At what point is a union stepping over the boundry of good sense (and the law) into extralegal territory?
Dr. William Henry Jones, NASA, published a letter to the membership of IFPTE Local 28.
Keith Cowling of NASA Watch published the letter and had some semi-scathing remarks.
Virginia Cantwell, President of IFPTE Local 28, wrote to Keith, threatening an Unfair Labor Practice.
Cowling is a private citizen who runs several web sites that publishes commentary on and about space, NASA and related subjects. He's not employed by the government. Can a union really bring a UTP against a private citizen? What about using government facilities (computer and email) to threaten the UTP?
So the union has devolved from an institution defeding the worker against the depredations of management into an office that threatens private citizens for publishing semi-mocking commentary ...
LESA BULLETIN 2004-002: IFPTE LOCAL 28
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=12252
LESA BULLETIN 2004-002
IFPTE LOCAL 28
AFL-CIO & CLC
Virginia A. Cantwell, President
March 2004
A Word from the Know-Nothing Bureaucrats By Dr. William Henry Jones
Space is easy. So says the alternative, private-sector space crowd momentarily being led into that glorious blackness by Burt Rutan and his SpaceShipOne. The bureaucracy just makes it "hard" to protect their jobs, their budgets, and their little political niche in life. Yeah.
As Mr. Rutan is about to find out (and is perhaps already finding out) space, even the little toe-hold he is trying to gain, is hard - in fact, space is very hard. I will admit that bureaucracy doesn't make space any easier, as witness the tangled management and cultural mess the Columbia Accident Investigation Board uncovered, but taking away the bureaucracy won't magically make space flight something your granny can do with her Oldsmobile. Space is a hard, dangerous, demanding, expensive, and unforgiving world to fly in.
While the anti-government crowd cheers on Mr. Rutan, we should be clear about what he is trying to do: he is trying to take people 100 kilometers up twice in two weeks. While, technically, 100 kilometers is "space" and, technically, his ship will be "flying", this is a long, long way from the spaceflight that the bureaucracy takes on. There is no actual speed requirement in Mr. Rutan's goal; I understand he intends to reach his goal in a near-vertical ascent, giving him a horizontal speed of essentially zero. This is well short of the 17,500 mph that low earth orbit involves and this net energy difference makes Mr. Rutan's task significantly easier. An altitude of 100 kilometers is also significantly easier than the 300 kilometers or so of low earth orbit - more energy SpaceShipOne won't have to deal with. Somewhere I got the impression that Mr. Rutan expected to reach velocities in the neighborhood of Mach 3, again something well short of the Mach 25 or so that vehicles returning from bureaucratic spaceflight encounter.
The fact of the matter is that the bureaucracy in the form of NASA (pronounced "nay-say" in Mr. Rutan's opinion) flew "spaceflight" profiles approximating Mr. Rutan's expected achievements some 40 years ago with the X-15 program it inherited from its forerunner, NACA. They were stunning achievements then, they will be stunning achievements again when Mr. Rutan succeeds, but they are not yet the path to spaceflight as the bureaucracy practices it. NASA didn't go to the spam-in-a-can approach because they couldn't make the X-15 expensive enough; they went to spam-in-a-can because the X-15 just could not get to where they needed to go: orbital space flight. An X-15 couldn't pack in enough energy to accelerate from the 3,000 mph it achieved to the 17,500 mph that physics dictates for orbit, and the materials available to the X-15 simply would not have been able to take the heat of returning from success, had it been achieved.
It should also be noted that Mr. Rutan enjoys the luxury in his efforts of being an experimentalist, a visionary, a ground breaker, an engineer pushing the edge. Others verify this by citing the fact that, of his hundreds of aircraft designs, only one - the Beech Aircraft Starship - has ever been certificated at any level beyond experimental. Mr. Rutan attributes this to the "know-nothing" bureaucracy that, presumably, can't understand the genius of his designs. Mr. Rutan's designs may well be genius, but the problem isn't that the bureaucracy knows nothing; it is that the bureaucracy, and the larger engineering and science community it draws upon, don't have enough validated knowledge of Mr. Rutan's materials to tell the public with a straight face that they have a reasonable expectation of safety in them, and neither does Mr. Rutan. This is what led to the great difficulties and ultimate demise of the Beech Aircraft Starship: it was just too expensive to prove that it was safe in design, production, and service. The bureaucracy, even NASA, is bound by a certain public expectation of reliability and trust in its efforts. There are sometimes regrettable failures and tragedies, which the public accepts with good grace, that result from actually being beyond the edge in some way; but habitually-wild experimentalism is ground that does not look well in a Senate hearing, a place that Mr. Rutan, as a private citizen, will probably never be on the wrong end of.
Another point that must be made about Mr. Rutan's SpaceShipOne is that its most immediate application will be the production of joy-rides for millionaires. That is well and good; there is a market with cash customers lined up and a private sector effort is entirely suited to meeting that demand. The crowds cheer this as a private-sector triumph; but imagine the sound were the bureaucracy to devote its efforts to providing joy-rides for the very rich. There wouldn't be enough tar and feathers to go around! There are, of course, other applications expected for Mr. Rutan's technology - continental and inter-continental package delivery for one - but these must be considered more remote than the line for the thrill of a lifetime.
