“Man in space is a waste of money.”

Ahh… the return of a classic false meme.

And this is why Griffin went to war… he, and others, fear the populist resurgence of a short-sighted mindset that echoes the false “Billions for space? Wasted! AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!” meme of decades and squandered opportunities past…

… a meme retooled for the 21st century as the original meme of “Space research is a waste!” turned out to be so wildly wrong…

… but even so a meme not based in any reality but on the politician’s perceived need to placate an “angry” public… with said same public “anger” being stirred up mostly by same-said politicians using any ignorant sound bites ready to hand.

(Look for a group of Blue Dogs to start up the mindless yipping very shortly.)

And as Griffin actually has been squandering money… not with a design decision that didn’t pan out, but with his refusal to change course afterward when it became evident that the “facts on the ground” demanded changes… I’d think Griffin would be feeling terribly vulnerable right now.

People in his organization and in the private contractors are working together designing better spacecraft on their own time, an incoming President whose first words re: NASA were the old mantra of “Gut it!”, and the current economic upheavals where NASA’s entire budget wouldn’t be a drop in the ocean but where NASA’s past status as “favored congressional whipping boy” makes them stand out.

Think of it as a variation on the “Democrats as battered-spouse” meme… with the battered-spouse taking it out on the family dog.

I think that’s where most of the institutional support for Ares in NASA comes from… “Oh god they’ll be coming after *everything* again if they find out we need to change Ares!”

The solution for NASA, I think, is to arrange it so that NASA has clear goals and rational oversight… but is no longer a prime target for congressional budget cherry-picking.

One thought has been 5-year budgets.

Might make sense, as designing and testing spacecraft is an iterative feedback process with the occasional “bang!” thrown in. Offsetting that process from the usual mad budget scramble, but still requiring oversight and congressional input, that could work…

According to industry officials, Griffin started calling heads of companies working for NASA, demanding that they either tell the Obama team that they support Constellation or refrain from talking about alternatives. . . . One consultant said that when [transition team leader] Garver invited “several” midlevel aerospace executives to speak to the team, their bosses told them not to go and warned that anything said had to be cleared first with NASA because Griffin had demanded it.

Ah yes, the famous Bush appointee management style.

Obviously, after a stunt like that, Griffin is toast at NASA, no matter how many emails his wife sends–but you just know that once he’s out the door, he, the little woman and anyone still toadying to him will try to spin the reason for his dismissal as “partisan.”

Sounds like wifey-poo doesn’t want to lose her gold cards!!

Otherwise, … I’ll sign your petition for his removal.

Apparently Griffin just wanted to build a modern day follow-on to the Saturn V and return America to space exploration.

This, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, as the forced retirement of the Saturn V is now regarded as one of the worst U.S. space policy decisions ever… by a *lot* of people…

but…

1. As a result Griffin stood by silently or even aided and abetted as Bush-appointed climate-change deniers and creationists instituted their insane policies at Nasa, at *Nasa* of all places, on the behalf of the neocons and theocons.

2. Ares I and V have spiraled out of control. Under-powered and over-budget… to the point where the designers of the Orion crew capsule are having to cut out important safety advances just to fit the capsule on the Ares I.

And now Ares will eat just about all other new Nasa space science and space exploration budgets… and needs even more.

And as for why the drama in front of a notoriously no-drama Obama?

Well, there are some competing space architectures that may be able to pick up the threads where Griffin’s Ares fell down, and the proponents have naturally been pushing them… but since Griffin “went Bushie” the combination of pride and intolerance for other ideas has him lashing out at the thought… and he’s also lashing out at Obama, whom he fears will gut Nasa at the slightest excuse.

That would be silly thing for Obama to do, of course, and Obama promptly had his chain yanked up short by his advisers when he ventured that not-bright notion on the campaign trail.

But that seems to outline the plight Griffin is in.

Griffin: a man with a dream… who apparently wasn’t the right person for the job.

The article details how they would have died, anyways, because their space suits are inadequate for survival; their heads would have smashed inside of their helmets. This is the type of competence that the Mrs. thinks he should be rewarded for? He sends astronauts up into space with a maybe you’ll survive, maybe you won’t attitude? He does not care about the lives of astronauts, so why should he be rewarded for not insuring that they, at the very least, have space suits that could give them a chance of survival if they bailed out? Oh..I forgot..the astronauts have not yet been equipped with the parachutes that they require in order to bail out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..asa-report

The fact that your husband is somewhat of a dick may be the problem. And that’s not rocket science.

“To the Moon, Alice. To the Moon!”

Hysterical! Best comment of the day.

This is a related item I have from my scandals list.

398. The secrecy and the lack of accountability which have marked the Bush Administration are producing some comical but telling problems for Obama transition teams. NASA’s dictatorial Adminstrator Michael Griffin said that Lori Garver, a former NASA associate administrator, was unqualified to judge his pet project the Constellation program to return astronauts to the moon by 2020. He directed NASA employees to stay on message with the transition team. Interviews were monitored by NASA officials, and employees were told to report conversations back to their managers. Griffin also directly contacted contractors and told them to sell the program and not discuss any alternatives to it. He demanded that they pre-clear their presentations with him. Some contractors were also supplied with talkingpoints saying that if Constellation were cancelled it would make NASA look bad and damage public confidence in it. As a result, some contractors declined to participate in interviews fearing retribution from Griffin.
Griffin’s actions culminated in the following overheard exchange with Garver:

“Mike, I don’t understand what the problem is. We are just trying to look under the hood,” Garver said.
“If you are looking under the hood, then you are calling me a liar,” Griffin replied. “Because it means you don’t trust what I say is under the hood.”

It would be hard to find a more eloquent expression of the Bush mindset of “Trust me and don’t believe your lying eyes” or a better example of the view that facts are not to be addressed but managed.