
When asked about his earlier statement, Griffin stunned reporters by admitting he had to go back on his word. "I wish we hadn't had to do it; I didn't want to. But that's what we needed to do," he said. "One plain fact is NASA can simply not afford to do everything our many constituencies would like us to do."
The science programmes affected include:
• Delayed indefinitely – the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), a mission to detect and study Earth-like planets
• Delayed by about three years – the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), designed to map stars with unprecedented accuracy and search for planets slightly larger than Earth will now launch no earlier than 2015
• Cancelled – four to six 1.8-metre "outrigger" telescopes designed to bolster the twin 10-metre Keck telescopes in Hawaii. The outriggers would have searched for planets and imaged newborn stars
• Delayed indefinitely – the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a 2.5-metre infrared telescope built into a Boeing 747 plane, will be put under "review" because it is behind schedule. It has been given no funding for the foreseeable future
• Delayed indefinitely – NASA's cosmology programme, "Beyond Einstein", is under review. Two of its missions – LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), to search for ripples in space-time called gravitational waves, and Constellation-X, to study black holes – will be delayed indefinitely
• Cancelled/Delayed indefinitely – Mars research has been cut by $243.3 million to $700.2 million. This reflects the cancellation or indefinite postponement of missions such as the Mars Sample Return Mission and the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter
• Cut – solar system research, largely in astrobiology, has been cut by $96.5 million to $273.6 million.
NASA, and America's progressive science innovation, won't recover until all of the Administration's appointees are gone.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Michael Griffin. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Michael Griffin. Sort by date Show all posts
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Griffin Must Go
Michael Griffin is the wrong man to head NASA.
He's developed a new plan for NASA that calls for spending billions on new rockets that may not even work, while closing down the shuttle program completely.
NASA engineers are already walking away:
Griffin's game is the shell game. Manned exploration of the Moon and Mars is held out as a sparkly bangle to amuse the rubes, while billions go to the corporations that are a big part of Bu$hie's Ba$e. Robotic exploration, and scientific exploration are eliminated: except for the spy satellites that monitor an ever smaller, ever more tightly controlled Earth.
He's developed a new plan for NASA that calls for spending billions on new rockets that may not even work, while closing down the shuttle program completely.
NASA engineers are already walking away:
...Some inside the development program have complained that it is run with a my-way-or-the-highway attitude that stifles dissent and innovation. Jeffrey Finckenor, an engineer who left NASA this year, sent a goodbye letter to colleagues that expressed his frustrations with the program. “At the highest levels of the agency, there seems to be a belief that you can mandate reality,” he wrote, “followed by a refusal to accept any information that runs counter to that mandate.” The letter was posted to the independent NASA Watch Web site...
...in April, Richard Gilbrech, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems at the time, testified before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics that “we can’t justify, based on laws of physics, the performance” claimed by the plan’s proponents...
Pressure has grown to keep the shuttles flying. In July, former Senator John Glenn of Ohio said in testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee that he favored flying the shuttles until the Constellation craft were ready to fly. “I never thought I would see the day when the world’s richest, most powerful, most accomplished spacefaring nation would have to buy tickets from Russia to get up to our station,” said Mr. Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
Continuing shuttle flights has also been proposed by the New Democracy Project, a group with strong ties to John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of the Obama transition team.
To Mr. Griffin, though, such proposals threaten to scuttle the new space program by hijacking billions of dollars that could go to Constellation development. He also argues that the shuttle’s considerable risks make it unsafe to continue flying it. In an interview in November, Mr. Griffin defended the program he has put in place.
“U.S. civil space policy, in terms of its goals, was headed in the wrong direction after the Nixon administration,” he said. Today, with the nation talking about going back to the Moon, exploring near-Earth asteroids and even going to Mars, “that’s the right path for us to be investing in,” he said...
Griffin's game is the shell game. Manned exploration of the Moon and Mars is held out as a sparkly bangle to amuse the rubes, while billions go to the corporations that are a big part of Bu$hie's Ba$e. Robotic exploration, and scientific exploration are eliminated: except for the spy satellites that monitor an ever smaller, ever more tightly controlled Earth.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Sky-High Profitable Mistakes
Priorities like science didn't have much to do with it.
DINOcrats being as easily bought as Rethuglicans.
The low orbit space station concept was boneheaded from the beginning, serving as a potential weapons plaform. A low orbit space station is constantly falling towards earth. Better to build in the more stable LaGrange orbits.
The space program has largely existed to feed the aerospace defense industry since its inception. There has been some really impressive science done, but that hasn't been the major focus even in the unmanned era. Science has served as an excuse, not a motivation for these people.
Similarly, Griffin's motivation remains Company based- as might be expected for an ex-CIA ex-CSC/ DynCorp CEA. It's just now there's the likelihood the Chinese will have a moonbase soon. [thanks Xenophon] A little competition tends to focus one on the realities.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Dec. 8 — NASA’s administrator, Michael D. Griffin, says the current period of space exploration will come to be seen as a mistake.
“Viewed from the point of history several decades out,” he said in an interview, “the period where the United States retreated from the Moon and quite deliberately focused only on low Earth orbit will be seen, to me, a mistake.”
Mr. Griffin has made similar comments before, notably a year ago in an interview with USA Today. This time, his remarks came as he waited for Thursday’s down-to-the-wire effort to launch the shuttle on a 12-day mission to rewire the International Space Station. The liftoff was scrubbed at the last minute because of weather concerns...
Mr. Griffin was appointed to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 2005, a year after President Bush announced his “vision for space exploration,” which calls for returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020 and then moving on to send humans to Mars. Mr. Griffin has from the start been an enthusiastic proponent of that plan.
But it has put him in a delicate situation, as he has shifted NASA financing to the Moon initiative, while moving to complete the space station and shut down the shuttle program by 2010, and cutting back on its science activities. And in doing so, he has occasionally expressed doubts about the wisdom underlying the nation’s decision to build the shuttle and the station.
After his remarks a year ago, he issued an apologetic memorandum to NASA employees.
But if there was any discomfort in expressing such opinions once again at the Kennedy Space Center in the midst of preparations for launching, Mr. Griffin showed none. He said in the interview that his comments had been broadly misconstrued as a slap against the people who build and maintain the shuttle and space station, and emphasized that he admired the people of NASA who took on enormous challenges to create the shuttle and station.
The fault is not NASA’s, he said, adding: “The space shuttle is a response to a policy mistake — it isn’t the mistake. The mistake was tearing up all the infrastructure that we built for Apollo and saying, ‘let’s just focus on low Earth orbit...’ ”
The plan to return to the Moon by 2020 has been met with some skepticism, especially among those who doubt that the space agency can take on such a daunting project within its $17 billion annual budget. Dr. Griffin said that NASA could do the job — and could reach the moon even more quickly, with more money.
“I’m tempted to say, ‘Why the skepticism?’ ” he said, adding, “but in fairness, NASA’s recent history has not had the on-time, on-budget performance characteristic of the Apollo era. And I’m trying to restore that.”
The fact that Democrats won the majority of seats in Congress in the November election, and other political changes that will occur over time, should have little effect on the plan, he said...
DINOcrats being as easily bought as Rethuglicans.
The low orbit space station concept was boneheaded from the beginning, serving as a potential weapons plaform. A low orbit space station is constantly falling towards earth. Better to build in the more stable LaGrange orbits.
The space program has largely existed to feed the aerospace defense industry since its inception. There has been some really impressive science done, but that hasn't been the major focus even in the unmanned era. Science has served as an excuse, not a motivation for these people.
