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Typical Media Space "Reporting"

Forbes has an article on NASA's current problems.

NASA officials have taken days to decide whether the hole threatens the safety of the crew or if the astronauts need to get out to repair the damage.

I infer from the way this is written that the author thinks there's something wrong with "taking days to decide" something affecting the potential loss of vehicle and crew. Did they expect, or want them to rush the decision? The decision doesn't have to be made until it's time to go home (or at least, until they are about to run out of time to do a repair, if necessary). It seems proper to me to gather as much information as possible, and not to do so in haste.

The U.S. space agency is already weathering a veritable meteor shower of problems, including allegations of corruption, underfunding, drunken and disturbed astronauts, and even murder.
Can anything be done to turn things around?

NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs says the solution is to emphasize the agency's strong suit--science.

That's the agency's strong suit? I think that's a dangerous position to take. It might make people question why NASA is spending so much money on things that aren't science, and so little on their "strong suit." I expect the public to think that space=science, but it's disappointing to see a NASA spokesman promulgating the myth.

For a brief moment in 2004--less than a year after the shuttle Columbia disintegrated on its return to Earth--NASA enjoyed a swelling of support. President Bush announced his new program for space exploration. He vowed to complete the International Space Station by 2010, develop a new vehicle to replace the aging shuttle fleet and return to the moon by 2020. The ultimate goal, Bush said, would be a new frontier in space adventure--a human journey to Mars.

And beyond. "Mars and beyond." The president said that humans are going out into the cosmos. Mars is just one more stepping stone along the way, not the "ultimate goal." Why can't they ever get it right?

The administration's priorities have changed, for obvious reasons.

Really? In what way? And what for what "reasons," that are supposed to be "obvious"? There has been no change in policy of which I'm aware. VSE was never a high priority, but it was, and remains, the national civil space policy.

But NASA's recent bad luck has been largely self-inflicted.
For example, there's the strange case of Lisa Nowak. In February she was arrested after driving more than 900 miles to attack and potentially kidnap a romantic rival in a love triangle involving another astronaut. Last month a NASA study on astronaut behavior and health revealed that some astronauts have been drunk prior to liftoff.

No, it revealed nothing of the kind. We still have no reason to believe that anyone ever took off in a Shuttle while inebriated. Another media myth that will not die.

Just about everyone agrees that the agency is overstretched. In his fiscal-year 2008 budget, President Bush requested $17.3 billion for NASA. A Senate appropriations subcommittee has allotted $150 million more than the president's request, and the House committee also believes the agency is underfunded.
Vincent Sabathier, director of the Human Space Exploration Initiatives program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says NASA needs another $3 billion per year to do its exploration and scientific work effectively.

"NASA is an amazing tool for the U.S.," he says. The agency is "in trouble" because "we ask a lot from them, and we don't give them enough money." According to Sabathier, the agency needs another $3 billion per year to do its exploration and scientific work effectively.

"For one year of the cost of the war in Iraq," he says, "we could have a permanent lunar base."

This is always irritating.

Yes, or for a few months of the cost of social security. Or the amount we spend on vacations. Or interest on the federal debt. There are many potential sources of funding for a lunar base, if having a lunar base is important.

What's the point? Obviously, this is a person who would object to spending money on Iraq regardless of what alternate use it could be put to, and thinks that others agree with him, so he uses that as an example of where to get the money for a lunar base, as though the problem is simply not enough money, rather than the national priority we assign to having a lunar base. If we chose to, if it were important, we could afford a war in Iraq and a lunar base. As it is, even if there were no war in Iraq, we'd be unlikely to take the funds from it and instead put them into NASA. More likely, it would be used to reduce the deficit. This is a flawed argument.

Speaking of flawed arguments in favor of (and against) space spending, Alan Boyle has a(n inadvertent) gallery of them in his comments section here. You'll find almost every single one of them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 16, 2007 07:56 AM

Comments

"For one year of the cost of the war in Iraq," he says, "we could have a permanent lunar base."

...and if we allow the radicals to take over the world a Lunar Base would be a good fall back position to keep safe guard the HUNDREDS who would live there.

Posted by Steve at August 16, 2007 08:04 AM

We were not funding NASA at a higher rate than it is now (as a percentage of total budget or of GDP or by any other measure) BEFORE the war in Iraq. This is just another tactic of the anti-war leftists, claiming that if only we weren't in Iraq we could be doing all these other glorious things.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at August 16, 2007 08:37 AM

Well, that is different. Used to be Leftists would deride the budget being spent on NASA as money better spent "hear on Earth." As if NASA secretly used load Saturn Vs with $100 bills and send them crashing into the Sun.

