Disclaimer: This watchdog website is obviously not affiliated in any way with NASA,
or with the sponsorship-accepting,  NASA favor-seeking, usually pro "big government" (predictably),
& certainly nontrademarked NasaWatch.COM.   You  really CAN learn something here...

Incidentally, NasaWatch.INFO is a completely free service which has never accepted
any sponsorship (sort of like Consumer Reports).  Why might this matter?   Our answer. 

 Below, you can find some of the latest truly commercial space frontier-enabling articles & press releases.    Predictably enough, their essence is usually ignored by our rival  NASAWatch.COM (the pride and joy of the tax-leeching bureaucrats' & government contractor  media sponsors), and by much of the traditional space media.   After some of these articles, we include our commentary, and after some others we include what we believe that NASAWatch.COM would say if injected with a healthy dose of some truthfulness serum and subsequently prompted to comment.  
        If you know of an article from a reasonably credible source that addresses an unfairly and opportunistically suppressed reform-related idea, or that reveals a little-known scandal involving humanity's often thwarted struggle to finally open up the space frontier for our entire species, then please feel free to send us a confidential e-mail at scandals@NASAWatch.INFO here in Washington D.C.   We can happily discuss our linking to it, for free of course, from this increasingly popular noncommercial website.   We focus on calling attention to what one canNOT easily find in the traditional space media, which (unlike us) DOES accept biasing sponsorship or depend upon the cabal of corruption in some other way.   Our main goal is to make it impossible for thieves to continue hiding in the alarmingly stagnating & seemingly underperforming aerospace industry.  One can perhaps better ascertain what we consider to be sufficiently scandalous or progressive enough to warrant a link & commentary from us, by reading what's below.
          If you want to grab the precise URL of an external article,  please simply right click on it with your mouse.

You  really CAN learn something here...

Remember,  if you want to understand what's REALLY causing the space industry to underperform even as some folks opportunistically pretend to praise its "progress," just follow the money!

To see who contributes to whom, or receives what from whom in terms of campaign financing,
please feel free to consult the following free source:  

http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/disclosure_data_search.shtml

Other liberating links:

Google News Alerts (a free news update service tailored to YOUR preferences)...

WikiFoia: "guidance on open records requests at the state and local level"

Wikileaks.org: an "uncensorable wikpedia for anonymous document leaking & analysis"

Pro-entrepreneurial reform proposals that could probably yield far better results than NASA's...

Some of the latest space & related scandals...
(and what we believe that NASAWatch.COM would say if injected with a healthy dose of truth serum)

Nobody's untouchable in our democracy.
We now have a page dedicated to the deposed NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin:

,

NASAWatch.INFO:  Can you believe Obama's essential rejection of  government-funded competitive prizes?  Why?  Remember when a leading Democrat presidential contender took the issue seriously?    Previously:  

HillaryClinton.com speech: "[L]et's use competitive prizes to encourage innovation...If we propose prizes to be part of our budget at our research agencies, we could seek out new ideas from unexpected places."

NASAWatch.COM: Of course I'm practically ignoring this scandalous comparison!  If NASA embraced the prizes paradigm shift significantly more, there'd be far less need for my [advertising-coveting & promoting] "soap opera digest of space" "news" service.   Meanwhile my bureaucrat moles and financers would lose more of their tax-subsidized monopoly, thereby hindering my business plan.  

NASAWatch.INFO:  How is it prudent that we force these entities to pay taxes to subsidize NASA, a bureaucracy which offers miniscule space prizes in comparison (and reluctantly at that)?

Previously:

Newt.org interview: "I am for a dramatic increase in our efforts to reach out into space, but I am for doing virtually all of it outside of NASA through prizes and tax incentives. NASA is an aging, unimaginative bureaucracy committed to over-engineering and risk-avoidance which is actually diverting resources from the achievements we need and stifling the entrepreneurial and risk-taking spirit necessary to lead in space exploration."

Previously:

Space.com article: NASA's Centennial Challenges competitive prizes program produces a(n) historic winner in the astronaut glove competition despite the program's still being so underfunded...

Previously:

NASA's 2008 budget request (.pdf, page 460): requested prizes funding declines drastically during future years...

NASAWatch.INFO:  The Department of Energy is poised to offer considerably large competitive prizes as this article documents, and as one can follow daily at Thomas.loc.gov here: [S.365.IS] & [H.R.632.IH]. Are your elected officials supporting this healthy paradigm shift? This bill died in the Senate during 2006, with apparently fewer senators signed on than it has now.      
       Although NASA is not a fine example, the  Defense Department's DARPA is nevertheless already offering substantial competitive prizes and has not made them [conveniently] nearly impossible to win either.  Since the White House's budget proposal for NASA's Centennial Challenges  competitive prizes program is so meager, it would seem that additional funds will apparently have to come from other NASA programs.  Might you have any in mind that you'd like to democratically recommend for cuts?

Space Frontier Foundation press release: Please rescue NASA's competitive prizes program!
 
NASA's prizes program now has its share of problems, as one can see here but also here (where it says as follows):

     "The Committee does not provide any funding in fiscal year 2007 for the Centennial Challenges program. Funding provided in previous fiscal years for this program is sufficient for NASA to run a prize based competition, as well as to verify that NASA will see tangential benefits from running such a program. Providing additional funds to a program based on prizes only creates a pot of unused funds while other aspects of NASA's mission are being cut or delayed due to a lack of funds."

DARPA's Urban Challenge has a financial challenge of its own now, too, astonishingly enough...

Darpa.mil press release:  "DARPA announces Urban Challenge. Teams will compete to build an autonomous vehicle able to complete a 60-mile urban course safely in less than 6 hours... New discussion forum is now on-line."

