Ex Cathedra

The Associated Press: Stardust gets a nice rest.

His orbit might take him to Mars to visit  Opportunity Grrl who’s  had a mad crush on him for years.

Budget Statement – Who We Are | The Planetary Society.

This may be temporary bad news for Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, but they’re good at coping, and if they exercise their imaginations toward a more sustainable vision of space flight, Huntsville’s future could be even brighter when it’s freed of the boom and bust cycles of military-industrial economy.

To no one’s surprise, Alabama Republican Congressional candidate Loony Les Phillip called the NASA budget increase a “cut” and called it “un-American.”

Jean Smith asked a Huntsville newsgroup:

Probably because of the triple tail design, Michael Griffin is refusing
to permit NASA employees and contractors to brief the presidential
transition team regarding [the Constellation] program.

Working so hard to hide something for twenty days doesn’t sound good.

And alienating your future boss is seldom a career enhancing move.

We shouldn’t neglect the possibility that what’s forcing Griffin to
stonewall is that on the day he was picked, Bush and Cheney handed him
a list of contractors and the amounts of money they wanted to hand out
to each and a list of projects that had to be canceled or redirected
(e.g., Mission to Planet Earth) for ideological reasons, and Griffin
was left to cobble together a mission for NASA from that. What he’s
covering up may be White House ideology and corruption. Ideology and corruption in the Bush administration? Inconceivable!

Or, if you prefer a simpler explanation, Griffin may be corrupt or
ideological all by himself.

If upper management refuses to talk to the equivalent of auditors,
it’s not a good sign, in business or in NASA.

Griffin should realize that the grooves in the treads of the Bush
administration’s bus are stuffed solid with the remains of people who
were loyal to them.

Or, even simpler, Griffin could be an asshole or overwhelmed by the job.

Or it may be that Obama wants to let our aerospace industry die
because he hates engineers, pretty much the way Old Right Republicans
are willing to let the auto industry die because, well, you know.

I place a fairly low probability on that because when Obama was
chatting about NCAA Division 1 playoffs, he knew off the top of his
head that lg(8) == 3.

More idle speculation by Speculation Man™

Got ‘em crossed? Start crossing them now for May 25.

7 Minutes of Terror from NASA JPL.

h/t/ GMSV

You know those tourists who have somebody take a picture of them standing next to the Statue of Liberty? NASA is exactly like that. The Greenbelt: Nova: So proud of us — more pictures there, including the picture of us.