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NASA Space Government Politics

NASA Inspector General Under Investigation 130

Posted by Zonk from the seriously-spacey dept.
pinkUZI writes "Apparently, the FBI is investigating reports of NASA Inspector General Cobb doing a poor job with safety inspections and 'retaliating against whistleblowers.' Complaints have been filed by current and former employees." From the article: "The complaints are being reviewed by the Integrity Committee of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency. The complaints describe efforts by Cobb to shut down or ignore investigations on issues such as a malfunctioning self-destruct procedure during a space shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center, and the theft of an estimated $1.9 billion worth of data on rocket engines from NASA computers."
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NASA Inspector General Under Investigation More

NASA Inspector General Under Investigation

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  • Wow, the Maestro [imdb.com] sure has come a long way!

  • Now there's a great commitee name (Score:5, Funny)

    by NiteShaed ( 315799 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:11AM (#14634347)
    "The complaints are being reviewed by the Integrity Committee of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency."

    Experts at weeding out and disposing of integrity and efficiency wherever they're found......

  • Public perception (Score:5, Interesting)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:13AM (#14634362) Homepage Journal
    Many of us who pay attention already have a somewhat negative view of NASA. Monolithic, slow, expensive, etc. I think this investigation will change public perception. Now the general public may view NASA as bloated and poorly run. It'll be interesting to see the repurcussions.

    BTW, "President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency"... that makes me giggle. They have it backwards. They should council the president.

  • NASA just needs more money (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <info AT devinmoore DOT com> on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:17AM (#14634389) Homepage Journal
    If NASA weren't shortchanged so much on budget, there wouldn't be any of these problems. The original Viking landed successfully on Mars, but the budget for that was ~1 billion dollars -- back then! Not coincidentally, the 250 million (in today's dollars) craft from a few years ago crashed. I think the bureaucracy should be fixed, but also you then need to pump some cash into there, so we get more cool consumer spinoff products.
    • NASA just needs more money

      NASA is getting more money. President Bush has been slowly increasing their budget to cover the costs of CEV development and ongoing operations.

      What NASA has traditionally needed is not more money per say, but more commitment. When Congress says they'll fund a new space vehicle, they need to continue funding the space vehicle until it is complete. When NASA says that they need two different vehicles for different tasks, the President should tell them to make a jack-of-all-trades-ma
      • s/President should tell them/President should't tell them/g
        s/per say/per se/g (Per Mr. Coward. :-))
      • One of the advantages of the USSR (and all fasicsts/totalitarian govs.) was that they could fund things for 5-10 years at a time in one vote. Here in America, you have parties that bring politics with them and will kill projects that are part way done.
         
        NASA (and in fact, most hard science projects) are items that are in the multi-billion range.
      • the President should tell them to make a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none vehicle

        In the software world that would be called ... WINDOWS.

        It is always more expensive to make some super-do-everything vehicle. NASA should make every attempt to avoid the shuttle-type mistake again.
        • Indeed. That "should" is supposed to be "shouldn't". I posted a correction in the replies.

          The Space Shuttle was intended to be a straightforward transport for humans, while the Saturn V was to remain the primary method for lifting cargo. Instead, Nixon told NASA to use the Shuttle for everything because the Saturn V was going away.

          It's interesting to note that the CEV is like what the shuttle was supposed to be (except lacking the original SSTO design) and the Shuttle Derived HLV will take the place of the
        • Well to be truthfull the more apropriate operating system woud be Linux because you do want a master of security and stability, not just a "jack" bit of software (look up slang for "I'm alright jack" somehow well and truly appropriate for anything with the M$ logo).

          NASA is all about custom solutions and preparing the way for commercial access into space. The research of space and specifically space travel. There are cheaper ways but unfourtunately until NASA does the hard yards and creates the basic scinc

          • All right, I'll admit, my windows comment was nothing but a karma whore on my part... bad me...

            you want to reward those engineers and scientists with what drives them, getting into space themselves.

