But I want to talk about something else in the article. I quote:
NASA also announced on Friday its decision to delay until 2013 the launch of a half-billion-dollar Martian probe called Scout. The $475-million US Scout atmospheric probe was originally scheduled to launch from Earth in 2011.
NASA chose to delay the launch over what it called a “serious” conflict of interest in one of the proposals submitted for the mission from one of two Colorado research institutions, but declined to elaborate.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that since NASA is publicly funded, that they should allow public input. As it is they are keeping too many secrets. Or else they think that anyone not within NASA is too stupid to be allowed to have any input. Why can’t the general public have a say? Why keep the so-called “conflict of interest” a secret? Let’s face it, organizations like NASA are elitist, and they think that the public has no right to know what they are doing.
I am Canadian and therefore have no right to lobby NASA to smarten up and get the public involved. But I would like to appeal to the American people to start making a lot of noise about this! Stand up and demand input! I know part of the delay has to do with launch windows, but this CAN’T be the real reason for the delay. If it’s “serious”, don’t you think we should know about it? Maybe NASA is waiting until they succeed in smashing that “asteroid” into the “face on Mars” and then they won’t have to worry about launching high resolution imagers to that area anymore…
You are losing, if you have not already lost, the spirit of your democracy.