Similarly, Griffin's motivation remains Company based- as might be expected for an ex-CIA ex-CSC/ DynCorp CEA. It's just now there's the likelihood the Chinese will have a moonbase soon. [thanks Xenophon] A little competition tends to focus one on the realities.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Using Pork Barrel Engineering ManDated by Cracker Barrel Bureaucrat$
NASA grounds future shuttle flights
Foam insulation flew off fuel tank but did not hit Discovery
The shuttle Discovery, like Columbia, lost a large chunk of foam debris during liftoff that could have threatened the return of the seven astronauts, NASA said Wednesday.
While there are no signs the piece of insulation damaged the spacecraft, NASA is grounding future shuttle flights until the hazard can be fixed.
“Call it luck or whatever, it didn’t harm the orbiter,” said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. If the foam had broken away earlier in flight — when the atmosphere is thicker, increasing the acceleration and likelihood of impact — it could have caused catastrophic damage to Discovery...
Again, Bu$hCo demonstrates its willingness to use the lives of the most dedicated Americans like they were toilet paper. I hope they make it back down in one piece. I most sincerely hope the Wrepublicans aren't in control when the next manned moon or Mars mission is sent.
They'll never make it back alive with all the pork barrel engineering. If it's not Star Wars or a Kool DARPA toy, the man in charge of NASA now isn't interested in it. We're talking about a man who invested money for the CIA and headed the corporation that owns DynCorp before he became the head of NASA.
When NeoCon spooks get physical, they tend to ignore reality-based science in favor of their own political agenda- like Bu$hCo's current public relations blitz for it's new manned space policy.
Like Porter Goss in the CIA, Michael Griffin is turning NASA upside-down getting rid of competent professionals and replacing them with more right thinking people.
Of course, when 20 year old fuel gauges break down for "unknown" reasons, Michael Griffin's new professionals in charge don't let that stop them. They have a time table. While reality-based engineers are dealing with problems, they're making up whole new realities for the engineers to deal with.
Besides, Darth Rumsfeld has this thing about people who report failure.
Foam insulation flew off fuel tank but did not hit Discovery
The shuttle Discovery, like Columbia, lost a large chunk of foam debris during liftoff that could have threatened the return of the seven astronauts, NASA said Wednesday.
While there are no signs the piece of insulation damaged the spacecraft, NASA is grounding future shuttle flights until the hazard can be fixed.
“Call it luck or whatever, it didn’t harm the orbiter,” said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. If the foam had broken away earlier in flight — when the atmosphere is thicker, increasing the acceleration and likelihood of impact — it could have caused catastrophic damage to Discovery...
Again, Bu$hCo demonstrates its willingness to use the lives of the most dedicated Americans like they were toilet paper. I hope they make it back down in one piece. I most sincerely hope the Wrepublicans aren't in control when the next manned moon or Mars mission is sent.
They'll never make it back alive with all the pork barrel engineering. If it's not Star Wars or a Kool DARPA toy, the man in charge of NASA now isn't interested in it. We're talking about a man who invested money for the CIA and headed the corporation that owns DynCorp before he became the head of NASA.
When NeoCon spooks get physical, they tend to ignore reality-based science in favor of their own political agenda- like Bu$hCo's current public relations blitz for it's new manned space policy.
Like Porter Goss in the CIA, Michael Griffin is turning NASA upside-down getting rid of competent professionals and replacing them with more right thinking people.
Of course, when 20 year old fuel gauges break down for "unknown" reasons, Michael Griffin's new professionals in charge don't let that stop them. They have a time table. While reality-based engineers are dealing with problems, they're making up whole new realities for the engineers to deal with.
Besides, Darth Rumsfeld has this thing about people who report failure.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Dissent in the Ranks: the Rethuglicans vs. the Reptilicans
Dr. Jim Hansen has his little problem, but apparently Young Rethuglican propaganda operatives from the Heritage Foundation have decided to make NASA like the Air Force Academy, and a long-time minion of Darth Rumsfeld is uneasy about it.
A week after NASA's top climate scientist complained that the space agency's public-affairs office was trying to silence his statements on global warming, the agency's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, issued a sharply worded statement yesterday calling for "scientific openness" throughout the agency.
"It is not the job of public-affairs officers," Dr. Griffin wrote in an e-mail message to the agency's 19,000 employees, "to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff."
The statement came six days after The New York Times quoted the scientist, James E. Hansen, as saying he was threatened with "dire consequences" if he continued to call for prompt action to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. He and intermediaries in the agency's 350-member public-affairs staff said the warnings came from White House appointees in NASA headquarters.
Other National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists and public-affairs employees came forward this week to say that beyond Dr. Hansen's case, there were several other instances in which political appointees had sought to control the flow of scientific information from the agency.
They called or e-mailed The Times and sent documents showing that news releases were delayed or altered to mesh with Bush administration policies...
Climate science has been a thorny issue for the administration since 2001, when Mr. Bush abandoned a campaign pledge to restrict power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, and said the United States would not join the Kyoto Protocol, the first climate treaty requiring reductions.
But the accusations of political interference with the language of news releases and other public information on science go beyond climate change.
In interviews this week, more than a dozen public-affairs officials, along with half a dozen agency scientists, spoke of growing efforts by political appointees to control the flow of scientific information...
One NASA scientist, William Patzert, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, confirmed the general tone of the agency that year.
"That was the time when NASA was reorganizing and all of a sudden earth science disappeared," Mr. Patzert said. "Earth kind of got relegated to just being one of the 9 or 10 planets. It was ludicrous..."
The Big Bang memo came from Mr. George Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.
In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."
It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."
The memo also noted that The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual specified the phrasing "Big Bang theory." Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's boss, said in an interview yesterday that for that reason, it should be used in all NASA documents.
The Deutsch memo was provided by an official at NASA headquarters who said he was upset with the effort to justify changes to descriptions of science by referring to politically charged issues like intelligent design. Senior NASA officials did not dispute the message's authenticity...
More about this tool here.
Memo to the Dominionists: it's hard to use your nukular capability to convert the heathen with Faith-based missile guidance systems.
Although if there's someone who deserves an admonishment from Darth Rumsfeld about his disturbing lack of Faith, it is Michael Griffin, the Computer Sciences Corporation a.k.a. DynCorp link to Star Wars.
Like Paryngula says, this rot goes deep. It's part of the mindset of the Dominionist 30% of us who would support Dear Leader if he disbanded Congress tomorrow and sent all Undesirables to re-education camps. If you haven't read this about the War on Science division of the War on Terra, you need to.
A week after NASA's top climate scientist complained that the space agency's public-affairs office was trying to silence his statements on global warming, the agency's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, issued a sharply worded statement yesterday calling for "scientific openness" throughout the agency.
"It is not the job of public-affairs officers," Dr. Griffin wrote in an e-mail message to the agency's 19,000 employees, "to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff."
The statement came six days after The New York Times quoted the scientist, James E. Hansen, as saying he was threatened with "dire consequences" if he continued to call for prompt action to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. He and intermediaries in the agency's 350-member public-affairs staff said the warnings came from White House appointees in NASA headquarters.
Other National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists and public-affairs employees came forward this week to say that beyond Dr. Hansen's case, there were several other instances in which political appointees had sought to control the flow of scientific information from the agency.
They called or e-mailed The Times and sent documents showing that news releases were delayed or altered to mesh with Bush administration policies...
Climate science has been a thorny issue for the administration since 2001, when Mr. Bush abandoned a campaign pledge to restrict power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, and said the United States would not join the Kyoto Protocol, the first climate treaty requiring reductions.
But the accusations of political interference with the language of news releases and other public information on science go beyond climate change.
In interviews this week, more than a dozen public-affairs officials, along with half a dozen agency scientists, spoke of growing efforts by political appointees to control the flow of scientific information...