            Hey, I am a scientist (insert an obligatory "you insensitive clod" here) in the field and I do not want to go into space... well OK perhaps just a little bit... Oh shit, alright, take my left nut, take it dammit... I really want to thrust my instrument down the throat of the solar acceleration mechanism. I
      • Nasa may be getting "More money" to develop the CEV project and keep the shuttle flying, but last I heard a lot of that was coming from other NASA programs rather than in the form in increased funding to NASA generally.
    • Let me get this straight (speaking as a former NASA contractor). Allegations of waste, inefficiency, SAFETY issues squashed, and purposeful negligence and malpractice by the IG.
      And you'd like to give them more money?
      I prefer the commercial approach where there is some accountability involved. Not trying to trivialize the MANY excellent and hardworking NASA employees, but something serious needs to occur in their management culture. I think this is indicative of the thoughts of many employees. Hold manag

    • Re:NASA just needs more money (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cujo ( 19106 ) * on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:56AM (#14634670) Homepage Journal

      Throwing money at problems doesn't work. It just turns it into a more expensive problem,like the space station, which by my reckoning has cost at least $60 billion dollars (arguably more like $80 billion) and does diddly-squat. In the case in question, the problem is internal NASA politics and culture, which is highly resistant to change, often self-righteously so [nasawatch.com]. This is why most of what NASA really gets done is executed by non-NASA entitites: JPL (run by Cal Tech), APL (run by Johns Hopkins), and various university groups, non-profits and consortia.

      The other problem with NASA is a problem everywhere: pork barrel politics. Once money starts going down a hole, it keeps going down there because the congress critters need it to. Here's a summary of my idea to get rid of it:

      1. At least triple Congressional salaries and beef up the pension to make the job attractive to a wider talent base. You can't keep two homes, one of them in D.C., for any less than $350,000/year, and current slary for most is $162,100/yr. This small investment would pay off in spades - Ithink we should value our legislators at least as miuch as our college basketball coaches.
      2. Let each state determine that state's method of electing or appointing and unseating senators. I think the ideal would be a lifetime appointment by the governor with legislative approval and with recall by a 2/3 vote of the legislature.
      3. Representatives still elected directly, but limited to a single 6 year term. Stagger the elections so discontent with a particular party's policies can be felt every two years.
      4. Require each congressperson to sign their earmarks.

      • Re:NASA just needs more money (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Buran ( 150348 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:28AM (#14635437)
        "At least triple Congressional salaries and beef up the pension"? They already get ridiculously cushy pensions as it is -- FOR LIFE -- and get more than enough from their lobbyists etc. Who the hell needs two homes anyway? I do just fine with my single one at 1000 sq. ft. We really need to go back to true citizen-legislators.

        Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders" is an interesting read because it's largely about one idea of what reconstructing the government (and improving and simplfying it) would be like assuming the "high command" were taken out all at once, so normal succession procedures couldn't be carried out. In the book, the President decides to replace most of Congress (read the book for what happened to them - I won't spoil it all!) by having ordinary people, like farmers and regular working people, serve in Congress. He does this because he felt that the Founding Fathers intended legislators to be selected this way (and I agree). The system has gotten as messy as it is because it wasn't ever meant to be handled by career fat-cat politicians.

        As for the space program -- actually, yes, NASA does need more money -- the current bug-riddled Shuttle we have now would have been much safer and capable had the budget not been slashed in the first place, and so many great programs get killed because some idiot somewhere thinks they have a better plan for the money, and so much more gets spent to fix the stupidity. For example, the X-38 Crew Return Vehicle that would have allowed a full seven-person crew to return safely in the event of an emergency was killed -- after flight testing was going very, very well -- and now the seven-person ISS is stuck with two-person crews because the Soyuz -- a second-hand technology (though very well made; I'm not slighting it in that way) we have to ram special funding bills through to use, which is totally unacceptable! -- can't handle more right now! (though yes, Soyuz TMA is designed to carry three).

        We need to fully, and properly, fund what we're doing. None of this compromise crap. It just comes back to bite us in the ass.

        The latest casualty of this stupidity: the methanol-fueled engines the CEV was intended to use. Too expensive.

        So why not rename it CV? [samizdata.net]

        • Re:NASA just needs more money (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Cujo ( 19106 ) * on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:55AM (#14635662) Homepage Journal
          "At least triple Congressional salaries and beef up the pension"? They already get ridiculously cushy pensions as it is -- FOR LIFE -- and get more than enough from their lobbyists etc. Who the hell needs two homes anyway? I do just fine with my single one at 1000 sq. ft. We really need to go back to true citizen-legislators.