NASAWatch.COM: Gee, I wonder how many points I could score with corrupt bureaucrats if only I could somehow defame the whole prizes movement by publicly smearing its proponents?  How can  I arm-wave most profitably?  After all, as a pseudo-journalist I'm sure as heck not making much money on selling banner ads now that the Discovery Channel's sponsorship account of my "news" services is toast, while my New Moon Rising book sales flopped beyond what I can stand to admit in public (even as ISBN sales-tracking services can readily confirm the painful truth).   Why isn't there interest in buying a banner ad from me, though? http://www.spaceref.com/company/advertising.html "  Other than the traditional banner networks that pay pennies a week, practically nobody is interested.  Rats! I guess I'll just try and peddle NASA ringtones through Google's ad newtwork now, since I'm already one of the NASA bureaucracy's biggest media sycophants.  Won't ya please chip in?

NASAWatch.INFO:  Sigh, Keith...   We noticed how you completely ignored this article, as well: 

New York Times.com article: synopsis: resentfulness & jealousy towards NASA's competitive prizes program lingers among those whom it could displace...

Previously...

San Francisco Chronicle article:  "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- the gee-whiz Pentagon outfit that brought us the Internet, stealth bombers, "smart bombs" and a short-lived terrorism futures market -- has for 40 years dreamed of the day when robotic vehicles would wage war. It has thrown vast sums at defense contractors who, so far, haven't accomplished much...Disappointed by the slow pace and facing a congressional mandate that one- third of all Army ground combat vehicles be unmanned by 2015, DARPA decided to kick-start the research by inviting any scientist, engineer or gearhead with an idea to give it a try [with a million dollar competitive prize as their incentive]...The competition has attracted teams ranging from robotics powerhouse Carnegie Mellon University, which has budgeted $5 million for the task, to former NASA engineers to a pair of guys cobbling together a vehicle in their garage in St. Louis.  The real money, contestants said, comes with marketing the technology."

NASAWatch.INFO: Did you notice how the government's offering competitive prizes provides former NASA employees with opportunities to make far more money than they could have at NASA, and without its tedious bureaucracy?   Will current NASA bureaucrats be able to overcome their jealousy and tolerate an increase in the size of such prizes?

Previously...

FoxNews.com article:  NASA finally offers competitive prizes, resembling DARPA's multi-million dollar Grand Challenge. "DARPA was convinced that good ideas existed for overcoming some of the problems plaguing vehicles that drive themselves. But officials also suspect that they aren't hearing all those ideas because some people are unable or unwilling to run the bureaucratic paperwork gauntlet necessary to secure a DARPA contract. "Who's out there in their garages, their bedrooms, in their labs, working on this?" Negron said. "We want to know." The race might appeal to some people who simply want to show what they can do, without all the red tape."

Previously:

Google News Alerts feature.  http://www.google.com/newsalerts now offers a free ability to create a search for news items from thousands of  different news sources, and have links to related stories e-mailed to one for free either once daily or as often as Google encounters a new relevant story. According to the Washington Post: "The service allows a great deal of customization, especially if you use Google News's advanced-search function to fine-tune a query."

(NASAWatch.COM: "Huh? But what will folks need SpaceRef and NASAWatch.COM for now?")

NASAWatch.INFO: That's an interesting question, Keith.  And Google doesn't even have a reputation for being sold out to special interests, either.   Indeed, isn't it easier to filter what a searchbot sends out in hopes of finding useful content than it is to screen "coverage" from self-serving statist journalists?  

Previously... 

WashingtonTimes.com article: A former Boeing executive who also held important procurement positions in the Air Force and at NASA has pled guilty to conspiring to get Boeing a government contract at grossly inflated rates in exchange for a lucrative job with Boeing.

NASAWatch.INFO: Considering all the "revolving door" corruption that plagues the U.S. aerospace industry without even getting probed, isn't this kind of like putting a band-aid on a hemorrhaging wound, or locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen?  Regardless, don't incidents like these suggest that space mission pricetags would become much more credible if NASA finally got out of the central planning business and into that of offering more and better competitive prizes, and possibly doing research that contestants can't do but need to have done?

NASAWatch.COM: Of course I didn't pull strings to try and protect her. She didn't leak enough national secrets to me while she still could have.  She also didn't persuade Boeing to pour new money into sponsoring my websites.

   Previously... Space.com article: "Both the House and Senate versions of the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 that is scheduled for conference in mid-December include provisions that would allow NASA to offer prizes worth millions of dollars or more."      

Space.com article: NASA issues its latest Centennial Challenges (even as funding issues remain)

(NASAWatch.COM: " I'm not comfortable with NASA's offering competitive prizes.  Keep trying to fund them privately and leave my bureaucrat & contractor allies' $16 billion annual budget alone. ")

NASAWatch.INFO: Well then:   Forbes.com article: "Abolish the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) or drastically scale back its mission. Since the moon landings over three decades ago, NASA has become an obstacle to advancing space exploration and travel. If NASA had been in charge of developing the automobile, we'd still be riding horses."

Previously... 

NASA HQ press release: NASA HQ's Small Business Utilization Office needs a new boss...

WashingtonPost.com article: "[NASA Administrator Mike Griffin] expressed dismay that NASA over the past several years had put a lot of people in top management positions because of what one source described as "political connections or bureaucratic gamesmanship -- not merit." "

NASAWatch.INFO: Just how aware of the problem IS he, though?  And isn't it remarkable how NASA pretends to offer certain ethnic minorities (but not others) a racial spoils system of government contracting preferences in exchange for their political support, while nevertheless sneakily keeping them down & dependent on the bureaucratic & parasitic central planners'  "NASA plantation"? Have you noticed how little NASA tells them of its competitive prizes? 

Previously...

FederalTimes.com propaganda / article:  "The Democratic staff of the House Small Business Committee recently released its [2005] annual report card that purports to grade federal agencies on their small and disadvantaged business utilization....[T]he House report card gave NASA an F.  This report demonstrates more than ever the need for an alternative, uniform measurement that yields a fair and credible assessment of the government in this important arena."

