Have we uncovered significant corruption involving NASA and the (supposedly objective "watchdog") NASAWatch.COM / SpaceRef duo regarding (to say the least) Devon Island, Canada?

  PRELUDE:  Guess who needs to sell an upcoming Canadian-published book:

http://www.cgpublishing.com/newmoon.htm

on how George W. Bush embraced the Moonbeam plan of the author's former acquaintance (and discredited politician) Gerry Brown?  If Bush loses though, or if Congress changes the focus to Mars, folks will be more reluctant to pay for it.

    Hypocritically enough, though, the Mars Institute (which is run by a major SpaceRef investor, and promoted aggressively by both SpaceRef and NASAWatch.COM) wants your money. 

http://www.marsinstitute.info/fundraising/donate.html

How often will "journalistic" publications associated with this supposed "501(c)(3) non-profit public benefit corporation" look the other way or even attempt to sabotage potential reformers [such as Mars advocate Dr. Robert Zubrin] whenever NASA civil servants and their pet contractors desire as such?  Doesn't the SpaceRef clique want donations and timely newsleaks from such bureaucrats and their pet contractors?   Let's keep the tax-subsidized "Combined Federal Campaign" on our radar, folks...

      On a different note, prices for banner advertising at SpaceRef.com, a NASAWatch.COM crew-mate, are now published at:

http://www.spaceref.com/company/advertising.html .   

Ah, but space journalistic integrity would never be compromised to favor previous, current, or potential sponsors' or news-leakers' hidden agendas, right?  Indeed, the progress or stifling of meaningful reforms are always emphasized at SpaceRef, and at its very closely affiliated website NASAWatch.COM, just like the price-gouging potential aerospace sponsors [and their sycophants] want to happen, right?   Not!  

    NASAWatch.COM: "I will be living in a tent on Devon Island [with the NASA Haughton Mars Project, to which my SpaceRef venture is contributing a greenhouse, etcetera] for nearly a month beginning Saturday night."  (July 4th, 2002). Here are pictures from that excursion spent with an agency that NASA Watch. COM purports to objectively police:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=6563

  Was anyone even remotely surprised to see this civil service union letter from NASA Ames (available at http://www.afeu.org/fair_act__letter_to_mcdonald.htm) aggressively promoted at NASAWatch.COM beginning on July 2nd, 2002 (while NASA Watch. COM's editor was en route to his tax-subsidized month-long mission to Devon Island)?   Meanwhile, does anyone honestly believe that the SpaceRef-supported Mars Institute (the one at MarsInstitute.INFO, and not to be confused with the pre-existing Walsh Mars Institute) will not opportunistically serve as an anti-entrepreneurial public relations tool for NASA civil servants who despise genuinely entrepreneurial competition for their tax-squandering, under-achieving sinecures?  By the way, the NASA Haughton Mars Project visit was repeated by NASAWatch.COM's editor in 2003...

         Has the SpaceRef  & NASAWatch.COM alliance not gotten federal tax subsidies to transport their non-closed-loop (and therefore basically non-value-adding) greenhouse up to Devon Island?   And considering how Dr. Zubrin has advocated pro-entrepreneurial, bureaucracy-trimming reforms in the past, is it not intriguing how the NASA bureaucrats have now become so supportive of a competitor of Zubrin's in Canada? 

       Incidentally, what's so special about Devon Island that can't be mimicked much more affordably to taxpayers by setting up the "donated" greenhouse publicity stunt in SpaceRef  Inc.'s native USA, instead?  That's where the largely worthless greenhouse originated, anyway.    And was there any competitive bidding involved with this, or were the NASA bureaucrats too busy opportunistically drooling over the prospect of getting NASAWatch.COM to continue pretending that downsizing NASA's bureaucracy [if not closing at least one NASA Center and using the money to support space prizes, instead] is somehow NOT long overdue?

        Meanwhile, someone we don't personally know posted the following relevant observation:

Chris Vancil: "The total habitable season on Devon Island is three months at best. The scientists must let anyone who wants to enter the greenhouse during the winter, do so. The scientists won't be there to watch over the experiments and hunters are clumsy or can even be vandals.  Inuit hunters have a legal right (source: http://www.nunavut.com/government/english/contacts.html) to shelter during winter and they do get as far north as Devon Island."

