NASA reforms will never, ever succeed

I may be a skeptic - having been expelled from UT Austin's Aerospace
Engineering a semester short of my Ph.D for having found a faster,
safer, more efficient Earth to Mars trajectory - but I doubt very
seriously that any reforms at NASA will last even into the next
administration.

They have already established a rigid constraint against success.
After all the middle managers have their psych evaluations, and a
chance to change; some new people will be brought in, and others
relocated. The office environment they will be faced with will be
quite hostile (people despise psych tests to begin with, and abhor
anybody who replaces a supervisor who is outsoured by one), and the
bright, creative, resourceful new managers will be crushed to a pulp
in no time. Resistence is futile. Conformity is the evil beast in
the closet of every worker, everywhere - especially with jobs being
sent overseas by the boatload, competition for the few that remain
escalating. There's no way in hell you can isolate anybody anywhere
from those pressures...

Be that as it may, the only possible way NASA will succeed in creating
the kind of corporate culture they are mandated to create is to
institutionalize the reforms - all managers, until the end of time (or
NASA, whichever comes first) must pass these psych reforms. Those who
implement the psych reforms must themselves be policed, and thus be
beyond politics.

Which brings up another problem: psychiatry is synonomous with
politics. Consider that ten years ago there was a popular self help
technique promoted by psychiatry called orgasmic reconditioning. This
is a way for gays to re-orient their sexuality. In recent editions of
the same textbooks, this technique is not even mentioned.
Psychiatrists now consider it too stressful - or, reading between the
lines, they've been lobbied by gay groups to excise it from the
medical lexicon because it implies that gays are mentally ill. The
consequences of this has been that the rest of the population has been
denied the use of this important practice: adulterers wanting to
re-orient their cravings from prostitutes to lawful spouses; clerics
wanting to get turned on my Jesus instead of small boys; even good
christians wanting to try and get an erection from porn instead of
viagra.

So NASA is going to have to isolate the shrinks from the politicians,
as well as from the pharmaceutical companies. Good luck.

A formitable problem is that the NASA culture extends far, far beyond
the 18,000 official employees - to perhaps five times that many
contractors, academics, consultants, and aerospace firms. All of
these institutions are much worse than NASA when it comes to freedoms
of speech and willingness to speak out, and to do the job right the
whole damn aerospace universe has to be gutted of all the prejudice,
fear, and loathing not only for psychiatrists but for bright,
courageous, outspoken people period. Moreover, given the blurring of
boundaries with our international friends because of the International
Space Station, the reforms must be practically global. Every space
agency in the world will have to implement the same reforms, and the
same long term stragety. We're talking Star Fleet Command as an
adjunct to the United Nations here, not some minor NASA pencil
sharpening ~ and it will have to be so high profile that the only
feasible office building is the replacement towers for the 9/11
attacks in New York City.

Like I said, it will never happen. I predict the next major space
disaster will happen within five years, NASA will be shut down, and
the American space effort will die an ignominous death. We might as
well save the space program the expense and gut NASA of all its non
commercial contracts, delegate the pieces that are left to the
military space commands, and accept as inevitable the status quo of
scientific conformity that's been in place since the Dark Ages.

Given the horror I experienced at UT Austin, I admit that I won't
myself shed a tear when that happens. I certainly won't turn over a
finger to try and help it happen otherwise.

Bill Clark

"Bill Clark" wrote in message
om...
I may be a skeptic - having been expelled from UT Austin's Aerospace
Engineering a semester short of my Ph.D for having found a faster,
safer, more efficient Earth to Mars trajectory

I would bet, oh, about a trillion, billion, quadrillion dollars that this
didn't happen as described above.

I have submitted the attached statement to my Texas state Senator and
Representative, the Chancellor, President and Board of Regents at UT
Austin, and I thought you might be interested in reviewing the case.

