Two Year Delay for NASA Costs Another $40 Million
“This was not a conflict of interest that could be avoided,” McCuistion said. He refused to say who it involved or what kind of conflict it was or who was on the board, saying revealing that type of data could “compromise the competition” between the two proposals.
NASA is planning on spending an additional $40 million dollars in order to launch a Mars probe because of an “unspecified conflict of interest in the purchasing process,” according to the latest info coming down the space pike. A 2011 launch schedule of the Mars Scout Program’s Mars atmospheric probe had originally planned on choosing proposals for this mission from one of the two Colorado research institutions. Just another one of the many financial mishaps coming from the NASA drawing boards has forced them to disband the board that had formed to choose the proposal. Unfortunately, but expected, NASA refused to offer any more information and declined to elaborate.
An entirely new panel has been put together which has caused a delay in the contract awarding, according to Doug McCuistion, Mars Exploration Program Director. The postponement from 2011 to 2013 was because of the location of Mars to Earth, coming close only once every 26 months. The first time in more than ten years that NASA will have no Mars missions to explore the Red Planet, the $40 million fee that was tacked on the the later launching was “poo-pooed” as simply an inflationary amount due to the two year wait. With the big secret from NASA involving more money and no information, it sounds like the same game of politics–hurry up and wait, while letting the tax payers foot the bill. But meanwhile, no information can be sent out as these very same tax payers are too ignorant too understand what is going on. My opinion? The tax payers are not the ones making the same blundering steps to cancel space projects which are almost done at huge amounts of wasted money, forced cancellations with projects that have cost time and money to even get to the front door only to find they are done…..and the list goes on. A huge blundering elephant, NASA is finding it difficult to even understand they are losing the respect and interest of the American people. OR are they, and is that the goal?
Oh well, so far the only country involved in the planning of a 2011 mission to Mars is Russia. The Mars Scout Program was originally established in order to provide “an opportunity to capitalize on advancing technologies and innovations as well as to give the broader scientific community the ability to explore Mars,” according to Space.com on
This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 12:22 am and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