          They're not supposed to be getting any cash for personal use from lobbyists. I can't quote you chapter and verse from the USC, but I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

          And yes, you need two homes. You have to be a resident of your congressional district, in which you spend a fair bit of time when not in session. Decent housing in D.C. is very expensive and hard to find. So, if you want citizen legislators for limited terms(I do), and you want good ones, pay them like you're serious. 160 K$/year is lower middle class in D.C. and surrounds, and would make it difficult for the bulk of our talent pool to interrupt their careers to take the job.

          • That's true on the houses, although you don't need a huge house to live in temporarily. So the public should not have to pay for mansions. Just an ordinary two-bedroom house should suffice.

            I checked on the salaries and they already do earn what you suggest:

            Congressional Institute - Congressional Myths: Salary [conginst.org]

            So there's no need to give them any more money. Lower to middle middle class is fine -- we're paying them to carry out public service, not live like fat cats. Taxpayers like me expect fair value, not bl

            • We're not talking mansions. A middlin' size townhouse in good condition in a nice part of D.C. could easily run you $600K.

              • You can spend that much in St. Louis, too. But you can also get nice houses for 1/5th of that or less. My neighborhood goes for around $100Kish and it's a nice neighborhood. The houses just aren't huge. Now, go a few blocks over and they get bigger, sure. But you don't have to spend that much, so why should the taxpayers subsidize more than is necessary?
              • Then do like what they do with Presidents and Governers. They get 'issued' a house in Washington, for as long as they hold office.

                Personally, I think that part of the current outgrowth of the federal government is that the Senate is no longer selected by state legislatures. The idea is that the House represents the people, while the Senate represents the States. Allow the state senate to recall them at any time, with a default term of six years.

                Meanwhile, keep up the 2 year period for the house represent

          • One Word (Score:2, Interesting)

            by halltk1983 ( 855209 )
            Dorms...
        • by having ordinary people, like farmers and regular working people, serve in Congress. He does this because he felt that the Founding Fathers intended legislators to be selected this way (and I agree). The system has gotten as messy as it is because it wasn't ever meant to be handled by career fat-cat politicians.

          What it's meant to do and what the system needs are two different things.
          Term limits come from a place of great intentions, so I can't be totally critical. But the way it's worked in Califonia at
          • Ironically, that's what the book I cited is all about -- starting over from scratch. I have no idea, however, if there will be a sequel to it -- the last Clancy book was something of a prequel instead -- describing whether the while thing was successful or not or if the system fell apart again. I'd be interested in such speculation -- after that kind of big "what if?" story, an author should follow up with "this is what I think if".

      • Re:NASA just needs more money (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        2. Let each state determine that state's method of electing or appointing and unseating senators. I think the ideal would be a lifetime appointment by the governor with legislative approval and with recall by a 2/3 vote of the legislature.

        3. Representatives still elected directly, but limited to a single 6 year term. Stagger the elections so discontent with a particular party's policies can be felt every two years.
        ---------

        No, keep the Senate as is - 6 years elected by the people.

        As for the House, turn thi
      • "You can't keep two homes, one of them in D.C., for any less than $350,000/year, and current slary for most is $162,100/yr."

        Actually, I had a better idea. If you're a senator, you're in DC to represent the state, right?

        Have the State buy the house. The State owns it. The Senator lives in it, rent free. If he wants to change it, he asks the state legislature for the money to do so. When the Senator leaves office, he moves out and his successor moves in.

        "Let each state determine that state's method of el
        • Actually, as I understand it--and I may be wrong--senators are appointed by the governor and can be recalled at any time by that governor. The governor can send anybody he or she wants. That said, the governor usually stands by an election because that's what the people want. So the state can decide on whatever system they want for a senator.

          This used to be more the case, until the seventeenth amendment was passed in 1913. As of right now, the governer can only appoint someone if the elected senator cannot
      • Throwing money at problems doesn't work.

        Witholding money usually doesn't work, either.

        What usually does work is putting competent people in charge and letting them and the peer review process direct the money to where it is needed. It's also a big help if Congress and the President listen to competent people (instead of listening primarily to their donors) when deciding overall direction for an agency.

        It seems like lifetime appointments for senators and single term limits for representatives are oppo

  • The trouble with monopolies (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:18AM (#14634391) Homepage Journal
    NASA is a monopoly, one that is in a unique situation that is very hard to debate in terms of allowing more free market competition. I understand that the market doesn't like spaceflight because there doesn't seem to be a profit -- yet. Of course, when computers were first built, there wasn't much room for profit but it is my opinion that the competitive atmosphere of the computer market did more to facilitate cheap and common PCs than any government body did.