So is potentially worthwhile & tax-subsidized science therefore being jeopardized for the sake of a corrupted journalist's publicity stunt?   

    In moving along, NASAWatch.INFO asks: Is it in fact true that at least some of the SpaceRef crew gets tax-financed subsidies en route to, and while at, Devon Island as a result of this "donated" greenhouse publicity stunt, even though they wouldn't have OTHERWISE even gotten to visit and participate?   Keith Cowing never received an invitation from the Mars Society to personally participate in their Devon Island endeavor, did he?   Conveniently enough, though, not long after Cowing's rather abrupt negative publicity campaign at NASAWatch.COM during the Fall of 2001 against Dr. Robert Zubrin (a notorious and highly published NASA critic), NASA Ames and company subsequently reciprocated by facilitating with Cowing's getting to spend an entire tax-subsidized month with members of the NASA crew up at Devon Island, Canada.   If NASAWatch.COM really is the "independent" watchdog that it pretends to be, then isn't this literally what some might call "sleeping with the enemy"?  

       Doesn't this all seem more like a mere favor by NASA in exchange for "watchdog" NASAWatch.COM's and Cowing's closely affiliated SpaceRef venture's reciprocation?   Indeed, has anyone not noticed some predictable journalistic biases and flagrant coverage gaps at NASAWatch.COM?    For example, was anyone even remotely surprised to see this pro-civil service union letter from Ames bureaucrats  (available at http://www.afeu.org/fair_act__letter_to_mcdonald.htm) aggressively promoted at NASAWatch.COM, beginning on July 2nd, 2002 (right as the tax-subsidized Devon Island escapade got underway)?   In contrast, Dr. Robert Zubrin's publications promote ideas such as NASA-financed Mars Prizes which reward achievements instead of Mars-related wastefulness.   While Zubrin's pro-entrepreneurial proposals cause space entrepreneurs to salivate with optimism, they simultaneously make tax-leeching bureaucrats and their contracting sycophants nervous.  

        Meanwhile, how about the way that NASAWatch.COM promotes pork-laden congressional statements such as the Dear Colleague letter that was sent out by Capitol Hill's NASA Center constituency during the same Summer of '02? Yes, the following spacepork advocacy "coincidentally" received supportive frontpage publicity at NASAWatch.COM throughout most of June 2002:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=5532

It states in part that

"[i]n our view, one of the main areas suffering critical budgetary shortfalls is the Space Shuttle program. This program is the lifeline to the International Space Station (ISS) and its value to our nation cannot be overstated....We also call on the Subcommittee to look seriously at what can be done to ensure the International Space Station lives up to its mission with a full crew complement."

      By the way, is it not fair to suppose that such highly questionable space pork-promotion  by NASAWatch.COM and SpaceRef has anything to do with how one of SpaceRef's main business affiliates now heads the (increasingly floundering) Space Transportation Association?   For those who don't already know, the STA is an organization whose very financial survival desperately depends at least in part upon the Shuttle's, and the mismanaged lone remaining space station's survival at taxpayers' (and otherwise potentially competing space entrepreneurs') expense.   Meanwhile, the rest of us predictably still can't even afford to go into space, while our national debt has recently reached an all time high: (as http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm shows).  Nevertheless, we bet that we won't see anything appear on NASAWatch.COM -or- its close affiliate SpaceRef that advocates a NASA base closure at Ames (which supports Devon Island research), at least not after the emergence of this latest tax-subsidized Devon Island-related favor from NASA to the publicity-seeking SpaceRef / NASAWatch.COM crew.  But paradoxically enough, don't the shuttle and station programs drain money from Mars programs which NASAWatch.COM and SpaceRef at least pretend to embrace (perhaps as a smokescreen for what is really going on behind the scenes)?

      Awareness of the problem is part of the solution, but the traditional space media peculiarly and predictably doesn't raise these issues.  To find out  more about why they won't tattle tail on each other, please feel free to click here.   Anyhow, attacking the messengers who authored this article isn't the solution; exposing and addressing the corruption which keeps us all land-locked is.  Political activism with our elected officials probably can't hurt, either, although pork-barreling aspirations by some of them is worth keeping in mind, unfortunately (even though recent campaign finance reforms are finally changing the spacepork landscape).

Has NA$A been stifling commercial space ventures that could otherwise outperform it?