Regards,

Bill Clark

- - - - -

Senator Barrientos,

I am 46 years old and have been a licensed Professional Engineer in
half a dozen different disciplines. I got my BS from UT Austin in
1978, and an MS from UT Austin in 2001.

I was a semester short of a Ph.D in Aerospace Engineering at UT Austin
- my project was a computer model of the Earth to Mars trajectory,
with applications for the missile defense targeting system - and I was
expelled for non-academic reasons a semester short of matriculating
with a Ph.D. I appealed the dismissal through the whole UT
bureaucracy for two solid years, to no avail.

A few weeks ago I submitted a statement to the Texas Board of
Professional Engineers giving evidence and documentation of several
serious offenses done by the ASE Department. They include slander,
retaliation, misrepresentation, and theft of services. The
documentation I submitted to the PE Board included letters from
esteemed professors admitting to all these offenses in their own
words.

I received a letter back from the PE Board yesterday stating that the
things I have described are "...beyond their jurisdiction because they
do not involve the practice of engineering."

As a lifelong engineer, a published author, and a third generation
engineer; I find this ruling by the Board to be offensive. What can
be more the practice of engineering than the teaching of it? When I
was a consulting engineer most of my day was devoted to training
subordinates, educating clients, and sharing my experience and
knowledge with anybody and everybody. To separate this from the
"practice of engineering" is to narrow the definition of engineering
to little more than the equivalent of a computer algorithm.

The most disturbing part to me is that the professors at the
University - all of whom are licensed PE's - know they are beyond the
law, and have no guilt for breaking every rule in the book. I think
the Texas Legislature should consider the particulars of my case, and
contemplate the idea of enforcing some kind of ethical, moral, and
humanistic standards upon those who teach engineering to furure P.E.'s
and, in their comportment in the classroom, set the standard of
behavior for all the impressionable students in their realm of
influence.

Regards,

Bill Clark

XC: P.E. Board
XC: Lee Smith, UT VP for Legal Affairs

"John Krempasky" wrote in message ...
"Bill Clark" wrote in message
om...
I may be a skeptic - having been expelled from UT Austin's Aerospace
Engineering a semester short of my Ph.D for having found a faster,
safer, more efficient Earth to Mars trajectory

I would bet, oh, about a trillion, billion, quadrillion dollars that this
didn't happen as described above.

I'll take you up on that bet. Consider the following:

I refer you to the four editions of the popular book "The Relaxation
and Stress Reduction Workbook" for the documentation you seek on the
"orgasmic reconditioning" practice. As for the issue of
homosexuality, it's easy to search the literature from say fifteen
years ago, then compare it to the modern day and to see that modern
day psychologists consider this method to be too stressful,
homosexuality irreversible - and their decision irreversible.

You can ignore this issue all you like, but the bottom line is this:
evidently something has happened in the last fifteen years that has
diminished the stress coping capacity of ALL people everywhere. It is
not hard to qualify this statement: the Gulf War syndrome was a
stress disorder, never before experienced by soldiers. AIDS is
essentially a stress disorder, whereby the immune system is weakened.
The need for Viagra is a clear signal that fundamental physiological
processes of the human body are breaking down.

All of these conditions, of course, have chemical solutions. All I
was saying is that modern advertising is so powerful and the marketing
budget of the pharmaceutical companies is so limitless, that they are
driving all people into a chemical dependency and a chemical solution
for basic biological processes. Other than my scrawling in the
newsgroups, there is no opposition anywhere to this trend - thus, it
is not hard to extrapolate the trend, to say what I have said. I'm
sorry if that offends you, but if you were to study up on the issues I
think you would see more than an iota of truth in my statements.

I did not say that my theory was correct. I only stated that it fits
the facts better than any other, and implied that the political
implications are too stressful for psychiatrists to consider the
notion. That being the case, I suppose humanity will ultimately be a
buch of spineless quadrupeds cringing in the darkess, hiding from the
truth and shivering in the shadows afraid to move forward. I think
this whole NASA scenario pretty well proves all of that, without any
further ado.