    When you have a monopoly, you'll have corruption and laziness. There is no one else offering your product for possibly less money, or at a higher quality, or with more choice. The customer is stuck with what you decide to give.

    It's funny to me that it is the IG that is under investigation. My experience with my state's own IG shows that it is probably more common than not to see shortfalls in those who "police the police" but yet are paid by the "police" they're "policing."

    If no one here is willing to deregulate spaceflight and offer NASA some real competition, how does anyone foresee proper market policing of NASA's spending and development? In the open competitive market, companies fail all the time when they try to take advantage of the consumer. The biggest failures in the open competitive market are usualy companies that are given some monopoly status or public funding (Enron, etc) or are given some form of government power to manipulate the way they report their business financing (Worldcom, etc). There are rarely failures of companies that make truly competitive products at competitive prices.

    I wonder if spaceflight would be different if we spun it out of the federal budget and allowed it to be funded directly by states or even world organizations. Could NASA exist solely on donations of the wealthy and the poor, and could NASA exist on its own without any taxpayer allotment?

    If not, I would argue that we don't need it right now. NASA to me was always a ploy to keep us aware of communism and the USSR. Sure, some good things came out of NASA, but how many of those things might have come to the market cheaper and quicker without it? We'll never know, but I do know I can see what we've spent over the decades, and I'm not sure that I can accept future spending when we know it is getting wasted by bad management of this monopoly organization.

    • Re:The trouble with monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:55AM (#14634666) Homepage Journal
      Kuciwalker is right. NASA has no monopoly. Nearly all spaceflight is actually done by commercial interests. The problem with manned space flight is that it simply isn't profitable at the moment. Thus why no one does it.

      Of course, when computers were first built, there wasn't much room for profit but it is my opinion that the competitive atmosphere of the computer market did more to facilitate cheap and common PCs than any government body did.

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

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

      If no one here is willing to deregulate spaceflight and offer NASA some real competition, how does anyone foresee proper market policing of NASA's spending and development?

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

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

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

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

      • Re:The trouble with monopolies (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jdavidb ( 449077 ) * on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:37AM (#14635500) Homepage Journal

        Believe it or not, one of the most outspoken opponents of the "boldly sit where no man has sat before" space policy was Dan Quayle. I read about half of his memoirs years ago and I remember he related that over and over again he had to fight with people that wanted NASA to never do anything again and to slim down its existing projects. Remember "space station freedom"? He watched it slowly get dismantled and stripped down to a much less ambitious project, while arguing all the while that we needed to do more than just have a space station, but that if we were going to have one, we shouldn't build it so "on the cheap" that it couldn't even do what little it was designed to accomplish.

        Interestingly enough, Quayle said that up until his time the Vice President was considered one of the main administration officials in charge of NASA. I don't know if that's true any more or not.

        • Re:The trouble with monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Friday February 03, 2006 @12:13PM (#14635817) Homepage Journal
          You almost have to feel sorry for Quayle. He was actually a very intelligent and capable individual, but he couldn't speak in public to save his life. Under Reagan's administration, NASA was given broad powers (led in part by George Bush) to develop a plan to get the space program back on track. Reagan knew it would be expensive, but he wasn't willing to throw away the existing investment in the Space Shuttle. Unfortuntately, Quayle wasn't able to maintain a hold on Congress during Bush's presidency. While part of it was the fact that Bush trusted Congress a little too much (not enough killer instinct there), one has to wonder if Quayle's inability to speak [snopes.com] had something to do with it?

          Some of his more famous quotes about the space program:

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

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

          Interestingly enough, Quayle said that up until his time the Vice President was considered one of the main administration officials in charge of NASA. I don't know if that's true any more or not.

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

            I'm guessing there was some kind of hazing or training ritual that led to both of these men ending up with damaged speech centers in their brains.
      • Hmmm...Project Orion [wikipedia.org]...he's so dreamy...
        • Hmmm...Project Orion...he's so dreamy...

          *rolls eyes*

          You do know that Wernher Von Braun went along with the plan to launch an Orion on the Saturn V, right?