  NASAWatch.INFO: Things went from bad to worse.  Have you seen this  2003 Congressional Score Card which evaluates the small business procurement records of all the U.S. federal agencies, based on official records reported by agencies such as NASA to the Small Business Administration?  NASA has the nation's 3rd largest procurement budget but scored a D-, as one can confirm beginning on page 47.  That grade placed NASA in the bottom tier of federal agencies in terms of complying with its legal obligations to spend 23% of its prime contracting dollars on small businesses. Indeed, NASA's percentage during 2001 was merely 14.52% and during 2002 it was 14.69%, which is actually a slight improvement over what the previous administration "achieved."  Anyhow, within the aerospace sector the Small Business Administration says that companies can employ "up to 1,000 [one thousand] people" and still remain classified as small businesses, as the following SBA u.r.l. can confirm [see "Subsector 541"].
      Who audits NASA for truthfulness, though?  Meanwhile, do you believe their predictable claims that it's not possible for NASA to outsource more to small businesses such as Bigelow Aerospace, MirCorp, or any rocket company seeking investment to revive the DC-X or some other potential competitor for the Shuttle monopoly?  Regardless, kudos go to the House Small Business Committee Democrats (led by Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, D, NY)  for compiling this study that's potentially helpful to all the excluded small businesses.   Some at NASA predictably claim that Nydia doesn't have her facts right but are these not statistics reported directly by NASA to the Small Business Administration?
     To learn more about NASA's jealous hostility towards privately owned ventures that could potentially outperform whatever the NASA clique still gets to deceptively push on taxpayers, please read this article.      Meanwhile, how is it that NASA's Small Business Office (portrayed here: http://www.osdbu.nasa.gov) got to host a tax-subsidized  "annual" minority awards ceremony on September 24th of 2002 when they just had such an "annual" event on February 20th, of 2002?   Is that a public relations-driven entity, or a performance-driven one?   Don't the numbers seem to speak for themselves?   To learn more about how NASA's supposedly pro-minority programs actually stifle minorities by keeping them dependent on NASA bureaucrats' plantation, please click here.

Previously...

U.S. Court of Appeals (D.C.) case document:  NASA HQ's purported outsourcing-related antidiscrimination czar Ralph Thomas (head of SADBU since 1992) was recently found liable for discrimination in a way that has just cost taxpayers (and NASA) a very large amount of money.  The March 30th, 2005 final ruling regarding docket # 95cv00155 (Susan Borgo vs. NASA HQ) may be obtained by calling the files and copies division of D.C.'s federal court at 202-354-3080.

NASAWatch.INFO:  Wasn't he Dan Goldin's first appointee, who later somehow burrowed in as a career civil servant despite laws protecting taxpayers from such self-perpetuation?

NASAWatch.COM: Shhhh!  Of course I didn't rock the boat by disclosing this litigation news.  You should hide this story, too, just like NASA must!  Otherwise it will be harder for NASA to continue fighting its eventually offering adequate competitive prizes, which NASA pretends it must not offer so that it can self-perpetuatingly claim to fight outsiders' supposed discrimination!  C'mon, folks know that almost nobody can accuse African Americans at NASA HQ of discrimination without risking upsetting alliances maintained with others there (and elsewhere) who are of the same ethnicity (to varying, admittedly potentially conflicting degrees), who have similar career protections, and who are similarly eager to sell out the well-being of other members of their race so that they can personally enrich themselves at their overall ethnic group's expense (tragically enough).  Can you imagine what would happen if they stopped helping NASA hide its inefficiencies from voters & taxpayers? Why can't you embrace the double standard? There's no shame in being a coward when it's "politically correct". Bureaucrats enjoy substantial career protections.  So why did his stellar NASA career just end?  Wasn't his performance not only flawless but also fabulous?

Previously...

Washington Post.com article: "A former Pentagon agency director and his top aide were charged yesterday with extortion and bribery for allegedly demanding payoffs, prostitutes and expensive watches in exchange for government contracts. Robert L. Neal Jr. headed the Defense Department's Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization from 1996 to June 2001, and Francis D. Jones Jr. was his executive assistant. In a 52-page affidavit unsealed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria yesterday, federal agents said the two men instructed contractors to make payments to companies friendly to Neal and Jones to obtain or maintain lucrative federal jobs. The money would then be laundered through a sham company or a secret trust in the small principality of Liechtenstein, the affidavit said... The Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization was created to help small and minority businesses obtain defense contracts. The office awards few contracts, but it exerts influence within the Pentagon, officials said... The office also directly controlled $28 million annually for the Mentor-Protege Program, in which small businesses find a large Defense Department contractor to serve as a partner and receive both training and contracts. One small business in the program told investigators that in 1997 and 1998, Neal and Jones demanded several payments of $8,000 to $15,000, "or they would take certain adverse actions or cease taking helpful actions" for the participant's company, according to Stroot's affidavit."

Washington Times article: "According to the affidavit, Mr. Neal and Mr. Jones, both of whom are black, engaged in a wide range of criminal activities during their tenure at the Pentagon, using their positions as leverage to receive illegal extortion payments, bribes and gratuities from minority or disadvantaged Defense Department contractors seeking to participate in the preference programs....Mr. Neal has been awarded the Secretary of Defense's Outstanding Public Service Medal and Outstanding Achievement Award, the OMB's Special Performance Awards, OMB's EEO Award and OMB's Divisional Awards for Special Performance."

NASAWatch.INFO: And some folks still wonder why there's been so much (self-perpetuating) reluctance by the federal government to simply offer adequate competitive prizes as a means of procurement?
                                                                                                                                                                                  Previously...Yahoo News article: "A professor who claimed she was targeted in a hate crime that stirred student protests at the Claremont colleges is suspected of staging the vandalism herself, police said Wednesday. Kerri F. Dunn's car was vandalized and covered with racist, anti-Semitic and sexist epithets on March 9, leading faculty to cancel classes and students to stage rallies the following day. Two witnesses interviewed by police investigators allegedly saw Dunn, a visiting professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College, commit the vandalism, police said in a statement."

NASAWatch.INFO: Maybe she deserves a NASA contract now?  After all, doesn't self-proclaimed victimhood pay at an agency that is desperate for political support from any group for its predictably underachieving, over-priced space programs?   