Ignorance is bliss - ignore it while you still have some accessible
gray matter.

Bill Clark

Ever hear the story of the little engine that could? He kept saying,
"I think I can,I think I can" and he did make it up the hill.

If a person constantly says he can't do something ( something that he
has the capactiy to succeed in ) he will not succeed. It's called,
and I think you know this, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A long time ago, but within modern history, a bunch of colonies
decided that they wanted to do what had never been done befo break
from it's parent country.

That little group of colonies grew to a super power that has made as
many mistakes as any other but did things that no other country has in
the history of our world.

I have no doubt that we can go to Mars and beyond....

But if we all decide we can't then we will not.

Ed

"P. Edward Murray" wrote in message
om...
Ever hear the story of the little engine that could? He kept saying,
"I think I can,I think I can" and he did make it up the hill.

If a person constantly says he can't do something ( something that he
has the capactiy to succeed in ) he will not succeed. It's called,
and I think you know this, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A long time ago, but within modern history, a bunch of colonies
decided that they wanted to do what had never been done befo break
from it's parent country.

That little group of colonies grew to a super power that has made as
many mistakes as any other but did things that no other country has in
the history of our world.

I have no doubt that we can go to Mars and beyond....

But if we all decide we can't then we will not.


If America and Europe carry on the way we're going, the only reason for
going to Mars will be to see first-hand how the Chinese are getting on

Ian

Bill Clark skrev

I may be a skeptic - having been expelled from UT Austin's Aerospace
Engineering a semester short of my Ph.D for having found a faster,
safer, more efficient Earth to Mars trajectory

This sounds almost too good to be true. Would you mind giving the details
here or on some webpage?

--
Øystein Olsen, , http://folk.uio.no/oeysteio
Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, http://www.astro.uio.no
University of Oslo, Norway

I have submitted the attached statement to my Texas state Senator and
Representative, the Chancellor, President and Board of Regents at UT
Austin, and I thought you might be interested in reviewing the case.

Regards,

Bill Clark

- - - - -

Senator Barrientos,

I am 46 years old and have been a licensed Professional Engineer in
half a dozen different disciplines. I got my BS from UT Austin in
1978, and an MS from UT Austin in 2001.

I was a semester short of a Ph.D in Aerospace Engineering at UT Austin
- my project was a computer model of the Earth to Mars trajectory,
with applications for the missile defense targeting system - and I was
expelled for non-academic reasons a semester short of matriculating
with a Ph.D. I appealed the dismissal through the whole UT
bureaucracy for two solid years, to no avail.

A few weeks ago I submitted a statement to the Texas Board of
Professional Engineers giving evidence and documentation of several
serious offenses done by the ASE Department. They include slander,
retaliation, misrepresentation, and theft of services. The
documentation I submitted to the PE Board included letters from
esteemed professors admitting to all these offenses in their own
words.

I received a letter back from the PE Board yesterday stating that the
things I have described are "...beyond their jurisdiction because they
do not involve the practice of engineering."

As a lifelong engineer, a published author, and a third generation
engineer; I find this ruling by the Board to be offensive. What can
be more the practice of engineering than the teaching of it? When I
was a consulting engineer most of my day was devoted to training
subordinates, educating clients, and sharing my experience and
knowledge with anybody and everybody. To separate this from the
"practice of engineering" is to narrow the definition of engineering
to little more than the equivalent of a computer algorithm.

The most disturbing part to me is that the professors at the
University - all of whom are licensed PE's - know they are beyond the
law, and have no guilt for breaking every rule in the book. I think
the Texas Legislature should consider the particulars of my case, and
contemplate the idea of enforcing some kind of ethical, moral, and
humanistic standards upon those who teach engineering to furure P.E.'s
and, in their comportment in the classroom, set the standard of
behavior for all the impressionable students in their realm of
influence.

Regards,

Bill Clark

XC: P.E. Board
XC: Lee Smith, UT VP for Legal Affairs