One NASA scientist, William Patzert, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, confirmed the general tone of the agency that year.
"That was the time when NASA was reorganizing and all of a sudden earth science disappeared," Mr. Patzert said. "Earth kind of got relegated to just being one of the 9 or 10 planets. It was ludicrous..."
The Big Bang memo came from Mr. George Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.
In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."
It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."
The memo also noted that The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual specified the phrasing "Big Bang theory." Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's boss, said in an interview yesterday that for that reason, it should be used in all NASA documents.
The Deutsch memo was provided by an official at NASA headquarters who said he was upset with the effort to justify changes to descriptions of science by referring to politically charged issues like intelligent design. Senior NASA officials did not dispute the message's authenticity...
More about this tool here.
Memo to the Dominionists: it's hard to use your nukular capability to convert the heathen with Faith-based missile guidance systems.
Although if there's someone who deserves an admonishment from Darth Rumsfeld about his disturbing lack of Faith, it is Michael Griffin, the Computer Sciences Corporation a.k.a. DynCorp link to Star Wars.
Like Paryngula says, this rot goes deep. It's part of the mindset of the Dominionist 30% of us who would support Dear Leader if he disbanded Congress tomorrow and sent all Undesirables to re-education camps. If you haven't read this about the War on Science division of the War on Terra, you need to.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
A Death Star for Darth Rumsfeld
"President Bush on Friday nominated Dr. Michael D. Griffin, a physicist and engineer who is a strong advocate of human space flight, to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as it tries to revive the shuttle program and return humans to the moon.
Dr. Griffin, who is head of the space department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., has held numerous posts in the aerospace industry and was president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit investment organization sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency. He also served as the deputy for technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and worked on missile defense systems from 1986 to 1991...
In April 2004, Dr. Griffin took his current post as head of the space department at the Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he had worked in the early 1980's. In 1986, he joined the Pentagon's "Star Wars" program, which was aimed at developing a missile defense shield.
Dr. Griffin worked at NASA from 1991 to 1994 before moving on to posts in private industry, going to Orbital Science Corporation in Dulles, Va. He also worked for Computer Science Corporation in El Segundo, Calif.
As a top official at In-Q-Tel, he helped invest about $45 million a year in federal money in projects including software and other technology designed to sort massive quantities of data like intercepted e-mail messages and satellite images."
Computer Sciences Corporation? Hmmm... that sounds familiar.
Computer Sciences Corporation (NYSE: CSC) today announced that the company has completed its acquisition of DynCorp...
And where else... ah, I know: "The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center awards its new Onsite Technical Support Services Contract to Computer Sciences Corporation with EG&G as its Major Teaming Partner...
EG&G, headquartered in the Washington, DC area, is a leading provider of technical and support services to the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, and Commerce and to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The company, which is wholly owned by the Carlyle Group, employs 4,200 people worldwide."
I suppose if you're going to have Total Information Awareness, it pays to have the guys who run the computer systems run the satellites, too.
And it must be nice to have somebody like DynCorp around to do the dirty work.
Dr. Griffin, who is head of the space department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., has held numerous posts in the aerospace industry and was president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit investment organization sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency. He also served as the deputy for technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and worked on missile defense systems from 1986 to 1991...
In April 2004, Dr. Griffin took his current post as head of the space department at the Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he had worked in the early 1980's. In 1986, he joined the Pentagon's "Star Wars" program, which was aimed at developing a missile defense shield.
Dr. Griffin worked at NASA from 1991 to 1994 before moving on to posts in private industry, going to Orbital Science Corporation in Dulles, Va. He also worked for Computer Science Corporation in El Segundo, Calif.
As a top official at In-Q-Tel, he helped invest about $45 million a year in federal money in projects including software and other technology designed to sort massive quantities of data like intercepted e-mail messages and satellite images."
Computer Sciences Corporation? Hmmm... that sounds familiar.
Computer Sciences Corporation (NYSE: CSC) today announced that the company has completed its acquisition of DynCorp...
And where else... ah, I know: "The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center awards its new Onsite Technical Support Services Contract to Computer Sciences Corporation with EG&G as its Major Teaming Partner...
EG&G, headquartered in the Washington, DC area, is a leading provider of technical and support services to the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, and Commerce and to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The company, which is wholly owned by the Carlyle Group, employs 4,200 people worldwide."
I suppose if you're going to have Total Information Awareness, it pays to have the guys who run the computer systems run the satellites, too.
And it must be nice to have somebody like DynCorp around to do the dirty work.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Will the last astronaut turn out the lights?
This effectively ends any official space program in the United States. Or any one not funded by black budgets anyway.
[tip o'teh tinfoil to Danger Room]
It's what happens when you put an ex-CIA ex-InQTel CEO astrophysicist in charge of NASA.
Sept. 9, 2008 -- NASA is about out of options for keeping U.S. astronauts in space after 2011.
Unless President George Bush intervenes, or whoever succeeds him in January immediately steps into the space arena, the dismantling of the space shuttle program will be too far along to reverse course.
"That horse has left the barn," wrote NASA's former shuttle manager Wayne Hale in his Web blog.
The three-ship fleet is scheduled for retirement in 2010. NASA wants to use the shuttle's budget for developing replacement ships that can go to the moon as well as to the International Space Station. The new vehicle, called Orion, won't be ready until 2015 -- five years after the shuttle stops flying.
NASA had counted on buying Russian Soyuz capsules to transport crews to the space station during the gap. But in recent interviews, NASA administrator Michael Griffin said he has no hope Congress will pass the legislation needed for NASA to keep the Soyuz assembly lines running.
"My guess is that there is going to be a lengthy period with no U.S. crew on (the space station) after 2011," Griffin wrote in an email to top NASA managers that was posted on the Orlando Sentinel's Web site...
[tip o'teh tinfoil to Danger Room]
It's what happens when you put an ex-CIA ex-InQTel CEO astrophysicist in charge of NASA.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Fireworks on the Fourth
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 3 — NASA will try to launch the space shuttle Discovery on Tuesday despite having learned on Monday that a small piece of foam had fallen off the external tank, officials said.
"We're 'go' to continue with the launch countdown," said William H. Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for space operations." Liftoff was set for 2:37 p.m.
The small piece of foam insulation, which fell off a bracket that holds a fuel line in place, weighs less than one-tenth of an ounce, about as much as a penny, and would not have caused serious damage to the shuttle if it had fallen off during ascent, said John Shannon, deputy manager of the shuttle program.
NASA engineers and officials spent the day trying to determine, among other things, whether the remaining foam would stay in place and whether the missing foam might cause ice to form on the bracket that could fall and damage the shuttle.
At an afternoon briefing with reporters at the Kennedy Space Center, John Chapman, the external tank manager, said the loss of some foam did not automatically mean that the vehicle was unsafe.
Still, the decision is likely to raise concerns among those who worry that the space agency has let safety standards slip in the face of pressure to launch the shuttle...
In the afternoon briefing, managers seemed inclined to move toward launching without a close-up inspection, which would have required an extra day. They argued that the inspection team, working 25 feet from the structure that flanks the shuttle, had tools like borescopes that could help examine the tank for damage at a distance.
Ultimately, Mr. Gerstenmaier said, a plastic pipe extension for the borescope camera allowed an examination to take place from about a foot away, and so several inspectors get a close look. "We actually got data that's as good or better than we could have gotten by delaying," he said.
Though the discussion was lively, Mr. Gerstenmaier said, no one on the mission management team or the shuttle astronauts, who were listening in, dissented from the decision. The NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, listened "intently" to the discussion, he said, but "didn't raise any questions or comments."