Previously...

 WashingtonTimes.com article: "An American historian says that more than a million Europeans were enslaved by North African slave traders between 1530 and 1780, a time of vigorous Mediterranean and Atlantic coastal piracy."

NASAWatch.INFO: Even so, NASA's race-related contract preferences continue to exclude Jews, Arabs, and Europeans because they supposedly lack the historical "disadvantages" of other ethnic groups.   Again, to learn more about how NASA's supposedly pro-minority programs actually stifle minorities by keeping them dependent on the NASA's bureaucrats' plantation, please click here.

(NASAWatch.COM: "Yes I'm ignoring this scandal! Elon hasn't paid anyone in my alliance in years!")

NASAWatch.INFO: One reader has asked: "Why can't NASA simply offer this as a competitive prize, combined with fixed price contracts to all entrants that succeed in building and flying cargo vehicles capable of supplying the space station?   Otherwise what is to stop NASA from using tight Prox Ops requirements to weed out cost-reducing upstarts that could undermine the NASA clique's dominance?"

NASAWatch.COM: "I would raise these kinds of issues if only someone would pay me to do so."

Previously... 

Space.com article: NASA will [finally] begin to offer launch-related competitive prizes...

MSNBC.com article:"One big unknown relates to the size of the purses offered. Sponberg said he hoped the prizes could be set at $1 million or more, but that would depend on congressional approval. He noted that the legislation governing NASA's funding for the coming year was still being considered."

NASAWatch.INFO: How much would you like to bet that monopolistic NASA's prizes will remain conveniently inadequate, while occupying a trivial percentage of NASA's overall taxpayer-financed $16 billion annual budget?

Previously... 

TechnologyReview.com article: "There's a legal cap on federal agencies' offering prizes larger than [$250,000] [says a fine NASA official who unfortunately has to take orders from above]." "Our request for special authority to lift that is working its way through the congressional queue. There's $10 million earmarked for challenges in our latest budget, so hopefully you'll see some bigger prizes."

NASAWatch.INFO: Is NASA thwarting its own pro-entrepreneurial competitive prizes initiative that it nevertheless touts as being a "justification" for taxpayers' and voters' desired approval of its much, much larger, conveniently statist program$?

1) NASA's "small business utilization" office website peculiarly ignored  NASA prizes for years, and of course made absolutely NO mention of the Centennial Challenges workshop on its calendar (or elsewhere, from what we have seen).  [NOTE: for more on NASA's minority-contracting hypocrisy, please click here.]

2) NASA's Acquisition Internet Service (NAIS) made absolutely NO mention of its Centennial Challenges workshop in its special events and announcements section.

3) NASA peculiarly opted to store the workshop's agenda in a format that makes one's operating system warn one about the harm that can be done to one's computer by actually opening it.  

 NASAWatch.COM: Of course I ignore how NASA thwarts its own reforms.  You haven't forgotten about my conflicts of interest, have you?

Previously...

Space.com article: "[X-Prize director Peter] Diamandis explained that for the promise of $10 million, over $50 million has been spent in research, development and testing.  "[X-Prize contestant John Carmack said] if I was willing to throw a million dollars at the problem by hiring the right firms to write the environmental impact statement and finish the launch license, things could get done faster, but I'm not willing to toss that kind of money at parasitic paperwork.""

NASAWatch.INFO: A 5:1 ratio isn't bad, considering how the size of the prize was so inadequate (despite its very noble nature).  But DARPA's Grand Challenge I prize had more like a 50:1 ratio.

Grist Magazine article: Laser beams could power rural areas, even cars and airplanes. 

For the latest news on NASA's "space elevator" challenges, see:
tether challenge /  beam power challenge.

NASAWatch.INFO: How can NASA justify offering just $50,000 for its space elevator tether challenge?  Are there sticky fingers somewhere in the budget offices, leeching off of the prizes funds? Are there companies seeking to lessen certain competitions in hopes of getting contracts?

(NASAWatch.COM: "Hey! Don't you dare point that scrutinizing spotlight in our direction! We're practically ignoring the story, and conveniently ignoring the scandal!")

NASAWatch.INFO: CAGW held a  Washington Waste Wire program on space waste during July '05.

Previously...

Citizens Against Government Waste document: "Mankind's future in space no longer depends on politicized bureaucracies and tax-funded boondoggles," Schatz concluded. "The success of SpaceShipOne, startup space companies, and the advent of space tourism have opened the door to an exciting future of private enterprise in space. Such endeavors are economical, realistic, and more likely to yield tangible benefits for mankind and taxpayers."

NASAWatch.INFO: Isn't it encouraging to see such a patriotic and bold organization on NASA's trail?

NASAWatch.COM: "&$#@)!!! We're not yet prepared to cope with their traditionally effective corruption-busting and pork-exposing.  More ad hominem is our only defense!"

Previously...

TechCentralStation.com article: "But both the Pilgrims and those prehistoric colonizers from Siberia had something that modern space enthusiasts don't -- they were pretty sure that once they got here, they could claim land without government interference. That modern space enthusiasts can't say the same thing was demonstrated just last week..."

COPUOS Legal Subcommittee annual meeting, April 4-15, 2005...

NASAWatch.INFO: Still no serious discussions about private property rights in space?

Previously...

       National Review article: the Bush Administration & the USA should back out of Article II of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.   Article II prohibits national appropriation of property rights in space.  Many consider it a relic of the Cold War that some proponents hoped would discourage private investment in space mining and colonization, thereby making funds more available for competing military endeavors.  
            That National Review article raises the possibility that the prohibition against national appropriation allegedly makes it more difficult for the U.S. government to protect American settlers' own private property rights in space.   Simultaneously, Article II nevertheless allegedly renders their property rights vulnerable to expropriation by super-national entities such as the bureaucratic United Nations.    
       
