NASA Housecleaning?

[ls317]

New NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin has decided to replace about 20 senior space agency officials by mid-August in the first stage of a broad agency shake-up. The departures include the two leaders of the human spaceflight program, which is making final preparations to fly the space shuttle for the first time in more than two years.

Senior NASA officials and congressional and aerospace industry sources said yesterday that Griffin wants to clear away entrenched bureaucracy, and build a less political and more scientifically oriented team to implement President Bush's plan to return humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually send them to Mars.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/10/AR2005061001911.html?nav=rss_print/asection

[Turbineguy]

1. Less political and more scientifically oriented?

and this is Bush's idea, right?

[Cooley Hurd]

2. MARS, bitches!

That's right, MARS!

[whistle]

3. There goes the Mars mission...I'll bet that many of the top senior

...officials will be replaced by military brains and administrators. NASA will be an extension of the military so that Bush can ram through the Star Wars Defense System.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Certainly. Any science that points to life off of this planet

might upset the fundy base. Too many cameras looking down for purposes other than spotting the backyard pot gardens of cancer grannies might come up with more pesky global warming evidence. And every time someone goes into orbit around the Earth people are reminded that the damn thing isn't flat.

No, NASA has to go.

[MuseRider]

4. With Bush's** brand of science

I assume they are going to pray them into space?

[Warren DeMontague]

7. I think the plan is to post the 10 commandments on the moon. nt

[ls317]

5. Point to Ponder

Also is wondering how many of them got threw under the bus,because of the shuttle accident also??

[spanone]

6. Don't forget about Nukes in space....

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

9. If the focus is on putting humans on Mars

it pretty much scuttles the current remote sensing programs, which have been phenomenally successful. The Mars Rovers program and Cassini's mission to Saturn each cost one-tenth of what one manned mission to Mars will cost. On July 4th the Deep Impact spacecraft will get up-close and personal with comet Tempel 1, slamming a projectile into the surface and recording what is ejected.

The only thing is that these missions aren't "glamorous" because they don't involve the drama of putting humans at risk. Remember how exciting the first moon landing was? Remember how boring the rest of the moon landings were? Quick, who was the fifth man to walk on the moon? Here's a hint: he was the first golfer on the moon.

Real scientists want robot missions. In addition to the lower cost, i.e., more missions, you can put a robot on a mission that would be humanly impossible -- a trip out of the solar system or close to the sun -- or boring, like taking photographs of every square mile of Mars.

Of course, if you want to terminate purely scientific research in favor of finding solutions to "real" problems, like blowing imaginary missiles out of the sky, you've got to eliminate (a) funding, and (b) scientists. The first is pretty easily done by shifting money to some black hole like the Mars project, the second is being done through the current purge and the destruction of public schools through the "no child left behind" program, which emphasizes rote learning over independent thought. And of course, it doesn't help to have a media which lauds celebrity over contribution.

I read recently that the number of children in the U.S. who are expressing a desire to enter careers in science or engineering has been steadily decreasing. Eliminating purely scientific research is going to accelerate the pace.