Posted by Raoul Ortega at August 16, 2007 08:41 AM

It seems proper to me to gather as much information as possible, and not to do so in haste.

Rand, I really do appreciate your comment here. I can assure you that the damage assessment team is working all hours to come up with the best prediction possible of what will happen. This whole mission has been a great workout for the tools and processes developed post STS-107.

Besides the issue of the severity of damage, we are also considering the risks associated with new repair techniques. These have not been tested in space, and there is some consideration to use this opportunity to evaluate the repair process. At the same time, all EVAs are dangerous, and this repair has some unique risks. Yesterday's EVA abort emphasized some of those risks just as the MMT was starting.

There is nobody here that wants to drag out this decision, but we won't make such a decision with incomplete data. Fortunately, we have extra time this mission, and we have decided to take advantage of this.

Posted by Leland at August 16, 2007 09:08 AM

Yay, another canonical idiotic argument! :)

Raoul, are you saying that if a NASA activity does not shoot physical currency into space, it is free? Please get the government to send me $10 B. I promise I will not shoot any dollar bills (or other negotiable financial instruments) into space. Also, I promise not to employee any off-planet space aliens as I pump the money back into the economy down here, buying myself a life of luxury.

What the 'leftists' were referring to were results on Earth (where, surprise, there are a great many non-space activities that interest many people), not where physical currency or the contractors were located.

Posted by Paul Dietz at August 16, 2007 09:36 AM

Rand, I'm assuming you know this, but it might be worth noting for others. The problem with journalism majors reporting on science (or rocketry) is not that they're idiots or incompetent per se. It's that they really don't give a hoot, and they're increasingly lazy.

The entire story you quoted could have been written by a Perl script loaded up with a big database of high-school essay cliches, plus a few Gee I'm Sensitive slogans from a late-night talk about Life, The Universe and Everything undertaken in one's sophomore year in college with the help of a stout bottle of Kahlua.

If there was a sentence in that article that took more than 2 microwatts of neural power to put together, I'd be astonished.

But, see, that's how they win. The author of this article spent 1/100 the mental energy writing it as you did deconstructing it. So while you were pointing out his mindless idiocy, he had time and energy to spread it (or similar stuff) around 99 more times. You're basically doomed.

Posted by Carl Pham at August 16, 2007 10:50 AM

Where'd you get that idea, anyhow? The Leftists I always heard making anti-NASA arguments never talked about any benefits here on earth. (To do that would be to admit that money is fungible and "trickle-down" might actually have some merit.)Whether or not NASA spent money, or how much, or how much or how little benefit that spending generated was immaterial. Just the fact that it was money the Left thought belonged to them and therefore money that should only be allocated to the various Leftist pet projects, just like any other porkbarrel project. They always implied that any money spent on NASA was nothing more than welfare for white guys in white shirts who played golf on the moon, disappearing in some sort of negative sum game. After the Pentagon, money spent on NASA was the one agency that was Safe To Hate. If anything the comparison to Iraq just keeps this stupid tradition alive, which was my whole point.

Actually, until recently the only good thing I've ever heard Leftists say about NASA is the "if we can put a man on the moon, then why can't we..." cliche used to justify pet social engineering projects. Except they keep using that line decades after we'd lost that ability. But now that NASA as repurposed itself to be in the forefront of Global Climate Warming Change research, I guess we'll be hearing more good things about it from the Left.

Posted by Raoul Ortega at August 16, 2007 11:54 AM

> Last month a NASA study on astronaut behavior and health revealed that some astronauts have been drunk prior to liftoff.

No, it revealed nothing of the kind. We still have no reason to believe that anyone ever took off in a Shuttle while inebriated. Another media myth that will not die.

Rand, those two statements are not necessarily contradictory. You added "in the Shuttle" -- perhaps the report revealed some astronauts had been drunk prior to takeoff in Soyuz or the T-38 or Southwest Airlines.

Or not at all. We don't know. The media is reporting is simply reporting gossip. We don't have any facts -- the "who, what, where, and when" of what occurred. They don't even name the alleged "sources" that are spreading this gossip. Did it come from Sean O'Keefe? A NASA flight surgeon? Jimmy Olsen?

The denials are just as vague. NASA says that a review so far shows no evidence of astronauts being intoxicated "prior to a Shuttle launch," but they aren't providing any details of the investigation.

Posted by Edward Wright at August 16, 2007 12:20 PM

When someone in the media talks about astronauts and liftoff, it's a safe inference that they mean the Shuttle.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 16, 2007 12:30 PM

until recently the only good thing I've ever heard Leftists say about NASA is the "if we can put a man on the moon, then why can't we..."

