Marginal Utility

by Tom Bozzo

Actual headline: NASA grounds iPhone: not "enterprise ready"

Like anyone should listen to those guys...

NASA has ignored flight surgeons and astronauts who questioned others' fitness to fly due to drinking...

A panel that studied astronaut medical issues also found that staff were "demoralized" when their identification of "major crew medical or behavioral problems" were ignored by NASA leadership. [!!!!!1!One!]

The findings suggest that problematic cultural issues remain entrenched at NASA, which has been faulted repeatedly in the past for failing to heed safety warnings through the ranks.

Though NASA's iPhone determination didn't come from NASA brass, quite:

[T]he decision was made by officials within NASA's ODIN program office. ODIN, or Outsourcing Desktop Initiative For NASA, is a program under which NASA is outsourcing computer supply and support to private-sector companies.

The meeting minutes indicate that Jeff Stephens, an ODIN acting project manager who also works for defense contractor Lockheed Martin, broke the news that the iPhone won't fly at NASA. Reached Monday at his office in Washington, D.C., Stephens said only that, "I can't comment on that one way or the other." [emphasis added]

That looks like 10/10 on the Fox Guarding the Henhouse scale — a contractor can serve as "acting project manager" for an outsourcing initiative. (*) It would be hypocritical of me to suggest that there aren't any roles for contractors in the operation of the Federal government, but having Lockheed Martin supplying and supporting desktop PCs doesn't sound like it could possibly be efficient. And you have to love that can't-do spirit of outsourced IT support.


(*) Less sensationally, the guy could be a manager for LockMart's activities under the contract, a role I've filled on what I presume to be a much smaller scale for certain of my firm's contracts.

Labels: computers, Nasa, Outsourcing

by Tom Bozzo

Or, The Fifth Generation of Social Science?! (ref.)

Where are the astrosociologists when you need them? NASA is pondering crew health issues raised by long-duration spaceflight at more-than-quick-re-entry distances. Well, not all of the problems:

One topic that is evidently too hot to handle: How do you cope with sexual desire among healthy young men and women during a mission years long?

Sex is not mentioned in the document and has long been almost a taboo topic at NASA. Williams said the question of sex in space is not a matter of crew health but a behavioral issue that will have to be taken up by others at NASA.

The agency will have to address the matter sooner or later, said Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who has advised NASA since 2001.

"There is a decision that is going to have to be made about mixed-sex crews, and there is going to be a lot of debate about it," he said.

Uh, yeah, because if you stick a bunch of men in a glorified tin can for months on end, Teh Gay will never happen. Not with a Republican administration's astronauts, anyhow.

Not that I wouldn't expect legions of volunteers for sex-in-space research studies drawn from the population who think we should establish a Martian calendar now.

Labels: Astrosociology, Nasa, Sex