Yes we can’t have them finding out the real truth that was faked on a sound stage on mars.
Griffin is also the whore who second-guessed his own chief climate-change scientists on global warming.
Since he’s a Bush appointee, I would have expected him to believe that stars are God’s lamps and God blows them out every morning, so I have to say I’m impressed to see the guy actually has some professional competence.
I should be ashamed of myself for assuming the worst.
Sinc he is an appointee, Obama can easily replace him with his own appointee when the time comes. That’s part of what presidents do, they appoint people. No muss, no fuss, new guy in the position.
This, however, is most definately, a good sign.
(Official NASA press release, so there’s no worries about copyright violations from the long quote)
Well, at least someone on the Inauguration Committee has some sense (I wish they all did, buncha fucking asses on that committee). Whoever the smart one is also invited the surviving Tuskugee Airmen and Little Rock Nine.
Slightly off topic, but here’s something I don’t understand:
Obama’s talking about blowing hundreds of billions of dollars on ‘infrastructure’. Experts are saying there aren’t enough infrastructure projects ready to start to be able to absorb all that money, but everyone’s looking under rocks and through their old closets for projects they can dredge up and have funded for the main reason of having a ‘stimulus’.
In this environment, why is Obama talking about cutting NASA’s budget, when NASA already employs hundreds of workers on the Constellation project, and it’s already being built and tons of money have already been spent?
I’m seriously confused about the logic behind this. NASA’s budget has to be cut so there’s more money to blow like mad to stimulate the economy? Does this make any sense?
One of the reasons the Constellation program was structured the way it was, was to keep as many Shuttle-related employees working. That’s why so much Shuttle hardware, like the modified SRB’s are being used. If the shuttle is retired on schedule, and Constellation is delayed, all these people will be on unemployment. Isn’t Obama doing flips and twists everywhere else, including wanting to bail out the auto industry with more money than Constellation would cost in a decade, to avoid just that?
Obama’s said that the original statement on his website about delaying the Constellation program was a “mistake” (his word, BTW) and that he plans on putting more money into NASA. If Griffin’s been “cooking the books” about Constellation, that’s a problem, since continuing to fund it could be putting more money after bad, which Republicans would promptly proceed to beat Obama over the head with.
What exactly Obama will do with NASA, in any case, is an unknown at this point. (He may have made nice noises, but he’s a politician, and its part of their DNA to do such things.) He seems to have picked some bright folks for his cabinet (one Nobel winner), and with Richardson being the guy who got VirginGalactic to locate in New Mexico, it seems likely that there’ll be a strong pro-space slant to his Administration. Will that translate to a strong pro-NASA stance will have to wait until he names a few more folks, I think. If he keeps Griffin at NASA, replaces him with an astronaut, or appoints an astronaut to his science advisory board (picking someone like Buzz or Neil would be a hugely symbolic gesture, if they only had a token level of participation), then I think we can safely say that Obama’s going to be supportive of NASA like he promised.
NASA’s spending is under scrutiny
I love NASA and want it to be the best it can be, so I do hope all this works out in NASA’s favor. It’s important for everybody that NASA do well.
The real problem IMHO is nobody is allowed to “fail” in a gubment beauracracy…really crappy performance A OKAY…fail? feed you to the wolves.
If anybody should be allowed to fail its the NASA folks. But that fear of any failure, either real or percieved, means tons of money wasted trying to prevent the unpreventable rather trying bold things and innovating…
Just MHO…
It depends who you are and where you are in the food chain. At the lower levels you can get fucked for doing just what the big shot told you to do.
Real life example: I was directed to “close out” some test data. After the fact, the SOB who told me to do it tried to deny it (I had annotated that it was closed out “by direction”). What saved me was, I had kept the voicemail message of him telling me to do it.
There are also times when you do things right, and likely as not, some SOB second guesser will try to hang you because he didn’t consider it to be perfect enough. Next time, he will turn around and hammer you for “delaying the comtractor” when you do try to keep things right.
At the highest levels, even the worst performance is tolerated. I imagine, because it might “embarrass the agency” if it ever came out.
No offense meant towards the worker bee’s Steve!
Your take on it certainly has some validity IMHO.
I meant the agency as a whole, even with politics aside and everyone being a team member.
Paraphrasing the old cliche, you cant achieve great things if you arent allowed to fail. Making sure you dont fail means both you dont strive for the big things and you are bogged down making sure the not so big things work. And out there concepts arent even tried to start with.
Glad you covered your ass and survived that one!
Nothing like a crazy SOB boss to make life interesting thats for sure
I learned ages ago, to keep my CYA records and “Pearl Harbor files”. I have finally reached a point where people will listen to me (sometimes), and I’ve “educated” them that I’m not the guy to go after. It only took 30 plus years to get there. Unfortunately, there is always someone jockeying for position, who doesn’t care what he does or who he steps on to get there. There are a lt of good people, but it only takes one in the wrong position to wreck it. By the time it all hits the fan, he’s already skipped to some other job slot, leaving other people to clean up his mess.
I know what you mean. I’m reminded of a video I saw once that showed many many many different early rocket failures, set to music. I couldn’t find a link to it or anything similar. Those kinds of failures were essential and valuable in learning what worked and what didn’t, but they wouldn’t be tolerated nowadays.
The spending is no surprise to me. I work for a NASA contractor (I don’t do NASA work, but most of the people in my office do) and according to the people that work for them they get sent on pointless wild goose chases all the time because NASA is so incredibly risk averse and there’s so much bureaucracy. I am not privy to the details so I can’t give them, but I can say I consider the people I work with to be very smart and take astronaut safety to be the absolute number one priority and they consider it a complete waste of time and money. But when your customer says to do something if you want to keep them as a customer you do it.
It seems that Griffin now has his wife and friends campaigning on his behalf.
Even the guy who first recommended Griffin for the job thinks this is a bad idea:
Oh, I dunno.
Remember a year ago, just after the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis went down? Remember all the talk about all the old, poorly maintained and very probably uninspected bridges that needed to be replaced in this country?
I do, but perhaps those experts don’t.
This whole “infrastructure” thingy is just an excuse to send in the UN teams to round up all the guns.
I thought it was the excuse to send in the guys who’ll forcibly convert us to Islam. Man, I need to buy a program to keep track of these things.
Oh, to be sure, but its a preliminary that the guns be rounded up. Devout Christians are, of course, heavily armed.