(NASAWatch.COM: "Oh no!   If we fortify the recognition and eventual protection of private property rights in space, then won't that incentivize private industry and thereby make more of the bloated and overpriced NASA clique increasingly obsolete in the eyes of taxpayers?! How can I personally profit from that?")  
         
NASAWatch.INFO: To learn more about the property rights in space issue, please click here.  Meanwhile, perhaps it's worth keeping in mind this TransOrbital press release: [After a successful testing designed to test rocket separation, downlink telemetry, spacecraft orientation and mass properties in preparation for the formal lunar launch] TransOrbital is on target to begin routine Moon travel....  “Significant commercial demand exists for high definition (HD) video, lunar mapping, data storage, scientific research, communications, and data archiving. Many corporate marketers see their products associated with the first commercial missions to the Moon.”  “Additionally, there is worldwide demand from private citizens to send personal items such as photographs, legal documents, business cards, burial ashes, and jewelry to the Moon.” TransOrbital is the first and only commercial company licensed by the U.S. Department of State and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for private sector flights to the Moon.

TransOrbital press release: "TransOrbital, Inc. has become the first private company in the history of space flight to win approval from the U.S. government to explore, photograph, and land on the moon. The company expects to launch its Trailblazer Mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan within the next 9-12 months."

NASAWatch.INFO:  Wouldn't their raising needed capital be greatly facilitated if NASA would offer adequate prizes to the first company or companies that could achieve certain milestones on the Moon (etcetera)? After all, NASA's annual budget is "only" $16 billion dollars.  That's around the same as all the rest of the world's civilian space agencies' budgets COMBINED.   Regardless of what such prizes are offered for, pro-entrepreneurial reforms such as tax-incentives continue getting stifled.   Who on Earth could be responsible for that?   Pork barrelers?  Or those who believe tax cuts should primarily benefit the wealthiest 1% of our population (many of whose members "earned" their money the old fashioned way by inheriting it)?

NASAWatch.INFO: NASA's annual budget's over $16 billion.   Regardless of which estimates regarding Chinese space expenditures you believe, the Chinese space program does quite a lot with reportedly a far smaller budget than NASA's.   For more information about how much China achieves with relatively much less money, feel free to visit here.  

 NASAWatch.COM: Why not simply use China as a competitive excuse to give my NASA bureaucrats MORE tax dollars to waste?

NASAWatch.INFO: Didn't around half a dozen finish the race in 2005?  Now they can enjoy the fruits of their efforts in the private sector...

Previously:

Space Frontier Foundation press release: "[We are] hoping to avoid conflicts that might arise if the [space] prize-giving entity remains with NASA, which has many vested interests in areas where prizes might best be applied.  For example, one often cited prize would be for the development of a comfortable, rugged and easy to use glove for astronauts’ space suits. In this case, NASA has personnel already working on space suit development with multi-million dollar contractors, who have strong ties to various NASA centers and programs, which might cause biases to creep into the prize process."..."While the government fights over a measly $34 million dollars out of its huge budget, we have a private prize out there for $50 million from just one person! After years of wasting billions on studies and presentations that often lead to dead ends, allocating less than 1/100th of our civilian space budget to pay for actual results should be a no brainer," concluded Tumlinson."

WashingtonPost.com article:  "DARPA chief Anthony Tether said the top prize would be $2 million in the second race instead of the $1 million prize offered at this year's Grand Challenge... [Program manager] Negron said the $12 million-plus that DARPA spent to organize the first Grand Challenge prompted participating teams to spend as much as $50 million researching autonomous vehicle technology."

NASAWatch.INFO: What's more noteworthy?  The 50:1 private sector investment: prize amount ratio?  Or the 12:1 bureaucrat expenditures: prize one?  And what's DARPA's annual budget?  OVER $1 billion.

NASAWatch.COM: "I simply cannot go as far as to shed light on the bureaucratic parasitism at NASA to which I crave the chance to return so that I won't have to corruptly chase after contractors and sponsors for contributions any longer. "

Previously:

Space.com article: "How does NASA justify its intention to spend tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to build what will probably be a far less efficient space transportation system than what the commercial space industry is developing for its own purposes. Look at the contrasts. Bigelow is assuming that his $50 million dollar America’s Prize will result in a safe and reusable passenger capsule for roundtrips between Earth and low Earth orbit. NASA is expecting to spend over $10 billion dollars to develop the same sort of capability. Yes, Bigelow expects the winner to spend far more than the actual prize amount based on hopes of follow-on markets; and yes, the winning capsule will have fewer bells and whistles that anything NASA builds, but the magnitude of difference in the development costs is ridiculous. NASA, the White House and Congress are being driven more by the power of traditional aerospace lobbying and the need to maintain political constituencies than practical and common sense understanding of the changes at hand."

WashingtonTimes.com article: "A new White House management reform proposal would create a commission able to shut down unnecessary and wasteful U.S. government programs...Congress would have to approve the creation of a commission to review every federal program according to an agreed upon timetable and recommend whether a program should be retained, curtailed, merged with similar programs or eliminated all together. Programs recommended for termination would be shut down unless the Congress reauthorized them."

NASAWatch.INFO: Can anyone name a single NASA program that couldn't be better administered through the government's awarding of adequate competitive prizes to space entrepreneurs?  

 (NASAWatch.COM: "Don't even suggest that space entrepreneurs' lack of success in space over the years has had anything at all to do with bureaucrats' jealousy & impudence!  My bureaucrat allies and their Congressional pork partners are still smarting from your annoying analysis of what bureaucrats did to force privatized Mir's deorbiting in 2001. Who cares if bureaucrats and ordinary government contractors have achieved remarkably little in space these past 30 years.  Doesn't that merely prove that they deserve to receive even more of your tax dollars?").  

NASAWatch.INFO: Is it not shameful that the X Prize Cup and [soon] Robert Bigelow's America's Space Prize are so much further ahead of any NASA-funded prizes that Congress could fortify but still hasn't?

Previously:

MSNBC.com article: "U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback [a Kansas Republican who chaired the Science, Technology and Space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee - which oversees NASA] proposed... that a prize of some $200 million dollars be offered for the first private, piloted mission to orbit Earth."

