NASA criticism from departing employee

Ian Parker wrote:
:
:Gives ESA spacecraft. However it is manned spacecraft which cost the
:big money. You are right in saying that NASA has sent far more people
:into orbit. However there is the Shuttle - Orion gap. Nothing like
:that in ESA.
:

Certainly nothing like that in ESA, since you first have to HAVE
manned flight on your own vehicles in order to have a GAP in manned
flight capability.

So far, ESA is all gap...

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

On Aug 26, 3:58 pm, eyeball wrote:
On Aug 26, 10:03 am, BradGuth wrote:



On Aug 26, 5:50 am, Ian Parker wrote:

On 25 Aug, 16:18, Pat Flannery wrote:http://www..nasawatch.com/archives/2...well_mess.html

Are things really that screwed up down there?

Is it just a disgruntled employee or is it a symtom of a wide malaise..
If you are in NASA you have to watch your step. Outside NASA you have
to judge by results. There is a gap in manned launcher capability
between the Shuttle and Orion. This is an OBJECTIVE fact not based on
disgruntled employees. Is the NASA malaise due to lack of funding? In
no way.

The NASA budget for 2008 was $17 billion. That of ESA €3 billion. Yet
with a far lower budget ESA seems to be managing to achieve as much is
not more. Ariane 5 BTW is now man rated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europea...//en.wikipedia....

Why does Ares oscillate? How come Armstrong and Aldrin went to the
Moon in 1969 yet Ares can't fly? A lack of CAD expertise would fit. Is
money the object. In the year before the Moon landing expenditure
(inflation adjusted) was 26 billion, and the year before almost $30
billion. Absolute expenditure was just over 5 billion. Look at the
table in the reference. 1975 was the year of lowest expenditure. NASA
STILL has an extremely large budget when compared both with other
space agencies and with other big science projects. The LHC is costing
something around $7 billion if the infrastructure costs are taken into
account. This is a TOTAL budget.

No it is not total money it is focus and competance. Herbert Spencer
has spoken of engineers making decisions in the Apollo days whereas
today everything is referred up to an administrator.

Does the fact tat GWB understands nothing of science and is a self
confessed creationalist anything to do with it?Possibly. One cannot
help comparing NASA with the CPA in Iraq. What links Arabic and
stability theory? A - If you know either you will not get a job with
the US Govt. I talked about using Saturn instead of Ares. Perhaps
people are right one should not look back. It does however seem
strange that what was accumplished in 1969 cannot be replicated today..

- Ian Parker

http://www.lhc.ac.uk/about-the-lhc/who-is-involved.html

There is the strong faith-based considerations and subsequent policy
or mandate that wants all of DARPA/NASA to respect their Earth only
policy, of everything off-world being of inert eye-candy according to
their one and only published interpretation. Perhaps their employee
Finckenor had inadvertently let it slip that he believes otherwise.

On Aug 25, 8:18 am, Pat Flannery wrote:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/20...well_mess.html

Are things really that screwed up down there?

Pat

Yes lord all-knowing Pat, and it's not that such public funded
agencies as NASA and their vendors are not capable of making honest
mistakes, but it's their seemingly endless capability to accommodate
special interest groups and to otherwise cover their butts whenever
things turn out poorly, spendy or lethal. Seems impossible to learn
from mistakes if information is suppressed or getting wrongly
published for PR damage-control.

Quote:
At the highest levels, there seems to be a belief that you can
mandate reality, followed by a refusal to accept any information that
runs counter to that mandate. I'm sure you can all think of multiple
examples (having nothing to do with CAD) without trying very hard.
This reminds me of Clark's law: "Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is
indistinguishable from malice" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark
%27s_Law). I've heard others use terms like "arrogance combined with
ignorance".
end quote:

Clearly insider/incest formulated job and retirement benefit security
is their priority No.1

Their need-to-know and otherwise taboo/nondisclosure policy on just
about everything that truly matters is what goes hand and hand, along
with their impressive truth-lag.

It's folks like yourself that are acting as their public brown-nosed
clown in charge of mainstream damage-control, and apparently they have
a nearly unlimited army of such civil service and x-civil service
subcontracted clowns as their loyal minions that'll willingly follow
your lead.

Our DARPA/NASA is much like a collective swarm of Borg killer bees, as
individually unthinking and otherwise unwilling to ever change their
collective mindset, regardless of the consequences or impending doom
of whomever gets in their way, or dares to so much as question their
authority.

Good folks like Jeffrey L Finckenor are seemingly too few and far
between. It’s a shame they have to exit stage left, in order to
survive without losing whatever is left of their mind.

Quote:
Then between us workers and the highest levels of management another
problem exists. As one person put it: "Where does the bad news stop
going up?" Again, I'm sure you all know of situations where people are
trying to raise red flags, but somehow they never get addressed. It
reminds me of the old joke about promoting growth with powerful
effects.

http://www.thejokejukebox.com/jokes/...S-wordwarning). One
group I know of is considered a success at the highest levels, not
because they've achieved anything, but only because they've voiced
problems. Program level management is so amazed at getting actual
input from workers that it doesn't matter that the news itself is bad.