What about "We choose to go to the Moon before this decade is out and do these other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard"?

Do you consider Kennedy's remarks "recently"?

Don't forget that Mercury and Apollo were created to take manned spaceflight away from the military -- to "preserve space for peaceful purposes."

The majority of NASA employees I meet are on the left, just as the majority of military people are on the right.

Even Von Braun used the let's-fund-NASA-instead-of-the-military argument.

Posted by Edward Wright at August 16, 2007 12:34 PM

Actually, Ed, NASA and the Mercury program were created under Eisenhower.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at August 16, 2007 12:49 PM

The denials are just as vague. NASA says that a review so far shows no evidence of astronauts being intoxicated "prior to a Shuttle launch," but they aren't providing any details of the investigation.

I disagree. Griffen has provided as much detail as he has. The review has gone back 10 years and looked at all cases of astronauts on the job flying. So far, no evidence to support the claims. Trust me, once you go back about 10 years, documentation is no longer nicely indexed by internet search engines, so now you have to pull it out documents and read each one individually. NASA hasn't completed the review, but what can be quickly reviewed, nothing can be found.

Posted by Leland at August 16, 2007 01:00 PM

Carl said,

The problem with journalism majors reporting on science (or rocketry) is not that they're idiots or incompetent per se. It's that they really don't give a hoot, and they're increasingly lazy.

Your statement seems to apply to everything the MSM reports on.

Posted by Steve at August 16, 2007 01:29 PM

Actually, Ed, NASA and the Mercury program were created under Eisenhower.

Actually, Mark, I never said they weren't.

Any more strawmen you'd like to kung fu?

Posted by Edward Wright at August 16, 2007 01:47 PM

Rand, It is a fact that in any given fiscal year the budget is a zero-sum game. By definition if one program gets more then somewhere else another program gets less. It is not a direct, one for one tradeoff between NASA and someone else, but it is a direct one for one tradeoff between NASA and everyone else. I appreciate your irritation at strawman arguments. When someone states that "For one year of the cost of the war in Iraq, we could have a permanent lunar base." it's not an argument, not even a straw man argument; it's a comparison. It merely illustrates the relative costs of one thing using another thing one might be familiar with. I found the comparison instructive not irritating.

Posted by Jardinero1 at August 16, 2007 02:09 PM

It is a fact that in any given fiscal year the budget is a zero-sum game. By definition if one program gets more then somewhere else another program gets less.

No, that is not a fact. In any given fiscal year, the Congress can appropriate, and the president sign, a budget of whatever size they wish. If it's above the projected (or, really, actual, since we don't really know what they will be ahead of time) revenues, there will be a deficit. If it's below, there will be a surplus. But there is never any magic number that the budget must be.

When someone states that "For one year of the cost of the war in Iraq, we could have a permanent lunar base." it's not an argument, not even a straw man argument; it's a comparison. It merely illustrates the relative costs of one thing using another thing one might be familiar with. I found the comparison instructive not irritating.

And then again, it's something that one might not be familiar with, in which case it's not instructive at all (particularly when one misleads by comparing the cost of a multi-year apple with a single-year budget of an orange).

Given the obvious political motivation behind it, I find it irritating.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 16, 2007 02:28 PM

I disagree. Griffen has provided as much detail as he has.

I certainly hope not. Griffin provided no details on who the "independent medical experts" making the charges were or who the reviewers are. He only said that they included "numerous medical and legal professionals." A description that might include Deepok Chopra, Dr. Phil, F. Lee Bailey, or Pepper Schwartz. If he doesn't know more than that, he's not doing his job.

The review has gone back 10 years and looked at all cases of astronauts on the job flying. So far, no evidence to support the claims. Trust me, once you go back about 10 years, documentation is no longer nicely indexed by internet search engines, so now you have to pull it out documents and read each one individually.

Well, that's a detail Griffin didn't provide. He said nothing about pulling records. He said reviewers were relying on voluntary interviews of astronauts, flight surgeons, support personnel, and spouses.

Besides, it shouldn't be necessary to pull every single record. That's like strip searching everyone at the airport rather than looking for people who are likely to be terrorists.

The logical approach would be for investigators to find out who made the original charge and what their evidence was. If Doctor Marcus Welby said that Lisa Nowak took a snort before her flight, you don't need to go looking through John Glenn's medical records to confirm or deny it.

Posted by Edward Wright at August 16, 2007 02:43 PM

When someone states that "For one year of the cost of the war in Iraq, we could have a permanent lunar base." it's not an argument, not even a straw man argument; it's a comparison.