NASAWatch.INFO: Notice how corrupt ole' NASA's not jumping onto that bandwagon?  Here's why.

Previously:

WashingtonPost.com article: "But Rutan and his team are the first to do so with no government help -- and not in a titanium machine powered by solid-fuel rockets, but a relatively lightweight craft. It was "a manned space program designed from scratch," Rutan boasted, in four years for $20 million -- about what NASA would spend "on a paper study," Rutan taunted".

CNN.com article: ""The reason we haven't had the advances is no one had the courage to demand it," [Burt Rutan] said."

NASAWatch.INFO: Like the tax-leeching NASA bureaucrats and their pet contractors wanted to risk letting their monopoly erode before campaign finance reform curtailed their antidemocratic powers?  Isn't it time that NASA finally funded adequate competitive prizes?

[NASAWatch.COM:  "Can't you shut up and enjoy the fireworks!? I'm trying to get a job at NASA. You're not helping... This kind of talk could lead to pro-entrepreneurial bureaucracy-trimming!"]

NASAWatch.INFO:  Now that Hurricane Katrina is making it less unfashionable to cut government waste, will this CEV endeavor be achieved competitively, or through mere "competitive bidding" through some monopoly-anointing contract offer?   Should we sit still and risk their imposing another X-33-style fiasco on us? Unsurprisingly, the pork-barrelers continue refusing to lend significant support to pro-entrepreneurial space reform initiatives.  But such reforms would save money for taxpayers, and would generate economic growth as well as actual progress in space instead of contracts to a few players and their crumb-seeking sycophants.  

(NASAWatch.COM: "I blame inadequate funding for how the lone remaining international space station was supposed to cost $8 billion and house around a dozen people, only to cost around a hundred billion just to house a couple.  I mean doesn't Moore's law say that at least in the competitive computer processing sector, speed doubles every 18 months while prices fall by around half?  There ya have it!  It's clearly not my bureaucrats' and their pet contractors' fault.") 

NASAWatch.INFO:  Oh and we can suppose that that tax-leeching NASA pension collector would have us believe that the USA's dependence on the murderous Shuttle (for which he is partially responsible) is preferable even at several times the price per flight and while covering far less distance?

(NASAWatch.COM: "Hey!  Ease up on the Shuttle monopoly like I usually do, will ya?  The solution is always to throw more money at a problem [as long as it's not my own money].  Mike Griffin will wish he would have hired me if he ultimately doesn't.  He owes me...  But meanwhile, have you callously forgotten that the SpaceRef venture in which I very actively participate also includes a director of the decreasingly subsidized but still pro-pork Space Transportation Association?  Can't you cease with the scrutiny of the Shuttle monopoly (and my at least tacit supportiveness of it)?  

NASAWatch.COM: Support Hubble instead! Some of my allies want that and I have to pay some bills!

NASAWatch.INFO: In the wake of that candid admission (and all the other commonly known facts), can you imagine the tort liability (at taxpayers' expense, for starters) that will result if and when another Shuttle (quite foreseeably) sort of collapses under its own weight, too?  

(NASAWatch.COM: "The solution is always to throw more tax dollars at the problem."

Previously:

WashingtonPost.com article: "Hundreds of whistleblower complaints about waste, fraud and abuse in government are going unexamined, with the backlog of cases at the Office of Special Counsel more than doubling in the past 18 months, according to newly obtained figures."

NASAWatch.INFO: Tax cuts are great, but why are these sources of potential savings being ignored?

 Washington Post.com article: "The Bush administration, like many of its predecessors, both Republican and Democratic, would like to put an end to the perennial problems caused by the legal limit on how much the Treasury Department can borrow to finance the rapidly rising national debt."

NASAWatch.INFO: Yes, forced fiscal discipline DOES tend to get in the way of politicians' pork-barreling & vote-buying, doesn't it?  Meanwhile, our national debt just reached an all-time $6.7 trillion dollar  record level.

(NASAWatch.COM: "Oh just shishhhh! I'm ignoring scandals like this. Why can't you just sell out like I eagerly did?")

Previously...

Space.com article: "What if the Shuttle never flew again?"

NASAWatch.INFO:  Have you seen how many more $600 million per flight Space Shuttle rides NASA hopes to impose upon taxpayers [presumably for Floridian governor Jeb Bush's benefit]?   Nearly two dozen:  

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/future/index.html     

Will the pathetically wasteful and murderous Shuttle monopoly survive?  In light of our federal deficit and record high national debt, why wouldn't an alternative candidate rush to continue outsourcing from the much more affordable private industry, initially from the Soyuz providers  (which are at least 20 times cheaper) until Rutan or Carmack or Bezos or Musk or somebody else can fill in?  
       How about finally applying President Bush's supposed mantra of "competitive sourcing" to the Shuttle monopoly for a change?  Or would Floridian governor Jeb object?  It looks that way, doesn't it?

Previously...

SunHerald.com article: "Brownback, a Kansas Republican and former chair of the Science, Technology and Space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee - which oversees NASA - questioned whether the large amount of money NASA spends on the shuttle, combined with safety and maintenance issues for the aging fleet, is worthwhile as the agency tries to reshape itself for more ambitious exploration....He wants to hold a hearing on recent problems within the space shuttle program and whether NASA's remaining fleet could or should be retired sooner than the current target date of 2010... In his statement, Brownback said he wants to know whether NASA would be better off shutting down the shuttle early, and plowing the money saved into an accelerated schedule for a new spacecraft, or even a project developed by the private sector. While Brownback is not the first lawmaker to raise the idea of scrapping the shuttle because of safety and cost concerns, that idea has not been the main topic of a congressional hearing."

NASAWatch.INFO:   U.S. Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas) has said that the Shuttle is too dangerous to fly with people on board.  "I think we should use the three remaining orbiters in an umanned capacity, in other words convert them so you don't put humans in the orbiter," said Barton during an appearance on CNNfn. "We should use the Russian Soyuz or develop our own new shuttle or spaceplane to take astronauts back into space."   At least President Bush has a greater interest in Mars than he had a few years ago, though, as this somewhat historic online video clip suggests."