          Von Braun was intially skeptical of the Orion design, thinking it to be a fanciful idea. However, after he witnessed the Putt-Putt test [nuclearspace.com], Von Braun changed his tune. He was still enamored with his chemical rockets for liftoff, but he began to envision the Orion being used as interplanetary transportation. Thus the Mini Orion [astronautix.com] was born. If things had gone as

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

        Now that's just nonsense. NASA was developed to provide an environment for rocket development that the military couldn't provide.

        Now, that's just nonsense. NASA was formed to provide a civilian agency to coordinate space research and development, and to get the military out of the drivers seat. (Ike was big on getting the military out of things.)

        America was already falling WAY behind Russia in rocket technology.

        Not noticeably.

        • NASA was formed to provide a civilian agency to coordinate space research and development, and to get the military out of the drivers seat.

          Thank you for repeating what I just said. As I just said, NASA was formed to provide an environment for development that the Military couldn't provide. i.e. A civilian environment that was outside the military structure.

          Not noticeably. In fact, the US was ahead by 1960 when the [Missile|Bomber] gap became a campaign issue. There was a perception that we were behind, but

          • Then what were we doing designing and launching the Jupiter and Thor IRBMs as NASA was formed? Those IRBMs (which we staged in Britain and other European allied countries) forced Russia to develop a crash ICBM program before we were ready. (Which was why Russia got Sputnik up while we had our pants down.) The US military responded with ICBMs such as the Atlas and Titan which would later go on to be used as commercial and military launch systems. The old IRBMs were redesigned for use in the Saturn and Delta

    • NASA is not a monopoly. A monopoly is a business that is either:
      1. Granted an exclusive right to do something (Cable companies today).
      2. a business that excludes all other, typically illegally (microsoft today, standard oil back in the old days).
      3. Or a company who is kicking ass and simply owns the market (Google).

      NASA is a gov. entity who is doing work in an area that private enterprise has not been interested in doing until very recent. Now, they are wanting to get into the market of launching and tourism.

      • "In particular, the gov. really should fund t/spaces access to the moon and LEO. They are looking for 1/2 billion. That is nothing for a probable cheap access. More importantly, we need an alternative in case NASA fails."

        Amen! t/Space might beat NASA to the moon even without a small handout but it would be nice if it got more government support (which they might actually get considering their success & speed so far).

        Barring that if Virgin Galactic works out (which is likely), and/or if Bigelow Aerospace
        • Well, I would like to think that not only the moon, but mars. While many here are opposed to NASA's development of new rockets, it strikes me that a private orgainization could use the heavy lit to send cargo to the moon and to Mars.

          Why Mars? It is far easier to send ppl to go there for a one way mission. That is, they are going to colonize it and mine it. When it comes to the moon, I suspect that it will end up being treated in the same fashion that Antartica is ( you can live there, but no real mining).
          • I think you're simultaneously right and wrong :)

            I'm not aiming for Mars but it doesn't bother me that some do, it's not like it's an either-or situation, both will happen :) I also think you're right about the Antarctic comparison. But then I also think that you're wrong but it depends a lot on point of view and opinion. Not entirely sure if the presently proposed NASA rockets will be that important but they might well be (something powerful will surely be needed for Mars).

            Imo the first semi-continuous pres
          • While many here are opposed to NASA's development of new rockets, it strikes me that a private orgainization could use the heavy lit to send cargo to the moon and to Mars.

            Personally, I suspect that a private organization would be more in favor of using something like SpaceX's $78 million Falcon 9-S9 [wikipedia.org] or one of its descendants, rather than whatever ultra-expensive shuttle-derived heavy vehicle NASA is developing.
    • NASA is now mostly staffed by corporations with cooperation of Universities and foriegn governments. You want to see cheap spin offs? How about commercial satelites, weather applets on PC's showing satellite imagery, google maps?

      If not, I would argue that we don't need it right now. NASA to me was always a ploy to keep us aware of communism and the USSR.

      Yeah we have track Russian Movements so we send satellites past pluto! You forget that pure science can be extremely expensive. Somethings don't have im

    • When you have a monopoly, you'll have corruption and laziness.

      No, it's more like, "When you have a corrupt administration that thinks it has absolute power, you'll have corruption and laziness."

      This is a typical Bush Administration ploy: if you can't get rid of a government agency because it's too popular, gut it from within with incompetent appointees. It's working wonders with FEMA, isn't it?