Does all this mean that Mr. Rutan's efforts are a waste, that they should just be dropped as old feats repeated? No, of course not - they will be a step, a contribution to what we know, they will fill in an area skipped over by the bureaucracy; what Mr. Rutan learns will have its applications. Does the bureaucracy need to squash Mr. Rutan to protect its turf? No. Mr. Rutan is going to find the same physics the bureaucracy has been dealing with for decades and he is going to find out the same truths. There is nothing to fear in that.
Finally, are Mr. Rutan's efforts and expected success proof that the bureaucracy is just stupid and wasteful, unwilling to see true genius simplifying the problem to an easy and safe adventure? Again, no - a resounding no! By grouping these two areas of achievement under the single term "spaceflight", we fool the crowd into the idiotic falsehood that 100 kilometers straight up is essentially the same as low earth orbit and do a grave disservice to the bureaucracy that has taken us to the moon. When the bureaucracy returns to Tranquility Base to stay, I very much doubt that Mr. Rutan and his SpaceShipOne or Two or Three will be waiting there to greet us. If he is, though, I hope he remembers the donuts.
Dr. Jones is available through e-mail at William.H.Jones-1@nasa.gov and also reads the grc.talk newsgroup regularly; however, he reserves the right to say nothing at his convenience.
LESA dues paying members in good standing are encouraged to submit articles for review and possible publication for a future IMPACT Bulletin. Please send your articles by E-mail to Alice.A.Martinez@grc.nasa.gov, or by mail to IFPTE, Local 28, MS 15-10, 21000 Brookpark Rd. , Cleveland, OH 44135
Keith Cowling's remarks
http://www.nasawatch.com/
19 March 2004
Editor's note: So long as people like Dr. Jones, the author of this silly, head-in-the sand-editorial still work at NASA, the agency will be constrained from thinking outside of any box - and things such as Burt Rutan and the so-called Alt.Space crowd are doing will remain beyond NASA's grasp. Indeed, it is downright depressing to think that such defeatist, not-invented-here, we-already-tried-that ethos resides in the mind of even one NASA employee. Alas, I was just at NASA GRC the other day (more on that next week) and I certainly did not see any evidence that such "why bother" mentality is prevalent. As such, you have to wonder what useful purpose such an opinion piece circulated by a union actually serves other than to give a false impression of what its members think, believe, and aspire to. If things are so hopeless Dr. Jones, why not just go find something else to do? Everyone else is looking upward.
Letter from Virgina Cantwell to Keith Cowling
http://www.nasawatch.com/
19 March 2004
March 19, 2004
Mr. Keith Cowling:
Subject: Your Editor's Note Regarding the March 19, 2004 IFPTE, Local 28, LESA IMPACT Bulletin
I hope that you have the guts to publish this feedback!
I suggest that you change your "Editor's Note" to "Editor's Attack". Your rude assault against this Union and the author of the March 19, 2004 IMPACT Bulletin is grounds for an Unfair Labor Practice which may indeed be filed against you. IF you are not familiar with the term it is a legal action.
Did the free ride on the NASA aircraft to NASA Glenn buy you off? IF not, what has? When I introduced myself to you on Wednesday, you seemed like a nice guy. But, I can admit it when I am wrong; neither nice guys, nor professional editors, make personal attacks such as you have done.
You have either missed the point of the Bulletin, or you are trying to stifle Freedom of Speech. There was nothing "hopeless" in the Bulletin. Dr. Jones is a highly respected and honorable man who thinks "out of the box" which is usually called innovation! You do not have to agree with his article and neither do any of our Membership - but you certainly should, at the very least, treat him with the respect that he deserves.
As for your assault on the Union and it's Members you are way out of line! Our Membership understands that they have the right to speak out and if they should disagree with anything that this Union does, or says, they know that we will listen and respect them for their opinions!
IF you were a gentleman, and/or a professional editor - you would make a public apology with regard to your personal attack!
In Solidarity,
Virginia A. Cantwell (LESA@grc.nasa.gov)
President
IFPTE, LOCAL 28, LESA
NASA GLENN RESEARCH CENTER MS. 15-10
21000 BROOKPARK RD.
CLEVELAND, OHIO 44135
(216) 433-5623
Keith Cowling's remarks
http://www.nasawatch.com/
19 March 2004
Editor's note: After all these years I have gotten all manner of threats, insults etc. - but this one is probably the most shrill, idiotic, and baseless one I can imagine: i.e. "Your rude assault against this Union and the author of the March 19, 2004 IMPACT Bulletin is grounds for an Unfair Labor Practice which may indeed be filed against you. IF you are not familiar with the term it is a legal action."
Yikes, get a grip. Go ahead and sue me for being 'rude', Virginia. You know where to find me. Meanwhile, I am sure the NASA OIG might have some issues with your use of government email systems for non-government use such as to threaten a private citizen with legal action on such a frivolous basis. Indeed, I have already begun the formal complaint process.
The most illogical part of this nutty complaint of yours is that you won't allow ME to exercise my freedom of speech on a website I pay for - yet you seem to have no problem using tax dollars to threaten me.