In recent weeks, Mr. Griffin, overruled his own chief engineer and safety officer, who wanted to delay launching until more work could be done to resolve the foam problems.
On the first day of trying to launch the craft, managers decided that it was safe to fly despite problems that would probably have made one of the 44 on-orbit thrusters inoperable...
That's the CSC/ DynCorp Can Do Concern for Human Assets management philosophy.
"We're 'go' to continue with the launch countdown," said William H. Gerstenmaier, the associate administrator for space operations." Liftoff was set for 2:37 p.m.
The small piece of foam insulation, which fell off a bracket that holds a fuel line in place, weighs less than one-tenth of an ounce, about as much as a penny, and would not have caused serious damage to the shuttle if it had fallen off during ascent, said John Shannon, deputy manager of the shuttle program.
NASA engineers and officials spent the day trying to determine, among other things, whether the remaining foam would stay in place and whether the missing foam might cause ice to form on the bracket that could fall and damage the shuttle.
At an afternoon briefing with reporters at the Kennedy Space Center, John Chapman, the external tank manager, said the loss of some foam did not automatically mean that the vehicle was unsafe.
Still, the decision is likely to raise concerns among those who worry that the space agency has let safety standards slip in the face of pressure to launch the shuttle...
In the afternoon briefing, managers seemed inclined to move toward launching without a close-up inspection, which would have required an extra day. They argued that the inspection team, working 25 feet from the structure that flanks the shuttle, had tools like borescopes that could help examine the tank for damage at a distance.
Ultimately, Mr. Gerstenmaier said, a plastic pipe extension for the borescope camera allowed an examination to take place from about a foot away, and so several inspectors get a close look. "We actually got data that's as good or better than we could have gotten by delaying," he said.
Though the discussion was lively, Mr. Gerstenmaier said, no one on the mission management team or the shuttle astronauts, who were listening in, dissented from the decision. The NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, listened "intently" to the discussion, he said, but "didn't raise any questions or comments."
In recent weeks, Mr. Griffin, overruled his own chief engineer and safety officer, who wanted to delay launching until more work could be done to resolve the foam problems.
On the first day of trying to launch the craft, managers decided that it was safe to fly despite problems that would probably have made one of the 44 on-orbit thrusters inoperable...
That's the CSC/ DynCorp Can Do Concern for Human Assets management philosophy.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
"Not One Thin Dime"- Just Three Billion Dollars Cut
More on the gutting of space science by Darth Rumsfeld's Star Wars minion of NASA, Michael Griffin, from Pravda:
Some of the most highly promoted missions on NASA's scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or perhaps even canceled under the agency's new budget, despite its administrator's vow to Congress six months ago that not "one thin dime" would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars.
The cuts come to $3 billion over the next five years, even as NASA's overall spending grows by 3.2 percent this year, to $16.8 billion.
Among the casualties in the budget, released last month, are efforts to look for habitable planets and perhaps life elsewhere in the galaxy, an investigation of the dark energy that seems to be ripping the universe apart, bringing a sample of Mars back to Earth and exploring for life under the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa — as well as numerous smaller programs and individual research projects that astronomers say are the wellsprings of new science and new scientists...
The cuts have alarmed and outraged many scientists, who have long feared that NASA will have to cannibalize its science program to carry out the president's vision of human spaceflight.
The new cuts, they say, will drive young people from the field, ending American domination of space science and perhaps ceding future discoveries to Europe.
"The bottom line: science at NASA is disappearing — fast," said Donald Lamb, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and chairman of a committee on space science for the Association of American Universities.
Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the New York Republican who is chairman of the Science Committee, called the new budget "bad for space science, worse for earth science," adding, "It basically cuts or de-emphasizes every forward-looking, truly futuristic program of the agency to fund operational and development programs to enable us to do what we are already doing or have done before..."
Astronomers and planetary researchers say space science has provided NASA's brightest and most inspirational moments in recent years: the landing on Saturn's moon Titan, the exploits of the Mars rovers and the stream of cosmic postcards from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Despite Dr. Griffin's assurances, they say that delaying space missions can be a death sentence if there is not money to continue developing technology and to keep teams together until the mission is ready to fly again.
That is the case, said Charles Beichman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with the Terrestrial Planet Finder missions, which are intended to produce images of Earth-like planets around other stars. They are the culmination of a line of missions devoted to hunting for planets around other stars and investigating if they are habitable or already harbor life, a goal, planetary scientists point out, that is explicitly endorsed in Mr. Bush's space vision.
"We're getting ready to fire all the people we've built up," said Dr. Beichman, who is the project scientist for the second of the two spacecraft missions, once scheduled for about 2020. Once those scientists have found other jobs, he said, they are not likely to come back.
"What I feel bad about is turning away a generation," Dr. Beichman said, explaining that planet-finding has been one of the hottest fields in science lately, attracting, in particular, young scientists into astronomy.
...Much of the concern among scientists is for the fate of smaller projects like the low-budget spacecraft called Explorers. Designed to provide relatively cheap and fast access to space, they are usually developed and managed by university groups. Dr. Lamb referred to them as "the crown jewels in NASA's science program."
In recent years, one such mission, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, produced exquisite baby pictures of the Big Bang, while another, the Swift satellite, has helped solve a 30-year-old mystery, linking distant explosions called gamma-ray bursts to the formation of black holes.
Explorers, Dr. Lamb said, are where graduate students and young professors get their first taste of space science. Until recently, about one mission was launched a year, but under the new plan, there will be none from 2009 to 2012. In a letter to Dr. Cleave last fall, 16 present and former Explorer scientists said, "Such a lengthy suspension would be a devastating blow to the program and the science community."
Many scientists said the roots of their plight lay in the Bush administration's refusal to ask Congress for enough money to carry out the Moon-Mars program, announced with fanfare two years ago...
Announced with fanfare: a return to 1969.
The astronauts don't like it either, but then again, they're the ones risking their lives on an unsafe shuttle schedule to keep Dear Leader's life exciting.
Some of the most highly promoted missions on NASA's scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or perhaps even canceled under the agency's new budget, despite its administrator's vow to Congress six months ago that not "one thin dime" would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars.
The cuts come to $3 billion over the next five years, even as NASA's overall spending grows by 3.2 percent this year, to $16.8 billion.
Among the casualties in the budget, released last month, are efforts to look for habitable planets and perhaps life elsewhere in the galaxy, an investigation of the dark energy that seems to be ripping the universe apart, bringing a sample of Mars back to Earth and exploring for life under the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa — as well as numerous smaller programs and individual research projects that astronomers say are the wellsprings of new science and new scientists...
The cuts have alarmed and outraged many scientists, who have long feared that NASA will have to cannibalize its science program to carry out the president's vision of human spaceflight.
The new cuts, they say, will drive young people from the field, ending American domination of space science and perhaps ceding future discoveries to Europe.
"The bottom line: science at NASA is disappearing — fast," said Donald Lamb, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and chairman of a committee on space science for the Association of American Universities.
Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the New York Republican who is chairman of the Science Committee, called the new budget "bad for space science, worse for earth science," adding, "It basically cuts or de-emphasizes every forward-looking, truly futuristic program of the agency to fund operational and development programs to enable us to do what we are already doing or have done before..."
Astronomers and planetary researchers say space science has provided NASA's brightest and most inspirational moments in recent years: the landing on Saturn's moon Titan, the exploits of the Mars rovers and the stream of cosmic postcards from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Despite Dr. Griffin's assurances, they say that delaying space missions can be a death sentence if there is not money to continue developing technology and to keep teams together until the mission is ready to fly again.
