Thursday, March 01, 2012

NASA - The Final Outreach: The Mother of All Predictions

The former head of NASA described as "deeply flawed" the idea that the space exploration agency's priority should be outreach to Muslim countries, after current Administrator Charles Bolden had revealed that goal in a 2010 interview.

Bolden had also said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help.

Does Gen. Bolden's calculus sound strained?
HINT: The U.S. exceeded low-Earth orbit in July 20, 1969, when the Apollo program landed the first humans on Earth's Moon.

Will the Muslim outreach be successful?
HINT: Stolen NASA laptop contained space station control codes

A laptop stolen from NASA last year was unencrypted and contained command and control codes for the International Space Station (ISS) on it, the agency's inspector general told a United States House subcommittee Wednesday. This particular laptop, Martin said, was one of 48 NASA notebooks or mobile devices stolen between April 2009 and April 2011.

Some of these thefts resulted in the leak of sensitive data "including export-controlled, Personally Identifiable Information, and third-party intellectual property," as well as Social Security numbers and data on NASA's Constellation and Orion programs, Martin said.

Constellation program: NASA's human spaceflight program to gain significant experience in operating away from Earth's environment, develop technologies needed for opening the space frontier, and conduct fundamental science. Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 to terminate the program.

Orion program: Consists of three main parts:
Crew Module for 4 to 6 crew members;
Service Module for primary propulsion systems and supplies; and
Launch Abort System for astronaut recovery in the event of necessity during launch ascent.

Considering the "sensitive, export-controlled and third-party intellectual property" stolen in NASA's unencrypted laptop, can we venture two guesses:

1) In which portion of the Orion program is input from a Muslim country likely to
be forthcoming in a few years?

2) Which Muslim country (Pakistan) is now destined to be credited with a significant contribution to the ISS space exploration effort?

The Russians and Chinese have usually been blamed as hackers of U.S. computer systems. Yet, no country is usually identified with thefts of laptops containing sensitive U.S. data. Hmm!

Stay tuned for the predicted updates.

Submarines are always silent and strange.


Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

|