    • Re:The trouble with monopolies (Score:4, Insightful)

      by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:36AM (#14635497)
      The biggest failures in the open competitive market are usualy companies that are given some monopoly status or public funding (Enron, etc)

      What in the hell are you talking about? Enron failed because they got caught up in the capitalistic frenzy of the Internet Bubble days, borrowed massive amounts of money, spent it poorly on overseas projects and other bad business ideas, ended up with billions of dollars of debt, and then couldn't pay it back to the banks. They were able to get this deep in the hole because they pulled a bunch of shady deals and creative accounting schemes to shift their losses off their balance sheet and make their earnings look better. Last I checked, it didn't have anything to do with a monopoly or government funding. It was primarily the greed and stupidity of Corporate America at work.

      I know the libertarian "corporations do everything better than government" sentiment is popular on /., but the truth is that corporations- like Enron- can often suffer from dysfunctional cultures and incompetency, just like Enron.

      I do agree that government-run enterprises suffer much more from a lack of accountability than private ones, in general but private industry doesn't cure all evils. There's still bullshit, incompetency, bureaucracy, egotism and politics in the private sector.

    • those who "police the police" but yet are paid by the "police" they're "policing"

      Yeah, that's a little odd.

      According to the Integrity Commitee's website [fbi.gov], "The [Integrity Commitee] does not have purview regarding whistleblower retaliation or discrimination matters. Whistleblower retaliation matters fall within the purview of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel." So, I'm not sure how the IC fits in with regards to those allegations.

      Also, the Executive Order No. 12993 (included in a report to the US Senate [ignet.gov]) say
    • I'd be very cautious about taking this story as an opportunity to grind a capitalist's axe when there's obviously something far more interesting going on.

      This is a story being carried in the Big Media about Big Government, which means without any doubt that the whole issue is malarky intended to manipulate public thinking in specific directions.

      What are some of those directions? What ideas are they trying to seed in our ever-fertile minds. . ?

      Here are a couple which jump out at me. . .

      1. "Oh, but Who could

  • No way!!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by CaymanIslandCarpedie ( 868408 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:19AM (#14634398) Journal
    So let me get this straight. They are saying a Bush appointee with no relavent experience is doing a poor job? Inconcievable!

  • Pedigree (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Billosaur ( 927319 ) * <wgrother@opto[ ]ne.net ['nli' in gap]> on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:28AM (#14634456) Journal
    Cobb, a 1986 graduate of George Washington University's law school, became NASA's inspector general on April 22, 2002, after working for a year as an ethics lawyer in the office of the White House General Counsel.

    So he is steeped in the fine tradition of White House integrity and ethics. My question, why did it take this long for this investigation to happen?

  • In related news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `cificap_4k'> on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:29AM (#14634465) Homepage Journal
    Recently surfaced allegations also suggest that Cobb made personal use of the shuttle.
  • malfunctioning self-destruct procedure

    What exactly was suppose to be destroyed, but wasn't?

    • Re:Self Destruct? (Score:3, Informative)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 )
      All rockets are equiped with a self-destruct. If the launch facility loses control, then the rocket explodes.

    • Re:Self Destruct? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Detritus ( 11846 )
      From the article, the backup command destruct system for the shuttle was malfunctioning. Normally this would result in the range being declared red, unable to proceed with a launch due to lack of a working backup system. For the range to be declared green, able to proceed with a launch, there is a long checklist that says what equipment must be working properly, allowable weather conditions, etc. The article says that some AF general waived the requirement for a working backup command destruct system so tha
      • The only bit not present in that post was the role played by the science officer on board. (He set the computer to calculating PI, effectively disabling the autodestruct.)

      • Re:Self Destruct? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Buran ( 150348 )
        The system is designed to cause the vehicle to destroy itself and not just shut down the engines, just to correct anyone who may not be sure about that from what you said. It has been used on many launches, though only once on the Shuttle (to destroy the Challenger boosters, which survived and were flying around randomly because there was no longer any guidance coming from the orbiter's computer systems). Valuable evidence of what had gone wrong was destroyed in the process, but given that millions of peopl
  • I was listening to a story on NPR this morning, that the astronauts on the ISS were going to launch "SuitSat", which is an empty Russian space suit with a radio transmitter inside and an antenna attached to the helmet. HAMs get to track it as it burns through the atmosphere. (What the point of this is, I couldn't begin to speculate...)

