Taking funds from NASA programs to support schools is
something I support and I would back Mr Obama's plans
to do that, but the question rapidly becomes which
programs should be cut and which are worthy of being
kept? The Manned Moon program is the one program I
feel is a necessity for America to persue.

It's no secret that I have long derided the Manned
Mars Mission as a one-off, bloated, dangerous,
spacebizcentric monstrosity designed to give the
maximum financial return to NASA and techonology
builders while having a minimum knowledge return to
the public.  NASA has tuned its internal program
advancment to the ability of the funding that any
one program can produce, and not to the long term
benefit that a program will have for the American
public. In that respect I have no qualms in seeing
many of NASA's programs .....

Minneapolis, I think, will soon be the biggest case of withholding of facts from the public since Nixon. If the information that David Chanen of Star Tribune printed today about the bridge workers statement is true, I find it very hard to believe that the NTSB didn't have the same info and MORE. A few others and I have formed an idea about what happened to the bridge and I printed mine Aug 02, 2007 at www.Dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/2/1425 19/0123.
I also think that the public should not be on one of these bridges while repair is in progress and it's hard for me to understand how anyone at NTSB would knowingly say they don't know that the off-center loading of the public traffic on the bridge was a major contributory cause of failure.

Bill Proenza lost his bid to change the National Hurricane Center today and Mr Rappaport will quitely bury any hope of change for this dinosaur of an agency, and NASA can go back to planning their next satellite to look at Mars weather; after all who needs new earth satellites.
I wrote a diary on July 12, 2005 that complained about the storm reporting that went on the night before. On that day the storm had moved inland and all the news media reported it was headed for Memphis when in fact the worst of the cell was headed to Nashville and the media had not updated anything after about 11:45pm.  It's not unusual down South to see the Mayor of Panama City or some other dude on TV do a pitch for FEMA help while inland we're still wondering if our backside is on the front line and if the storm is now headed for us. It seems to me weather media isn't worth watching after any storm passes the Coast and the only way to know for sure inland about a storm path is to go to real time radar and satellite. That's where NASA comes in and that's when poor Proenza lost his job.

Is the new National Hurricane Center boss in trouble because he
was critical of the failings of the NHC or because he had the guts to touch the third rail of inter-federal policy disputes--NASA Planning?
Seems that Bill Proenza is a well qualifed and knowlegable person to run the NHC. It seems he has worked hard and has shown ability to be the kind of person all could be proud of, except somebody forgot to tell him never

Well, "I'm sorry" is what Mr Griffin wanted the effect of his talk to the troops to be, but he only managed to show that he has no idea what NASA is or should be. Griffin only wants to fly his little rockets to Mars and build a colony. Griffin and the political powers that support him don't care that NASA has other mandates of science, health, weather, and financial accountability. All that's wanted at the top of NASA is to promote the fattest, most over bloated, most useless program that can be dreamed up.
Dr Alan Stern (groomed to take over?) gave a nice speech about priorities but NASA is not following any of those ideas when they talk about a one-off Manned Mars mission.

Michael Griffin seemed to say yesterday that global climate change is OK for now and that any BAD changes can be dealt with later when it's a big problem --or that's my take on his message.
That's the same idea that lost us a nice bunch of astronauts, shut down our manned space program for two years and forced us to use junk Russian ships to support the ISS.

If you read Dr Stern's ideas about the future of NASA planning ( http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html ?pid=24101 subcommittee hearing) you will wonder if he is going to do any planning on his own or just accept what his new group of advisors put forward. Is he going to do proper planning or just create a bunch of fall-guys in case something goes wrong?  Stern does have good ideas about priority of programs and if he follows his own statement to Congress then you would think global warming would be higher on the planning scale than an expensive, useless, one-off Manned Mars Mission would be.  Well guess again; not only is the one-off 3M program higher in priority than global warming, but

The 2008 Budget Reviews will be something to watch. All the thousand dollar NASA suits telling how successful the last 12 months have been and telling how the extra 6, 8,10,14, percent more will keep NASA moving forward to the Moon, Mars and Beeeeyond.

The projected figures for Manned Mars (not from NASA) are now  between 900 Billions and 1.25 Trillion by some estimates.  No not the whole program, just for a one-shot Manned Mars landing and return. I don't know what the odds of a successful Mars landing and return are but I do know a one-off Manned Mars shot will be the most risky single flight in history and a failure is more likely than not. I also know there is no engine in production or on the drawing boards that has the ability to do a manned Mars flight. Add 300 to 500 Billions more for the engine?

Never mind that Lisa hasn't been convicted of any crime, never mind the fact that NASA has stood by other employees through their personal meltdowns, and never mind the fact that some of their current people are crazy as a loon (or at least very eccentric). Lisa made the gross mistake of embarrassing NASA and that just can't be forgiven. Lisa, unlike her boss who stands up and promotes what he knows is untrue, broke the most sacred rule
of NASA, "Over promote bad and over bloated programs but always make NASA look good."
Mike Griffin, the NASA boss, never misses a chance to plug "Moon Mars and Beyond" when he knows full well he doesn't have and can't afford to build a manned Mars capable rocket motor. He won't tell the truth and he won't plan (like China and Japan) for a full blown permanent American Moon base.