If that were the case, you would expect to find an equal number of comarisons to prescription drug coverage, social security, etc., but you don't. The comparison is *always* to the military.

Posted by Edward Wright at August 16, 2007 02:52 PM

In any given fiscal year, the Congress can appropriate, and the president sign, a budget of whatever size they wish.

There's an upper limit on how much the government can tax or borrow. There's also a political limit, if they want to be reelected.

But the people who make that argument also insist that increasing the NASA budget doesn't decrease the amount of money the private sector has to develop things like iPhones or Falcon rockets.

I don't see any evidence to prove that belief, but assuming it's true that NASA budget increases don't come from the private sector, then they have to come from a government program.

Hence the argument for cutting "worthless" military spending to fund NASA.

(Then there are the people who acknowledge that the budget increases would come from the private sector but think that's a good thing because private individuals "waste more money" on pizza, soft drink, or beer than NASA spends on space.)

Posted by Edward Wright at August 16, 2007 03:14 PM

Ed,

Here's the original report:

Interviews with both flight surgeons and astronauts identified some episodes of heavy use of alcohol by astronauts in the immediate preflight period, which has led to flight safety concerns. Alcohol is freely used in crew quarters. Two specific instances were described where astronauts had been so intoxicated prior to flight that flight surgeons and/or fellow astronauts raised concerns to local on-scene leadership regarding flight safety. However, the individuals were still permitted to fly. The medical certification of astronauts for flight duty is not structured to detect such episodes, nor is any medical surveillance program by itself likely to detect them or change the pattern of alcohol use.

To your question, Ed:
The logical approach would be for investigators to find out who made the original charge and what their evidence was. If Doctor Marcus Welby said that Lisa Nowak took a snort before her flight, you don't need to go looking through John Glenn's medical records to confirm or deny it.

NASA has responded:

The committee received allegations regarding alcohol use that it did not attempt to confirm or verify. The committee included the comments in its report to NASA, but the committee has not provided NASA the names of individuals or flights involved in the alleged incidents.

This was an external review for which NASA has no control over, so Mike Griffin on down can only ask for the name of the doctor or astronaut, and apparently the panel isn't providing that information.

From the NASA press briefing with the Deputy Administrator:
Fourth, we will act immediately on the more troubling aspects of the report, with respect to alcohol use and the anecdotal references to resistance of Agency leadership to accepting advice or criticisms about the fitness and readiness of individuals for space flight. The report does not provide specific information about alcohol-related incidents and the Review Committee has left it to NASA to determine the scope of these alleged incidents.
Let me bring you up to date on this fourth category, and share with you what has been done since the draft report was briefed to NASA senior management.
The Administrator and I have directed NASA’s Chief of NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance to undertake an internal safety review. He will gather information, conduct necessary analyses, and determine the facts of the reported alcohol-related incidents. If any incidents occurred, he will determine the causes and recommend corrective actions. He also will review all existing policies and procedures related to alcohol use and space flight crew medical fitness during the immediate preflight preparation period to ensure that any risks to flight safety are dealt with by appropriate medical authorities and flight crew management, and, if necessary, elevated through a transparent system of senior management review and accountability.
In the meantime, NASA’s existing T-38 aircraft alcohol use policy that historically has been applied to space flight has been explicitly extended as an interim policy to flight on any spacecraft. This interim policy prohibits alcohol use for 12 hours prior to flight and further states that astronauts will neither be under the influence nor the effects of alcohol at the time of launch. A comprehensive review of alcohol use policy prior to aircraft use or space flight in underway.

Now Ed, I understand that's not a lot of hard information, but it's about as detailed as they can get before putting people to sleep. Do you really need to here NASA explain how medical records are kept and how privacy policies (and now HIPAA concerns) make it difficult for everyone to be allowed to review all the medical examinations of astronauts over the past 5 decades? Do you really want to detail over where paper documents are archived after so many years to make room for people to work? Or will you take that: "He will gather information, conduct necessary analyses, and determine the facts of the reported alcohol-related incidents" means more than "He said reviewers were relying on voluntary interviews of astronauts, flight surgeons, support personnel, and spouses." Besides, your comment comes from statements immediately after the report findings. Really, all Griffin could do is ask for whoever provided these incidents to the panel come forward voluntarily. After that, he has to ask for an internal audit, which he did and said so (even if you missed it).

Posted by Leland at August 16, 2007 04:02 PM

This was an external review for which NASA has no control over, so Mike Griffin on down can only ask for the name of the doctor or astronaut, and apparently the panel isn't providing that information.