And I regret that, despite mandatory "No Fear" training, retaliation
is real even if kept strictly legal. I've been here awhile, and am not
naive enough to expect much thanks for helping maintain the critical
path for the last 3 years. However I didn't expect a threat of
personnel actions that typically lead to firing. I didn't expect to be
personally badmouthed by an ED manager in public (when I was not
there) on more then one occasion. However I'm not surprised that the
fact that I talked to the IG was relevant in determining if I would
get the one job that might have kept me at NASA. When I first started
arguing that MSFC had made a bad decision it was with the sure
knowledge that it might cost me my job. For the past 3 years I've
wondered if I'd still be here 6 months later, and now that time has
come - despite the fact that things are arguably worse then we
predicted 3 years ago.
end quote:

Sadly, without investing trillions of our hard earned loot to fix most
everything, it’s only going to get worse, and the next presidential
administration that’s starting off in the hole by some $54 trillion
isn’t likely to fork over that kind of public loot, much less take
advisements from outsiders as to what could resolve many issues.

~ Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth

Incredible! That makes so much sense why can't any of our fellow
posters get it. You should offer your services as a consultant to NASA
or even the POTUS!

Ian Parker and even the likes of William Mook would be far superior to
what I alone would do with our DARPA / NASA. However, as a
contributing team effort I do believe that much of our NASA can be
salvaged, even if becomes another part of our USAF.

It's not that future mistakes and mishaps will not happen. It's about
not allowing cover-ups or special interest groups (aka cabals) to run
the show.

~ Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
Pat Flannery wrote:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/20...well_mess.html

Are things really that screwed up down there?

Kieth never met an anti-NASA rant he didn't like.

Make that an anti-NASA management rant. In my opinion, Ares I is the
biggest NASA cluster to date, shoved down everyone's throat by top level
NASA management.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"jonathan" wrote:

It wasn't all the long ago when the general public
cared quite a bit about what NASA was doing.

Spot on - except for the bit about the general public caring about
NASA.

The American public (i.e. the media) doesn't care what their astronauts do,
as long as they don't die doing it. But if it's another NASA employee who
dies on the job, you hardly hear anything about it in the media.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

On Aug 27, 5:05 am, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:
"Derek Lyons" wrote in message

...

Pat Flannery wrote:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/20...well_mess.html

Are things really that screwed up down there?

Kieth never met an anti-NASA rant he didn't like.

Make that an anti-NASA management rant. In my opinion, Ares I is the
biggest NASA cluster to date, shoved down everyone's throat by top level
NASA management.

It's just the tip of a very dirty iceberg that's AGW melting before
our snookered and dumbfounded eyes.

Perhaps if our DARPA/NASA could use even bigger and spendier cluster
bombs like the last one, at least it'll put on a really nifty blooper
show.

btw, why hasn't the Ares I and their Orion fiasco showed up on prime
time media televised news? (in HDTV none the less, along with command
center audio)

~ Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth

On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:46:29 -0700 (PDT), Ian Parker
wrote:

However it is manned spacecraft which cost the
big money. You are right in saying that NASA has sent far more people
into orbit. However there is the Shuttle - Orion gap. Nothing like
that in ESA.

NASA will be in the exact same boat as ESA during the gap. Both
dependent on rides to ISS by the Russians.

Brian

On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:13:55 GMT, (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

And reading the comments it appears he was fired because he refused to
gracefully accept that his pet software wasn't chosen as the standard.

He's since added some rebuttal to the NASA Watch posts challenging his
assertions, particularly the lack of data to support his claims. He
says that NASA Watch is not the forum for data (which is true) and
implies that his supporting data was already given to the NASA OIG.
But if that's the case, then the IG evidently didn't agree with his
conclusions, as NASA's decisions were not reversed. So NASA
procurement didn't agree with him, NASA management didn't agree with
him, and the IG didn't agree with him. Doesn't that bring us back to
"disgruntled employee?"

Brian

On Aug 27, 9:59*am, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:46:29 -0700 (PDT), Ian Parker

wrote:
However it is manned spacecraft which cost the
big money. You are right in saying that NASA has sent far more people
into orbit. However there is the Shuttle - Orion gap. Nothing like
that in ESA.

NASA will be in the exact same boat as ESA during the gap. Both
dependent on rides to ISS by the Russians.

Brian

That's assuming the next administration doesn't decide to extend the
use of the shuttles. All this talk won't amount to anything after the
election. Who knows what current projects will be funded and what will
be discarded. Maybe Cold War II will cause another space race.

That's assuming the next administration doesn't decide to extend the
use of the shuttles.

My impression from Jorge was that, with the termination of several
supply contracts, the die have already been cast - there is no way back,
at least not for more than a very few missions.

Jan

On 27 Aug, 18:11, eyeball wrote:

That's assuming the next administration doesn't decide to extend the
use of the shuttles. All this talk won't amount to anything after the
election. Who knows what current projects will be funded and what will
be discarded. Maybe Cold War II will cause another space race.

CW 2 means that it might be unwise to rely on the Russians for
transport to LEO.


- Ian Parker