That is the case, said Charles Beichman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with the Terrestrial Planet Finder missions, which are intended to produce images of Earth-like planets around other stars. They are the culmination of a line of missions devoted to hunting for planets around other stars and investigating if they are habitable or already harbor life, a goal, planetary scientists point out, that is explicitly endorsed in Mr. Bush's space vision.
"We're getting ready to fire all the people we've built up," said Dr. Beichman, who is the project scientist for the second of the two spacecraft missions, once scheduled for about 2020. Once those scientists have found other jobs, he said, they are not likely to come back.
"What I feel bad about is turning away a generation," Dr. Beichman said, explaining that planet-finding has been one of the hottest fields in science lately, attracting, in particular, young scientists into astronomy.
...Much of the concern among scientists is for the fate of smaller projects like the low-budget spacecraft called Explorers. Designed to provide relatively cheap and fast access to space, they are usually developed and managed by university groups. Dr. Lamb referred to them as "the crown jewels in NASA's science program."
In recent years, one such mission, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, produced exquisite baby pictures of the Big Bang, while another, the Swift satellite, has helped solve a 30-year-old mystery, linking distant explosions called gamma-ray bursts to the formation of black holes.
Explorers, Dr. Lamb said, are where graduate students and young professors get their first taste of space science. Until recently, about one mission was launched a year, but under the new plan, there will be none from 2009 to 2012. In a letter to Dr. Cleave last fall, 16 present and former Explorer scientists said, "Such a lengthy suspension would be a devastating blow to the program and the science community."
Many scientists said the roots of their plight lay in the Bush administration's refusal to ask Congress for enough money to carry out the Moon-Mars program, announced with fanfare two years ago...
Announced with fanfare: a return to 1969.
The astronauts don't like it either, but then again, they're the ones risking their lives on an unsafe shuttle schedule to keep Dear Leader's life exciting.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
"Don't talk to them and they'll go away"
Michael Griffin, the techno-spook head of NASA, thinks he can classify all of NASA and keep Obama's transition team from evaluating it.
For how long, you ask? Perhaps just until he's through destroying all the records of what all those black budget dollars went for.
For how long, you ask? Perhaps just until he's through destroying all the records of what all those black budget dollars went for.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Out of This World Hot Property
NASA can't find original tape of moon landing
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," a NASA spokesman said on Monday.
Armstrong's famous space walk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said.
"We haven't seen them for quite a while. We've been looking for over a year and they haven't turned up," Hautaloma said.
The tapes also contain data about the health of the astronauts and the condition of the spacecraft. In all, some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing, he said.
"I wouldn't say we're worried -- we've got all the data. Everything on the tapes we have in one form or another," Hautaloma said.
NASA has retained copies of the television broadcasts and offers several clips on its Web site.
But those images are of lower quality than the originals stored on the missing magnetic tapes...
700 boxes! Those tapes are valuable. Some private contractor probably pulled up a trailer one night when his security boys were on guard, told 'em to fill it up, and pulled off into the night.
Did I ever mention that Michael Griffin was an ex CSC/ DynCorp CEO?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," a NASA spokesman said on Monday.
Armstrong's famous space walk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said.
"We haven't seen them for quite a while. We've been looking for over a year and they haven't turned up," Hautaloma said.
The tapes also contain data about the health of the astronauts and the condition of the spacecraft. In all, some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing, he said.
"I wouldn't say we're worried -- we've got all the data. Everything on the tapes we have in one form or another," Hautaloma said.
NASA has retained copies of the television broadcasts and offers several clips on its Web site.
But those images are of lower quality than the originals stored on the missing magnetic tapes...
700 boxes! Those tapes are valuable. Some private contractor probably pulled up a trailer one night when his security boys were on guard, told 'em to fill it up, and pulled off into the night.
Did I ever mention that Michael Griffin was an ex CSC/ DynCorp CEO?
Saturday, August 05, 2006
That was then, this is now
Nature 442, 485 (3 August 2006) | doi:10.1038/442485a; Published online 2 August 2006
No more protection
Cutting NASA's science budgets is one thing; rejecting the agency's historic role in the study of Earth is something else entirely.
Ten years ago this month, NASA scientists found possible evidence for life on Mars in a meteorite, kick-starting the nascent discipline of astrobiology (Science 273, 924–930; 1996). That particular evidence has not stood the test of time, and the infant discipline has also disappointed some.
But the astrobiological vision of a Universe that had a role for biology as well as for chemistry and physics was a powerful one. It linked the study of some 4 billion years of life on Earth with a yearning for hints of life beyond. It was a vision that balanced the outward urge to explore space with an inward appreciation of the sort of world from which we set out and to which we come home. This is the sort of balance that NASA needs today — and which, to judge from a contentious change in the space agency's mission statement, its leadership seems happy to lose.
The agency's current priority, set by President George W. Bush and so far acquiesced to by Congress, is to inaugurate a new age of human exploration. This effort, by no means assured of success, will require cuts in spending elsewhere. Science — never NASA's core concern, nor ever meant to be — has suffered as a result. The most recent potential victim is scientific research on the International Space Station, which the agency seems to have considered putting on hold for a couple of years...
President Bush's call for human exploration of the Solar System's more accessible deserts is described as a "vision for space exploration", but this puts the cart before the horse. Although NASA needs direction and leadership, it is a producer of visions as much as their consumer. The Apollo programme, for example, provided a vision of America at its 'can do' best, with an impressive blend of corporate effectiveness, esprit de corps and extraordinary technical achievement.
Apollo also played a key role in perhaps the greatest of the visions NASA has given the world — that of Earth from space. No images from any of the Apollo missions speak more powerfully than those of Earth rising above the barren Moon, or of Earth alone in space, the Sahara golden, the Antarctic diamond white, the clouds and seas and surfaces between them ineffably rich and complex. Winning a new point of view beyond the surface of Earth has provided nothing aesthetically, spiritually or intellectually more important than the ability to look back at our planet below. NASA, as its more poetically inclined supporters have pointed out before, thus embodies the wisdom of T. S. Eliot's "Little Gidding":
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
This vision from outside is not only inspiring; it is also empowering, providing a fresh way of studying the Earth. As the population dependent on Earth's resources grows, and its perturbations of the planet's atmosphere and ecosystems escalate, studies of the processes being perturbed become ever more valuable...
That is why recent changes to NASA's mission statement are more disturbing than any single cut could be. The goals in the mission statement, developed through a thorough set of consultations earlier this decade, used to begin "to understand and protect our home planet". This imperative is now gone, replaced by a commitment to "pioneering the future".
NASA administrator Michael Griffin argues that the agency is still committed to Earth science through the part of its mission statement that commits it to "scientific discovery", and that what "protect" meant was never clear. For all that, the excision still echoes the only decent scene in the movie Superman III: "I hope you don't expect me to save you," that other icon of the American way informs a damsel in distress, "cause I don't do that any more." Except this time there's no artificial kryptonite to pin the blame on. And it's not funny...
This situation should not be allowed to continue. Employees, grantees and others with a stake in the agency should press hard to have the change reversed. A NASA that does not see its interest in the living Earth as essential is as much of a betrayal as a Superman without altruism.
Or a democracy with stolen elections.
No more protection
Cutting NASA's science budgets is one thing; rejecting the agency's historic role in the study of Earth is something else entirely.
Ten years ago this month, NASA scientists found possible evidence for life on Mars in a meteorite, kick-starting the nascent discipline of astrobiology (Science 273, 924–930; 1996). That particular evidence has not stood the test of time, and the infant discipline has also disappointed some.