NASAWatch.COM: Stop rocking the boat! I want to profitably sell my book  (http://www.cgpublishing.com/Books/NewMoon.html) about this statist plan before it becomes financially doomed.  Don't you DARE insinuate that I don't deserve the Pulitzer!

NASAWatch.INFO: Once again, Mexico has more democratic rights than its Northern neighbor: http://www.informacionpublica.gob.mx

NASAWatch.COM: Why shouldn't I prefer that practically only >I< can access nearly secret information (through my sycophantic sources of leaks whose causes I champion)?

Previously:

FoxNews.com article: "A congressional investigation of misuse of funds at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is focusing in on possible abuses by recently departed NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe..."

NASAWatch.COM: Shhhhhh!

NASAWatch.INFO: Keith, why did you keep quiet about this sort of thing for so long?

Previously:

AP News article: "President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries Wednesday not to hire columnists to promote administration agendas after disclosure that a second writer had been paid to assist an agency."

NASAWatch.COM: "Buy my sycophantic book.  Now!!!  Despite months and months of publicity campaigns, and all the special access that I was astonishingly given to Bush Administration officials, we had barely even sold 500 copies as of November 16th, 2004 (roughly half a year after its release).  Its increasingly languishing sales are not even ranked highly @ Amazon, due to your laziness and preference for actual critical analysis.  What's the matter with you?!?  I opportunistically looked the other way while the monopolistic Space Shuttle was forced upon us again and this is all that I get?"

NASAWatch.INFO: What do these sales figures signify? Click here to discuss...

The book entitled Space: The Free-Market Frontier (from the Cato Institute) is still ranked #681,114 out of over a million books for sale at Amazon.  [We have absolutely no relationship with that book, and we were never asked to mention it here. We simply admire its pro-entrepreneurial positions, and are pleased that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is now aggressively embracing the space industry.]. And the authors of THIS book have something unique, too: published words of which to be proud.

Cato Institute book forum: Space: The Free-Market Frontier: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 12:00 p.m. (video & audio are available there for free).

NASAWatch.INFO: Predictably ignoring invitations, NASA ultimately sent nobody to speak in a related Cato event 2 years ago.  There are elections in November of '04 though, so this time someone [Courtney Stadd] showed up to speak for NASA (while peculiarly NOT accepting any publicly asked questions).  Nice things were said about NASA by him (and he has since resigned to cash in out in the private sector) but, ahem!,  where are the pro-entrepreneurial reforms?  The Columbia disaster is a justification for them, not an excuse to ignore them, right?

NASAWatch.INFO: Why can't this article be fair and balanced?  It laments how civil service reforms could discourage folks from passing up the chance to work in a major accounting firm instead of the IRS, but ignores how a flat tax (like more competitive prize offerings) would make such tax-leeching and unpredictability-inducing jobs unnecessary.  It mourns the upcoming reduction in government "worker" volunteers for events like after school PTA gatherings, while ignoring  how ordinary people have to miss such events because they must work harder and longer hours to give half of their annual earnings to the government.  It claims that the current system protects taxpayers from political favoritism while ignoring how the vast majority of these career-protected bureaucrats have allegiance to the same political party (the Democrats), and they leak timely news and dole out tax-funded contracts to universities and media outlets (etcetera) with similar political leanings.   So what can be said in the Washington Post's purported defense when critics call it the Washington Compost?   

 (NASAWatch.COM: "I sure hope the bureaucrats win their lawsuit to thwart these legal reforms!").

Previously:

NASA Watch.INFO: In a victory for taxpayers and for those who find excessive bureaucratic hurdles to be a hindrance to generating economic growth, a growing quantity of bureaucratic sinecures are finally being competitively sourced to the private sector.   Feel free to consult our anti-bureaucracy page dedicated to analyzing the inertia which stubbornly fights such progress even as our national debt has reached an all time record high $8 trillion dollar level.

(NASAWatch.COM: "Oh no!  This could wreck my business plan. I'd better show my renewed loyalty to the side my bread is buttered on.  I want for some deadweight tax leeches in NASA's bureaucracy to remain comfortably employed at NASA so that they can keep on viewing my sponsored websites at taxpayers' expense, and leaking national secrets to me for my own personal profit.   Besides, if some of my allies lost their bureaucratic sinecures then how could I subsequently continue furthering my own agenda in ways that benefit close business affiliates?
     Admittedly though, it's getting rather infuriating that despite my years of selling out, my allies in the NASA bureaucracy and entrenched government contracting realm still haven't found me any adequately paying sponsors to sufficiently replace the Discovery Channel's lost account.  Here are my advertising rates, folks: http://www.spaceref.com/company/advertising.html .   Do you want me to keep needing handouts from the Space Transportation Association, which has been run by a SpaceRef business affiliate with a sponsorship-accepting, government contractor-pandering, predictably statist agenda?  I'd prefer to further my own self-serving agenda.")

NASAWatch.COM: Does this mean I can continue with my book-sales about Bush's space vision?

NASAWatch.INFO: As you wish, Keith.  We'll keep covering what you corruptly ignore.  

Previously...

WashingtonPost.com article: "The largest federal employee union will work to defeat President Bush in November after endorsing presumptive Democratic nominee John F. Kerry last week. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which has 210,000 dues-paying members, said the Massachusetts  senator would help turn back the Republican's efforts to revamp federal pay and personnel systems and open up more federal work to private contractors.  Kerry, who has voted with the AFGE 88 percent of the time during his Senate career, also opposes private accounts in Social Security...The IFPTE, with 40,000 members in the Defense Department and NASA, typically makes no endorsement, but it broke with that tradition because "this administration has been so anti-labor, particularly when it comes to federal employees," said Matthew S. Biggs, an IFPTE spokesman."

NASAWatch.INFO: So for more of the same at NASA, vote for whom the bureaucrats endorse...