    Now I realize the suit isn't empty. It's the last guy who pissed off the NASA IG.
  • The complaints describe efforts by Cobb to shut down or ignore investigations on issues such as a malfunctioning self-destruct procedure during a space shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center

    Apparently, the self-destruct procedure is working quite well for Mr. Cobb.

  • $1.9B worth of rocket data? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @09:48AM (#14634611) Homepage
    and the theft of an estimated $1.9 billion worth of data on rocket engines from NASA computers

    While I usually keep out of the argument of whether or not copying data is theft or not in the piracy debate, how do you value the data at $1.9 billion if it's government data?

    I'm all for funding NASA quite nicely, but were they going to sell their data? Shouldn't the information fruits of NASA's labor belong to the people of the nation that paid for it?
    • Agreed, how do you put a price on this data? Has NASA had bids from other government agencies for this exact data around the amount of $1.9B? Doubt it... ...I hate it when price estimates are inflated to add urgency to a problem.
    • The dollar amount is probably derived from how many man hours it took to create the data which will no doubt include metalurgical tests, vibration dampening, fuel development, fuel consumption per rocket motor, rocket motor development, software packages and a whole host of related matters.

      While NASA would most likely have never sold the data it still cost something to get the data, store the data and use the data when necessary.
    • Not too long ago, a kid was arrested for using one of NASA's storage computers as a storage site for all the movies and pron he was downloading off the Internet. He wasn't even detected until he'd accumulated something like 20 gigabytes.

      None of this surprises me - when I was at NASA Langley, security amounted to having all the main computers with public IP addresses, giving them .rhosts files and praying that their IT security guys would spot intruders. The files were encrypted with DES, which is relatively

  • Integrity & Efficiency (Score:3, Funny)

    by drooling-dog ( 189103 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @10:10AM (#14634778)
    "The complaints are being reviewed by the Integrity Committee of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency."

    Now there's something that inspires confidence...

  • Private/Commerical Structure (Score:3, Interesting)

    by XMilkProject ( 935232 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @10:49AM (#14635099) Homepage
    It's likely that in the near future we will continue to see the advances in space exploration/travel move increasingly to the private commercial organizations. A privately run company is always going to be far more efficient than one that must deal with political issues constantly such as NASA.

    Unfortunately even the huge amount of private funding available cannot compete with the funding the federal government could offer. Maybe the government should start dumping that money into grants and funding for private space ventures, or even offer NASA for sale to companies that are actually accountable to shareholders to do things effectively.

    That being said, NASA's funding is extremely small, most small tech startups have more money to work with.
    • That being said, NASA's funding is extremely small, most small tech startups have more money to work with.

      Um, huh? NASA's FY06 budget, across all missions, is about 16.5 billion. It goes up by about 1.5 billion over the next 4 years. I'm going to avoid getting into whether this is enough money or not. I work at a NASA center and I have my own views of how money is spent & allocated.

      If you can point me out a tech startup that is seeded with a 16 BILLION dollar budget PER YEAR, please post because t

  • The complaints are being reviewed by the Integrity Committee of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency.

    Some news is just too hard to swallow.
  • Well if he had the proper funding this wouldn't be an issue. Let's Bring the Budget committee up on charges!
  • "$1.9 Billion worth of data" seems like a contradiction in terms to me.

    I suggest putting it on the market and finding the strike price.
    • I don't know why this has been such a hot button quote for /.'ers. It's not an "IP" thing. It's a "we spent $1.9 billion in man hours and research facilities (labs & equipment) to compile and analyze that data and someone walked away with a copy of it" thing.
      • So, actually, it was free data. Since it was produced by the U.S. government, after all, it is public domain. So, in reality, someone copied some public domain data. I guess I can see why it was "sexed-up" for the press release.
        • So, actually, it was free data.

          Well, it assumably cost $1.9B to originally compile and analyze, but I suppose the true value of data once it already exists depends on its usefulness to interested parties. Whether or not it's available to the public free-of-charge is a different question, and you are free to inquire with NASA, I suppose. I can't guess why you'd care to, though.

          Since it was produced by the U.S. government, after all, it is public domain.

          I suppose that depends on its level of secret classi
  • Specifically Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director James E. Hansen's allegation [nytimes.com] that NASA's public affairs commisars upset with his stand on global warming have been denying journalists official access to him and censoring his lectures, papers and postings on the Goddard Web site. Other NASA employees have corroberated his story.

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