But the astrobiological vision of a Universe that had a role for biology as well as for chemistry and physics was a powerful one. It linked the study of some 4 billion years of life on Earth with a yearning for hints of life beyond. It was a vision that balanced the outward urge to explore space with an inward appreciation of the sort of world from which we set out and to which we come home. This is the sort of balance that NASA needs today — and which, to judge from a contentious change in the space agency's mission statement, its leadership seems happy to lose.
The agency's current priority, set by President George W. Bush and so far acquiesced to by Congress, is to inaugurate a new age of human exploration. This effort, by no means assured of success, will require cuts in spending elsewhere. Science — never NASA's core concern, nor ever meant to be — has suffered as a result. The most recent potential victim is scientific research on the International Space Station, which the agency seems to have considered putting on hold for a couple of years...
President Bush's call for human exploration of the Solar System's more accessible deserts is described as a "vision for space exploration", but this puts the cart before the horse. Although NASA needs direction and leadership, it is a producer of visions as much as their consumer. The Apollo programme, for example, provided a vision of America at its 'can do' best, with an impressive blend of corporate effectiveness, esprit de corps and extraordinary technical achievement.
Apollo also played a key role in perhaps the greatest of the visions NASA has given the world — that of Earth from space. No images from any of the Apollo missions speak more powerfully than those of Earth rising above the barren Moon, or of Earth alone in space, the Sahara golden, the Antarctic diamond white, the clouds and seas and surfaces between them ineffably rich and complex. Winning a new point of view beyond the surface of Earth has provided nothing aesthetically, spiritually or intellectually more important than the ability to look back at our planet below. NASA, as its more poetically inclined supporters have pointed out before, thus embodies the wisdom of T. S. Eliot's "Little Gidding":
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
This vision from outside is not only inspiring; it is also empowering, providing a fresh way of studying the Earth. As the population dependent on Earth's resources grows, and its perturbations of the planet's atmosphere and ecosystems escalate, studies of the processes being perturbed become ever more valuable...
That is why recent changes to NASA's mission statement are more disturbing than any single cut could be. The goals in the mission statement, developed through a thorough set of consultations earlier this decade, used to begin "to understand and protect our home planet". This imperative is now gone, replaced by a commitment to "pioneering the future".
NASA administrator Michael Griffin argues that the agency is still committed to Earth science through the part of its mission statement that commits it to "scientific discovery", and that what "protect" meant was never clear. For all that, the excision still echoes the only decent scene in the movie Superman III: "I hope you don't expect me to save you," that other icon of the American way informs a damsel in distress, "cause I don't do that any more." Except this time there's no artificial kryptonite to pin the blame on. And it's not funny...
This situation should not be allowed to continue. Employees, grantees and others with a stake in the agency should press hard to have the change reversed. A NASA that does not see its interest in the living Earth as essential is as much of a betrayal as a Superman without altruism.
Or a democracy with stolen elections.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Expendables
NASA is to launch the space shuttle Discovery on 1 July, despite warnings from senior safety officials and engineers that it is not safe to fly.
A meeting held to set the launch date was split on whether the problem of foam chunks breaking away - which brought down the Columbia - was fixed.
Safety officials said modifications carried out since the problem recurred a year ago were still not enough.
But managers decided to go ahead, insisting the crew was not at risk.
"There were very different viewpoints on the issue of whether we were ready to fly or not," US space agency (Nasa) administrator Michael Griffin told a news conference.
"I can't possibly accept every recommendation given to me by every member of my staff, especially when they all don't agree..."
Agree with what his CSC/DynCorp and In-Q-Tel clients want, anyway.
A meeting held to set the launch date was split on whether the problem of foam chunks breaking away - which brought down the Columbia - was fixed.
Safety officials said modifications carried out since the problem recurred a year ago were still not enough.
But managers decided to go ahead, insisting the crew was not at risk.
"There were very different viewpoints on the issue of whether we were ready to fly or not," US space agency (Nasa) administrator Michael Griffin told a news conference.
"I can't possibly accept every recommendation given to me by every member of my staff, especially when they all don't agree..."
Agree with what his CSC/DynCorp and In-Q-Tel clients want, anyway.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Priorities
Budgets Imperil Environmental Satellites
Tight Budgets Imperil the Nation's Environmental Satellites - Vital Forecasting Tools
By MATT CRENSON
The Associated Press
- Budget cuts and poor management may be jeopardizing the future of our eyes in orbit America's fleet of environmental satellites, vital tools for forecasting hurricanes, protecting water supplies and predicting global warming...
...NASA has chosen to cancel or mothball at least three planned satellites in an effort to save money. Cost overruns have delayed a new generation of weather satellites until at least 2010 and probably 2012, leading a Government Accountability Office official to label the enterprise "a program in crisis."
Scientists warn that the consequences of neglecting Earth-observing satellites could have more than academic consequences. It is possible that when a big volcano starts rumbling in the Pacific Northwest, a swarm of tornadoes sweeps through Oklahoma or a massive hurricane bears down on New Orleans, the people in harm's way and those responsible for their safety will have a lot less information than they'd like about the impending threat.
NASA officials say that tight budgets tie their hands, forcing them to cut all but the most vital programs. The agency's proposed 2007 budget request contains $2.2 billion for satellites that observe the Earth and sun, compared to $6.2 billion for operating the space shuttle and International Space Station and $4 billion for developing future missions to the moon and Mars.
"We simply cannot afford all of the missions that our scientific constituencies would like us to sponsor," NASA administrator Michael Griffin told members of Congress when he testified before the House Science Committee Feb. 16...
Unless, of course, the Constituency is Darth Rumsfeld.
...NASA's Earth Observing System was conceived in the 1980s as a 15-year program that would collect comprehensive data about the planet's oceans, atmosphere and land surface. It was originally intended to send three generations of spacecraft into orbit at five-year intervals, but budget shortfalls limited the project to only one round of launches.
Landsat, a series of satellites that have provided detailed images of the ground surface for more than 30 years, is in danger of experiencing a gap in service. Landsat 7, launched in April 1999, is scheduled to be replaced by a next-generation satellite in 2011. But if the existing satellite fails before that date and NASA has not developed a contingency plan, scientists, land managers and others who depend on Landsat images could be out of luck.
The launch of a satellite designed to measure rainfall over the entire Earth, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, has been pushed back to 2012. But the satellite it is designed to replace, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, can't possibly last that long. That means there will be a period of several years when scientists have no access to the accurate global precipitation measurements that help them improve hurricane forecasts and predict the severity of droughts and flooding.
In December, scientists working on the Hydros mission received a letter canceling their program. They were developing a satellite that would measure soil moisture and differentiate between frozen and unfrozen ground, an increasingly important distinction since melting of the Arctic permafrost has accelerated over the past several decades. The satellite also would have improved drought and flood forecasting.
Last month Scripps' Valero was notified that the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project he has led for more than seven years, would be canceled. The spacecraft has already been built, but NASA is reluctant to spend the $60 million to $100 million it would cost to launch and operate it...
The observatory would have provided valuable information about how clouds, snow cover, airborne dust and other phenomena affect the balance between the amount of sunlight Earth absorbs and the amount of heat energy it emits. And because it would have hovered between Earth and the sun at a distance of roughly a million miles, it would have been able to observe the entire sunlit surface of the planet constantly. Such observations could greatly enhance scientists' understanding how much the planet has warmed in recent years and help them predict how much warmer it will get in the future.
A new generation of weather satellites being developed jointly by NASA, the Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has gone so far over budget that federal law requires a review of whether it is worth continuing. Even if the program does survive, the first spacecraft in the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System can't be launched until at least 2010, and probably 2012.
The current generation of polar-orbiting weather satellites is critical to weather forecasting because it offers a complete picture of the planet every six-hours. That detailed coverage is especially important for developing four- to seven-day forecasts, because it gives meteorologists the ability to track weather systems as they evolve in both time and space.
