Homer Hickam has similar thoughts to mine on why Nowak cracked, with some recommendations, which are opposite to mine. His are to reduce the astronaut office, while mine are to open up flight opportunities. Either way, the situation has to be brought into balance.

Just checking in from London Towne (literally–I just checked in to my hotel). It’s noon here, early in the US, but not so early that my TCSDaily piece isn’t up. I have some thoughts on Lisa Nowak, and NASA.

I’m having dinner with Perry De Havilland tonight, and then off on the train to Brussels on the morrow.

Of an old story: waste, fraud and abuse at the National Reconnaissance Office.

Unfortunately, as the article points out, it’s very hard to oversee a program as secret as this one. I think that we actually need to scrap the agency and start over from scratch with some fresh thinking, which would include responsive space, rather than the fragile and vulnerable battlestar galacticas, such as the Keyhole series.

Dan Schmelzer has a breakdown. As I suspected, financing rounds are early progress milestones. For RpK, its second one is coming up this month. I assume that they have until the end of the month to meet it.

[Late morning update]

I just realized that my first sentence could be misinterpreted. I mean he has a breakdown of the COTS documents. I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on his mental health, which (unlike, apparently, Lisa Nowak) I trust is fine.

Lots more budget discussion over at Space Politics today.

As I noted yesterday, I think that this is the biggest problem with ESAS:

Griffin will be gone in January 2009. He needs to put his overall strategy in place

Alan Boyle has a roundup of thoughts over Mrs. Nowack’s escapades. And he beats me to the punch on the article title–guess I’ll have to come up with a new one.

Alan Boyle has a roundup of thoughts over Mrs. Nowack’s escapades. And he beats me to the punch on the article title–guess I’ll have to come up with a new one.

Alan Boyle has a roundup of thoughts over Mrs. Nowack’s escapades. And he beats me to the punch on the article title–guess I’ll have to come up with a new one.

What if it had happened on a Mars mission? That’s the nightmare of the psychs at NASA.

[Update at 7:20 Eastern]

I’m sure that it’s occurred to others, but isn’t wearing a diaper for an expected long mission exactly what a deranged ‘stro would do?

I haven’t had much to say about the submitted NASA budget, because I’ve been really busy (and have some personal problems right now), but there’s a lot of good discussion over at Space Politics (there are other posts on the subject as well).

Jeff Foust noted yesterday that it’s crunch time for NASA, sooner than many expected. I agree with Chair Force Engineer that if the program dies, or never gets beyond LEO, it will be an own goal by Griffin and company, who insisted on building new unneeded launch systems instead of focusing the funds on actual exploration hardware.

[Update a few minutes later]

Clark Lindsey has been doing some budget analysis to determine the potential fate of Centennial Challenges and COTS.