|
CounterPunch
February
1, 2003
Shuttle Crash
& Smug NASA Managers
"I F-ing
Warned Them!"
by DIAN HARDISON
Two years ago, I was a highly
decorated NASA engineer. I was awarded
their highest medal, for Exceptional Achievement -- something
that is usually reserved for senior managers -- because of my
expertise.
I was a safety engineer.
I was removed from my
GS-13 position, as an internationally-recognized
authority on hypergolic propellants and explosives, and forced
off the
Kennedy Space Center. At gunpoint.
Their excuse was that
I had "abused government equipment." Because I sent
a friend an e-mail joke.
The reality was that
I wouldn't play their "political ball."
I F-ING WARNED THEM.
I told them that the
technicians and engineers were overworked. I told
them that there were too many managers and too many meetings
and
"dog-and-pony" shows. I told them that their senior
"face time" play games, while they spent all their
time plotting how to give each other pay raises, and left the
guys on the floor to struggle day to day with obsolete and overpriced
and unqualified equipment, was going to result in another Challenger.
I was there for Challenger.
I saw the same exact
conditions happening again. Overpaid, lazy,
irresponsible managers concerned solely with their climbing up
their ladders.
I told them they were
skimping on inspections. I told them that the
ground crews were asleep on their feet from exhaustion. I made
as much noise as I knew how to make about the top-heavy bureaucracy
sitting around in their fancy panelled offices, giving whorish
press interviews in their smugness, while they did not have a
clue what was going on in the real world where I was working.
They fired me. They fired
a GS-13 civil servant, with an Exceptional
Service medal and ten dozen commendations. For sending an e-mail
joke.
In reality, for objecting
to political fat-cats sitting on their fat rear
ends and failing to do their jobs.
Like Challenger, those
who are most guilty are the ones who will attempt to make the
most political capital out of it. But the blame for Columbia
lies entirely and totally with the NASA administrators. They
should all be investigated for their criminal negligence. They
should all serve time in jail.
I warned them. They did
their best to destroy me, because I warned them.
It's too bad that innocent
astronauts paid with their lives for NASA
managers greed and political ass-kissing.
But I am not surprised.
Two years ago, I warned
them.
Dian Hardison served as an
engineer at NASA.
Yesterday's
Features
Muqtedar Khan
Heavy
Rhetoric, Wistful Thinking and Hydrogen Cars: a response to Bush's
State of the Union
William Hughes
An
Open Letter to France:
Justice is On Your Side
David Wilson
Meet
the Gloucester Weapons Inspectors: the Protest at the Fairford
Stealth Bomber Base
Anthony Gancarski
Free
Press? "There's No Damn Thing"
Josh Frank
Who Would Jesus Bomb?: 10 Reasons to Oppose War on Iraq
Abu Spinoza
Iraq: Web Resources
Dr. Gerry Lower
Class Warfare Against the Poor
Natalie Johnson Lee
Green
Party Response to Bush's State of the Union
Russell Mokhiber and
Robert Weissman
Stealing Money from Kids
Maria Tomchick
Bush's Smallpox Boondoggle
Paul di Rooij
War: It's Already Started
Website of the Day
Tie
Yourself to the Mast Brave Odysseus: Ashcroft Sings!
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax--Deductible Donation Today Online!
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
January 25
/ 26, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
War as Football Game
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Too Many Smoking Guns: Israel, American Jews and the War on Iraq
Chris Clarke
Collateral Damage: Draft Resistance and the Peace Mvt.
Bruce Jackson
Killing an Oak Tree: a Gratuitous Death
Jennifer Berkshire
Porto Allegre Diary II: Building the Party, Lula Style
Forrest Hylton
Left Turns in South America
Edward Said
When Will Arabs Resist?
William A.
Cook
Israeli
Democracy: Fact or Fiction?
Anthony Gancarski
America Never Was America to Me
Subcomandante
Marcos
Zaps to Basques: Lighten Up!
Ellen Cantarow
Music Lives in Palestine
Marta Russell
Extinguishing Frida Kahlo
Adam Engel
Man in the Black Suit: a novelini
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|