This Will Give You Nightmares

06/17/04 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

Check out these comments. I'm not sure if I'll be able to sleep tonight after reading that. This one in particular sent shivers up my spine:

bq.

Well, I work at a NASA Center, too, and I don't particularly care who pays me, though the rosy picture painted as to employee benefits is contrary to the experience at the FFRDC National Optical Astronomical Observatories, where scientists and engineers routinely make less than their peers in government, industry — or universities.

What concerns me far more is the ignorance of the people on the panel (and apparently among some of your correspondents) as to what actually goes on at NASA Centers. There are people above and beyond contracting officers and their bosses who monitor flight programs: engineers, technicians, and scientists. Was even one of the members of the Commission ever involved with a flight project, at NASA or JPL? Can they even spell the words, “fiduciary responsibility?”

Honestly, this raises the question for me of the competence of the Commission to make these suggestions. I get the sick feeling that there was an agenda at work before the Commission ever met, and that it included the more efficient transfer of the taxpayers' dollars to industry and universities — be damned with any expert oversight from within the government. Are the activities of Payload Engineers, Systems Engineers, Project Managers, and Project Scientists “inherently governmental?” Of course not. Would you trust the industrial and university partners of NASA that gave us the stirring successes of Lewis, WIRE, Mars Polar Lander, and Mars Climate Orbiter to go and try again with no adult supervision? I hope not. Should you trust an FFRDC technical expert to have the taxpayers' interests at heart? Good question.