Previously...

GazetteTimes.com article: "President Bush is on track to become the first chief executive since John Quincy Adams in the 1820s to complete a full term without vetoing one bill....That hasn't pleased everyone, including some fiscal conservatives who have faulted Bush for not blocking spending increases. A year ago, Bush demanded that a final 2003 spending package be held to $385 billion, but then signed a $397 billion bill.  "The president cannot say, as he has many times, that ‘I'm going to tell Congress to enforce some spending discipline' and then not veto bills," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said.  The writers of the Constitution assured strong presidential influence in the legislative process by giving the president the power to reject bills passed by Congress. Except for a few presidents, they have used the power sparingly, with 2,550 vetoes over the 213 years of the republic. Vetoes can be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate, but that has happened only 106 times, Congressional Research Service records show."

NASAWatch.COM: Why can't this discomfortingly distracting discussion wait until after my Bush-related space book's been on sale for a lot longer?  Please purchase your copy today! http://www.cgpublishing.com/Books/NewMoon.html

NASAWatch.INFO:  Has anyone forgotten how the Bush Administration peculiarly ignored its own "competitive sourcing" mantra regarding the murderous Space Shuttle monopoly that shares so many of our tax dollars with brother Jeb's state of Florida?   Whatever happened to various pro-entrepreneurial reforms regarding space that Bush could have supported but chose not to, despite the predictable Columbia disaster?

(NASAWatch.COM: "I'm not going there. There's too much money to be made for me behind the scenes. I support whoever is in power as long as I get to profit [at taxpayers' expense].")

NASAWatch.INFO: Have they considered looking into at least one of those linked from this list?

MSNBC.com article: "But with the budget deficit exceeding $400 billion this year, tough and painful cuts are unavoidable, said Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Federal agencies' discretionary spending has risen 39 percent in the past three years. "I think the public is ready for spending cuts," Riedl said. "Not only does the public understand there's a lot of waste in the federal budget, but the public is ready to make sacrifices during the war on terror."

NASAWatch.INFO: Isn't it a bit late to finally start with that long overdue budgetary streamlining?  Regardless, does NASA need to keep operating the still nonprivatized, lone-remaining International Space Station?  Not according to this report on space station entrepreneurs at Bigelow Aerospace.   How about the $600 million per flight murderous Space Shuttle?    Not according to this report on spaceport entrepreneurs who are achieving real space launches.

NASAWatch.COM: "Don't touch NASA's space station! I used to work on it while a tax leech at NASA. If it's de-emphasized then what will I have to show for my time as a tax leech?  As for the Shuttle, I have allie$ who do not want it abolished either so just shush! What we should abolish, instead, is NASA's $20 million dollar per year competitive prizes initiative.  I'll not advocate its survival unless the Shuttle, CEV and the Station get fully funded like my cronies and partners in crime desire."

Independent.co.uk article: "An official inquiry into the failure of the Beagle 2 space mission to Mars at Christmas will condemn the British-led project as mismanaged...and done too cheaply."

Previously...

BBC article: "But while the fate of Beagle may never be known, Esa has other plans to go back to Mars at the end of this decade. The aim is to send a big cousin of Beagle to explore the biology of Mars followed by a mission to snatch a sample of Martian rock for return to Earth. The British companies that helped build Beagle can make a key contribution to this programme. It rests on the UK Government to decide whether to sign up to the plans and commit the money that could make some kind of "Beagle 3" a reality."

NASAWatch.INFO: Surprise surprise: they're practically asking for lots more money for Astrium, instead of for a government-sponsored Beagle 3 competitive prize for the most efficient player(s)... Did Astrium actually WANT the lean-budgeted Beagle 2 to fail?   The European Space Agency is almost as socialist as NASA. Some in Europe have complained that socialist ESA has anointed basically one contractor monopoly, Astrium, while we already know that NASA has anointed its own for Mars as well: Lockheed Martin. LockMart and Astrium are basically NOT competitors for government contracts, and neither one is particularly commercial where space is concerned either. Anyhow, even though Astrium built Beagle 2, it apparently stands to profit disproportionately if embarrassment from it should result in political demands for better funding for ESA-sponsored interplanetary probes. How much support was there in Europe for interplanetary missions BEFORE this "unintentional" embarrassment emanating from Europe's first attempt? Not nearly as much, right?
     Do you remember what happened when Lockheed's 1999 Mars missions failed miserably? LockMart and tax-leeching bureaucrats involved with Mars missions got MORE money for future NASA missions to Mars. Although LockMart got its feather$ ruffled a bit in the process, did it not come out ahead financially because of the 1999 "failures"? And weren't the causes of those Mars failures rather silly (if not intentional), as is documented here? It wasn't enough that orbiters had successfully made it to Mars: the public wanted photo-ops of the surface.
     Here's the most annoying part: since then, Lockheed has worked against the emergence of pro-entrepreneurial, NASA-funded COMPETITIVE prizes.   Lockheed consequently maintains its monopolistic stronghold over NASA's Mars endeavors. Now then, is it unsurprising that we've not heard of monopolist Astrium's supporting competitive prizes' emergence in Europe, either? It was a competitive prize, NOT a government contract, that lured Charles Lindberg's historic entrepreneurial flight from the USA to Europe. Nevertheless, the socialists in Europe's space agency now seem to prefer to overlook this awkward detail, just like the socialists corruptly dominating NASA do. Isn't it time to get the bureaucrats and their pet contractors out of humanity's way so that we can finally bring life to space, and space to life?

(NASAWatch.COM: "Utterly preposterous! There's no conspiracy-mongering unless I report about it. If I refuse to report about it due to my numerous conflicts of interest, then anyone else who outshines me will be branded a peon and attention-seeker by me and my accomplices.  How dare them demonstrate (by example) how undeserving of the Pulitzer that I am!  The Mars Institute can't profit as much if we alienate Astrium or any other major Mars players, so back off!  And don't you DARE insinuate that I don't deserve the