I can’t comment on this. I just can’t.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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July 26th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
what i’m wondering, on a day like today, is how often this kind of nonsense went on before, say, january of 2001. i’m not going to assume that this sort of misbehavior at nasa before the onset of the anti-science era, but i wonder just the same.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
what i’m wondering, on a day like today, is how often this kind of nonsense went on before, say, january of 2001. i’m not going to assume that this sort of misbehavior did not occur at nasa before the onset of the anti-science era, but i wonder just the same.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
sorry, got an error message the first time. just as well, cuz i left out some words…
July 26th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
I bet you feel awful for saying “NOW WHAT?” two posts ago. See what you did?
This is awful. Definitely a bad day for NASA.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Wow, think someone at NASA is getting yelled at? I always liked to think most of the people who would work for NASA or become an astronaut would be motivated by some altruistic ‘calling’ and wouldn’t be predisposed to embezzlement or sabotage and whatnot. Guess I was wrong. Though I suppose the sabotage was by a subcontractor’s employee. Still, the jackass had to know what he was working on. Geez.
July 26th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
And here I thought that Scaled Composites was the third point in a Space Industry trifecta.
This just isn’t our day.
July 26th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
You almost have to expect this nowadays. I’m amazed it hasn’t come up before.
My friend Jim said “Bottom line is that we’re talking about regular folks now instead of superstars like we had in the 60’s and 70’s…”
July 26th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Phil, I’m still getting this error when I post comments (I use Firefox) …
Regex ID: 18281 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Regex ID: 18369 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Regex ID: 18261 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
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July 26th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
A Horrible Day For Space Flight…
If you’ve been watching my shiny new RSS feeds down in the left sidebar, you know that Dr. BA has covered the first three spaceflight disasters today, but hasn’t mentioned the latest yet.
Drunk astronauts? What?
According to an article in …
July 26th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Canada wins by a factor of 1000 for defrauding the government…
Google up “Paul Champagne” “National Defence” “guilty”
I’d post a link but my computer is acting weird and I can’t open another window.
July 26th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
What has been missing,
and I have no other place to put it …
The LHC is 1/8 powered up and cool now. Very cool.
Much people are hinging on the BA guy over wierd political crap at NASA, and never a mention about new particle physics that happened last weekend — to us in the US.
The LHC is the biggest deal in the universe to us today. Like the LEP was in 91.
July 27th, 2007 at 2:41 am
On that link there was a link to this story
I wonder why this went unreported here.
July 27th, 2007 at 4:43 am
What do you expect in the age of the ALLMIGHTY DOLLAR? These are just humans who can be tempted.
Andre
July 27th, 2007 at 4:47 am
By the way:
I also get still the error message below. I had it on all posts I made since your site has the new look. (Using internet explorer). The posts still go through. Just want to mention it.
Andre
Regex ID: 18261 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
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July 27th, 2007 at 5:01 am
Sticks: Yep, I noticed that one as well when I went there, doh!
July 27th, 2007 at 5:09 am
Well one final test to see if I can actually post anything without having to sacrifice a virgin, well some time actually, but that doesn’t sound as dramatic :), to the god regex. If not, it has been good while it lasted but I will go back to being a lurker as I just don’t have the patience required for the procedure necessary to post anymore.
July 27th, 2007 at 5:11 am
Amazing, it posted first time, I might be in to something here, or have you finally fixe it Phil
July 27th, 2007 at 6:45 am
Given that NASA is a government program, I just assumed there would be this kind of thing going on. It’s a government program. That means 90% wasted money, 9% stolen money.
This doesn’t make it any worse than any other government program. At least NASA is trying to accomplish something, rather than simply hold the status quo.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:58 am
[…] Stories found via Bad Astronomy posts here, here, and here. […]
July 27th, 2007 at 10:23 am
@ UDreamOfJanie:
I saw that too! WTF is happening at NASA!?!
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/woes-enough-to-drive-nasa-to-drink/index.html?hp
July 27th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Stealing the money from a cash-strapped agency is pretty low. But the story below that - the guy caught sabotaging the in-flight computer equipment - THAT is unconscionable. Had it been installed undetected, a hell of lot more would have been lost than what the embezzler stole.
July 27th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Aren’t these the sort of reports you normally release on a Friday night?
July 27th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
> I can’t comment on this.
Why not? Why would you assume people at NASA are any more “just” or less inclined to do bad things than the people you so regularly vilify publicly? Because they’re…scientists?
July 27th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Getting the same regex error from FF. Although it looks like my comment did post. Sorry about the dupe.
And before people go judging me for the content, I’m not a bible thumping right wing nutjob, and I have many of the same feelings about a lot of subject as he does. I’m just turned by the smug and self righteous tone of the content of late.
Yes, it’s his blog, he can write what he wants. I respect and support that.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
“A Nasa employee embezzled more than 150,000″ Is that actually such a huge deal in an agency as big as Nasa?
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but there have been larger embezzlements in the postal service, the department of defense.. many other agencies. If you employ tens of thousands and have a budget of billions, shady stuff will occasionally happen. That’s the nature of humans.
I’m just glad it hasn’t been found to be common or wide-spread and that it wasn’t one of the major higher-ups in the agency, like Griffen or something…
July 27th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Just to elaborate on what seeandyspin wrote:
“At least NASA knew where that computer was: a Congressional report this week said that the some $94 million worth of the agency’s computers, office equipment and supplies had been lost over the last decade because of sloppy administration — and that when NASA was made aware of the problem five years ago, they loosened their rules instead of tightening them.
(Weirdly, the report cites one case of an employee who accounted for a missing laptop computer assigned to him by claiming that it had actually been sent up on the shuttle, broken down and been ejected to burn up in the atmosphere — and his bosses apparently bought the story.)”
That’s 4 scandals, by my count. Pathetic!! But then what can we expect from any govt agency under this monumentally-incompetent administration. Other govt agencies are in the same boat NASA is in.
July 30th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Judging by the title of this post, BA has been reading too much FARK.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:51 pm
[…] yeah… some former NASA employee embezzled over 150,000 bucks. I’ve got to agree with Mr. Plait on this one. There’s not really anything left to […]