James Duncan, the NASA Chief of Space Medicine Operations at JSC, and Wayne Frazier, the NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance were ex-officio members of the panel. John Allen, NASA Program Executive, Crew Health and Safety, was the panel's executive secretary. Griffin has control over them, doesn't he?

Although I find it hard to believe the other members of the panel, most of whom are high-ranking military officers, would be stonewalling. More likely, I suspect, NASA got the information and it turned out to be a dead end.

No, because I don't think that sort of witch hunt is relevant. If an anonymous person alleged that NASA engineers abused alcohol, would NASA be looking into the records of Mike Griffin and every other engineer at NASA?

Posted by Edward Wright at August 16, 2007 07:41 PM

If an anonymous person alleged that NASA engineers abused alcohol, would NASA be looking into the records of Mike Griffin and every other engineer at NASA?

Ok Ed, who is the astronaut? When did it happen? Where did it happen?

Not one of those answers have been provided by any member of the panel. I'm not sure what else you expect to be done. Do you assume that administrators wouldn't do that, so skip them and just look at others? Until the report, most assumed astronauts would have better things to do before a mission.

Posted by Leland at August 17, 2007 03:19 PM

Ok Ed, who is the astronaut? When did it happen? Where did it happen?

Do you have a comprehension problem, Leland? I already said I don't know any of those details.

Not one of those answers have been provided by any member of the panel.

Why not? The fact that they haven't provided any answers is a datum in itself.

The most likely explanation is that their report was just a bunch of flight surgeons hyperventilating. In that case, it doesn't warrant an official witch hunt.

Far less likely, in my opinion, is that some astronauts really were engaged in reckless endangerment. If there's any real evidence of that, then there should be a criminal investigation of the individuals responsible. Not the entire astronaut corps. Anyone who refuses to cooperate could then be charged with obstruction of justice.

In either case, people on all side should stop holding press conferences that don't say anything.

Until the report, most assumed astronauts would have better things to do before a mission.

I don't know if "most" people assumed that. No one who knew any military pilots would. The "Boy Scout" image of NASA astronauts was a myth invented by the NASA PR office, which Tom Wolfe debunked long ago. I'm surprised NASA is still trying to resurrect it.

Look, Leland, JSC had an engineer running shooting its coworkers not too long ago. That didn't cause NASA to start investigating the medical records of each and every engineer, did it? Why are astronauts so different?

Do you think NASA will have fewer astronauts if there are more witch hunts, less privacy, and more people poking and prodding them?

Posted by Edward Wright at August 17, 2007 04:56 PM

Leland, I would also compare the press coverage of this "scandal" to coverage of the NASA IG scandal.

There, too, we saw a lot of accusations in the press but few real facts. The NASA Administrator either was or was not putting pressure on the Inspector General to drop certain investigations, depending on who you believe -- but no one on either side told us what those investigations were.

If the Administrator told the IG not to bother investigating a box of missing thumbtacks, that's one thing. If it was missing space station components, that's another. Mike Griffin obviously made some political enemies, but we don't know how or why. Both sides chose to fight a war in the press without ever revealling what it was all about.

If the press is going to cover these stories, I really wish they would dig deeper and get to the bottom of them. Otherwise, ignore them.

Posted by Edward Wright at August 17, 2007 05:12 PM

Ed, maybe we are talking past each other. Originally you wrote that there wasn't enough detail. My point was there isn't detail to give, and they said all they knew. Now it seems you don't think should say anything if they don't know anything. Well, I agree with that, but earlier you said you want detail...

I've had enough of running around in logical loops this week. I'm sorry you are disappointed about whatever.

Posted by Leland at August 17, 2007 08:47 PM

Ed, maybe we are talking past each other. Originally you wrote that there wasn't enough detail. My point was there isn't detail to give, and they said all they knew.

Those two statements are not contradictory. My point is, if that's all the information there is, this was barely worth one newspaper story, let alone dozens. Not to mention the witch hunt.

Now it seems you don't think should say anything if they don't know anything. Well, I agree with that, but earlier you said you want detail...

Again, those two statements are not contradictory. If someone doesn't have enough information to write an article or give a press conference, he shouldn't write an article or give a press conference. If he does write an article or give a press conference, I would like him to say something worth my time.

Posted by Edward Wright at August 18, 2007 01:53 PM

But the people who make that argument also insist that increasing the NASA budget doesn't decrease the amount of money the private sector has to develop things like iPhones or Falcon rockets.

Posted by Realty at August 21, 2007 01:00 AM

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