Weather forecasts could be compromised if the launch of the final satellite from the previous generation of polar orbiters, scheduled for late 2007, fails. The chances of a satellite failing on launch are typically about 10 percent.
Billions upon billions for Star Wars. Nothing for predicting the weather. Except for the Air Force, who will doubtless Classify the data.
Tight Budgets Imperil the Nation's Environmental Satellites - Vital Forecasting Tools
By MATT CRENSON
The Associated Press
- Budget cuts and poor management may be jeopardizing the future of our eyes in orbit America's fleet of environmental satellites, vital tools for forecasting hurricanes, protecting water supplies and predicting global warming...
...NASA has chosen to cancel or mothball at least three planned satellites in an effort to save money. Cost overruns have delayed a new generation of weather satellites until at least 2010 and probably 2012, leading a Government Accountability Office official to label the enterprise "a program in crisis."
Scientists warn that the consequences of neglecting Earth-observing satellites could have more than academic consequences. It is possible that when a big volcano starts rumbling in the Pacific Northwest, a swarm of tornadoes sweeps through Oklahoma or a massive hurricane bears down on New Orleans, the people in harm's way and those responsible for their safety will have a lot less information than they'd like about the impending threat.
NASA officials say that tight budgets tie their hands, forcing them to cut all but the most vital programs. The agency's proposed 2007 budget request contains $2.2 billion for satellites that observe the Earth and sun, compared to $6.2 billion for operating the space shuttle and International Space Station and $4 billion for developing future missions to the moon and Mars.
"We simply cannot afford all of the missions that our scientific constituencies would like us to sponsor," NASA administrator Michael Griffin told members of Congress when he testified before the House Science Committee Feb. 16...
Unless, of course, the Constituency is Darth Rumsfeld.
...NASA's Earth Observing System was conceived in the 1980s as a 15-year program that would collect comprehensive data about the planet's oceans, atmosphere and land surface. It was originally intended to send three generations of spacecraft into orbit at five-year intervals, but budget shortfalls limited the project to only one round of launches.
Landsat, a series of satellites that have provided detailed images of the ground surface for more than 30 years, is in danger of experiencing a gap in service. Landsat 7, launched in April 1999, is scheduled to be replaced by a next-generation satellite in 2011. But if the existing satellite fails before that date and NASA has not developed a contingency plan, scientists, land managers and others who depend on Landsat images could be out of luck.
The launch of a satellite designed to measure rainfall over the entire Earth, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, has been pushed back to 2012. But the satellite it is designed to replace, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, can't possibly last that long. That means there will be a period of several years when scientists have no access to the accurate global precipitation measurements that help them improve hurricane forecasts and predict the severity of droughts and flooding.
In December, scientists working on the Hydros mission received a letter canceling their program. They were developing a satellite that would measure soil moisture and differentiate between frozen and unfrozen ground, an increasingly important distinction since melting of the Arctic permafrost has accelerated over the past several decades. The satellite also would have improved drought and flood forecasting.
Last month Scripps' Valero was notified that the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project he has led for more than seven years, would be canceled. The spacecraft has already been built, but NASA is reluctant to spend the $60 million to $100 million it would cost to launch and operate it...
The observatory would have provided valuable information about how clouds, snow cover, airborne dust and other phenomena affect the balance between the amount of sunlight Earth absorbs and the amount of heat energy it emits. And because it would have hovered between Earth and the sun at a distance of roughly a million miles, it would have been able to observe the entire sunlit surface of the planet constantly. Such observations could greatly enhance scientists' understanding how much the planet has warmed in recent years and help them predict how much warmer it will get in the future.
A new generation of weather satellites being developed jointly by NASA, the Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has gone so far over budget that federal law requires a review of whether it is worth continuing. Even if the program does survive, the first spacecraft in the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System can't be launched until at least 2010, and probably 2012.
The current generation of polar-orbiting weather satellites is critical to weather forecasting because it offers a complete picture of the planet every six-hours. That detailed coverage is especially important for developing four- to seven-day forecasts, because it gives meteorologists the ability to track weather systems as they evolve in both time and space.
Weather forecasts could be compromised if the launch of the final satellite from the previous generation of polar orbiters, scheduled for late 2007, fails. The chances of a satellite failing on launch are typically about 10 percent.
Billions upon billions for Star Wars. Nothing for predicting the weather. Except for the Air Force, who will doubtless Classify the data.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
The Language of the Serpent
If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? Like the robotic Opportunity rover rolling across the red planet, you might well see vast plains of red sand, an orange tinted sky, and wispy light clouds. The Opportunity rover captured just such a vista after arriving at Victoria Crater
earlier this month, albeit in a completely different direction from the large crater. Unlike other Martian vistas, few rocks are visible in this exaggerated color image mosaic. The distant red horizon is so flat and featureless that it appears similar to the horizon toward a calm blue ocean on Earth. Clouds on Mars can be composed of either carbon dioxide ice or water ice, and can move quickly, like clouds move on Earth. The red dust in the Martian air can change the sky color above Mars from the blue that occurs above Earth toward the red, with the exact color depending on the density and particle size of the floating dust particles.From the sublime to the ridiculous. All helment and no starship. Theresa Hitchens and Haninah Levine:
After four years and some 35 drafts, the Bush White House has finally released its long-awaited rewrite of the U.S. National Space Policy. Obviously, the administration was keen to get the word out – they quietly posted a 10-page unclassified summary [.pdf] on the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s website at 5 pm on Oct. 6 – the Friday before the Columbus Day long weekend...
While the Clinton version focuses on civil and commercial space, the Bush NSP gives primacy to national security and military space. Example: of Clinton’s five goals for U.S. space programs, two mention national security; of Bush’s six goals, four are related to national security and defense.
While the Clinton policy aimed to highlight international cooperation and collective security in space, the Bush NSP takes a go–it-alone stance, using strong language that asserts U.S. unilateral rights in space while possibly also being intended to "negate" the rights of other space-faring nations. In ominous tones, the document threatens in one section to "dissuade or deter others from either impeding [U.S.] rights or developing capabilities intended to do so" – raising the specter of preemptive action against other nations’ dual-use space technology.
Indeed, even as the Bush policy emphasizes the importance of space security, it goes out of its way to make clear that this security may not, under any circumstances, come from (shudder) international law: "The United States will oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space. Proposed arms control agreements or restrictions must not impair the rights of the United States to conduce research, development, testing and operations or other activities in space for U.S. national interests" [emphasis added].
While the new NSP doesn't go as far as some space hawks wanted it to in openly endorsing the strategy of fighting "in, from and through" space, neither has it served to put a blanket – even a thin one – on those ambitions. And in taking a decidedly "us against them" tone, it is likely to further cement the view from abroad that the United States has taken on the role of a "Lone Space Cowboy." And as much as people love John Wayne movies overseas, that will not be a good thing.
Indeed. And some people even with in the Company aren't impressed. The editor at Pravda, for one:
The Bush administration has adopted a jingoistic and downright belligerent tone toward space operations. In a new “national space policy” posted without fanfare on an obscure government Web site, and in recent speeches, it has signaled its determination to be pre-eminent in space — as it is in air power and sea power — while opposing any treaties that might curtail any American action there.
This chest-thumping is being portrayed as a modest extension of the Clinton administration’s space policy issued a decade ago. And so far there is no mention of putting American weapons in space. But the more aggressive tone of the Bush policy may undercut international cooperation on civilian space projects — a goal to which the new policy subscribes — or set off an eventual arms race in space.
The new policy reflects the worst tendencies of the Bush administration — a unilateral drive for supremacy and a rejection of treaties. And it comes just as the White House is desperately seeking help to rein in the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran. That effort depends heavily on cooperation from China and Russia, two countries with their own active space programs.
The administration regards the policy as a necessary update to reflect how important space is becoming for the American economy and defense. But outside experts who have parsed the language are struck by how forceful and nationalistic it sounds.
Whereas the 1996 policy opened with assurances that the United States would pursue greater levels of partnership and cooperation in space, the new policy states: “In this new century, those who effectively utilize space will enjoy added prosperity and security and will hold a substantial advantage over those who do not. Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power.”
The only solace is that the new policy does not endorse placing weapons in space or fighting in, through or from space, as the Air Force has been urging. But neither does it rule out these activities.
In keeping with the more muscular stance, the administration is also opposing any negotiations on a treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space — arguing that it may impede America’s ability to defend its satellites from ground-based weapons. That seems shortsighted. An international treaty to keep space free of weapons might well provide greater security than a unilateral declaration that we will do whatever we have to do to preserve our own space assets.
Michael Griffin, the NASA administrator, insisted he did not intend to sound jingoistic when he addressed a conference in Spain this month — but he sure came across that way. He wondered aloud what language future settlers of the Moon and Mars would speak. “Will my language be passed down over the generations to future lunar colonies?” he asked. “Or will another, bolder or more persistent culture surpass our efforts and put their own stamp on the predominant lunar society of the far future?”
We fear the old notion that space might provide the perfect arena for international cooperation may be yielding to a new era of competition — one not seen since the cold war race to the moon.
Don't worry, Mikey. That "bolder and more persistent culture"
is probably quite at home with DynCorp tactics.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Inside Job
As time goes by, it will be harder for the Bu$hCo partisans to keep a lid on things like this, unless they manage to produce their police state.
Media hide truth: 9/11 was inside job
By Kevin Barrett
Last Saturday, former Bush administration official Morgan Reynolds drew an enthusiastic capacity crowd to the Wisconsin Historical Society auditorium. It is probably the first time in Historical Society history that a political talk has drawn a full house on a Saturday afternoon at the beginning of final exams.
Reynolds, the former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the ex-top economist for George W. Bush's Labor Department, charged the Bush administration with gross malfeasance, and proposed the prosecution of top administration officials.
Normally, if a prestigious UW alumnus and ex-Bush administration official were to come to the Wisconsin Historical Society to spill the beans about a Bush administration scandal, it would make the news. The local TV stations would cover it, and it would merit front page headlines in The Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal.
Reynolds' indictment of the administration he worked for was a stunning, life-changing event for many of those who witnessed it. As the event's organizer, I have received dozens of e-mails about it from people who were deeply affected.
Despite the prestigious speaker and venue, and the gravity of the charges aired, for most Americans indeed most Madisonians the event never happened. Why? Because it was censored, subjected to a total media blackout. Not a word in the State Journal. Not a word in The Capital Times. Not a word on the local TV news. Not a word on local radio news. And, of course, not a word in the national media.
Why the blackout? Because Reynolds violated the ultimate U.S. media taboo. He charges the Bush administration with orchestrating the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for launching a preplanned "long war" in the Middle East, rolling back our civil liberties, and massively increasing military spending.
When a former Bush administration insider makes such charges, how can the media ignore them? Is Reynolds a lone crank? Hardly. A long list of prominent Americans have spoken out for 9/11 truth: Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Sen. Barbara Boxer, former head of the Star Wars program Col. Robert Bowman, ex-Reagan administration economics guru Paul Craig Roberts, progressive Jewish author-activist Rabbi Michael Lerner, former CIA official Ray McGovern, author-essayist Gore Vidal, and many other respected names from across the political spectrum have gone on the record for 9/11 truth.
Are the media ignoring all these people, and dozens more like them, because there is no evidence to support their charges? Hardly. Overwhelming evidence, from the obvious air defense stand-down, to the nonprotection of the president in Florida, to the blatant controlled demolition of World Trade Center building 7, proves that 9/11 was an inside job. As noted philosopher-theologian and 9/11 revisionist historian David Griffin writes: "It is already possible to know, beyond a reasonable doubt, one very important thing: the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by terrorists within our own government."
A growing list of scientists has lined up behind BYU physicist Steven Jones and MIT engineer Jeff King in support of Griffin's position, as evidenced by the growth of Scholars for 9/11 Truth (st911.org) and Scientific Professionals Investigating 9/11 (physics911.net).
As a Watergate-era graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism, I was taught that exposing government lies and corruption is the supreme duty of the Fourth Estate. I simply cannot fathom the current situation. I do not understand the 9/11 truth blackout. I wish someone would explain it to me...
It's simple, Kevin. The Company owns the media.
Media hide truth: 9/11 was inside job
By Kevin Barrett
Last Saturday, former Bush administration official Morgan Reynolds drew an enthusiastic capacity crowd to the Wisconsin Historical Society auditorium. It is probably the first time in Historical Society history that a political talk has drawn a full house on a Saturday afternoon at the beginning of final exams.
Reynolds, the former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the ex-top economist for George W. Bush's Labor Department, charged the Bush administration with gross malfeasance, and proposed the prosecution of top administration officials.
Normally, if a prestigious UW alumnus and ex-Bush administration official were to come to the Wisconsin Historical Society to spill the beans about a Bush administration scandal, it would make the news. The local TV stations would cover it, and it would merit front page headlines in The Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal.
Reynolds' indictment of the administration he worked for was a stunning, life-changing event for many of those who witnessed it. As the event's organizer, I have received dozens of e-mails about it from people who were deeply affected.
Despite the prestigious speaker and venue, and the gravity of the charges aired, for most Americans indeed most Madisonians the event never happened. Why? Because it was censored, subjected to a total media blackout. Not a word in the State Journal. Not a word in The Capital Times. Not a word on the local TV news. Not a word on local radio news. And, of course, not a word in the national media.
Why the blackout? Because Reynolds violated the ultimate U.S. media taboo. He charges the Bush administration with orchestrating the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for launching a preplanned "long war" in the Middle East, rolling back our civil liberties, and massively increasing military spending.
When a former Bush administration insider makes such charges, how can the media ignore them? Is Reynolds a lone crank? Hardly. A long list of prominent Americans have spoken out for 9/11 truth: Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Sen. Barbara Boxer, former head of the Star Wars program Col. Robert Bowman, ex-Reagan administration economics guru Paul Craig Roberts, progressive Jewish author-activist Rabbi Michael Lerner, former CIA official Ray McGovern, author-essayist Gore Vidal, and many other respected names from across the political spectrum have gone on the record for 9/11 truth.
Are the media ignoring all these people, and dozens more like them, because there is no evidence to support their charges? Hardly. Overwhelming evidence, from the obvious air defense stand-down, to the nonprotection of the president in Florida, to the blatant controlled demolition of World Trade Center building 7, proves that 9/11 was an inside job. As noted philosopher-theologian and 9/11 revisionist historian David Griffin writes: "It is already possible to know, beyond a reasonable doubt, one very important thing: the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by terrorists within our own government."
A growing list of scientists has lined up behind BYU physicist Steven Jones and MIT engineer Jeff King in support of Griffin's position, as evidenced by the growth of Scholars for 9/11 Truth (st911.org) and Scientific Professionals Investigating 9/11 (physics911.net).
As a Watergate-era graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism, I was taught that exposing government lies and corruption is the supreme duty of the Fourth Estate. I simply cannot fathom the current situation. I do not understand the 9/11 truth blackout. I wish someone would explain it to me...
It's simple, Kevin. The Company owns the media.
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