I've previously noted the oversupply of astronauts at NASA.

Jim Oberg points out an insidious effect of this--a dysfunctional culture at the agency. This is one of the many reasons that NASA's manned spaceflight program needs a dramatic overhaul, assuming that it should even continue to exist in anything resembling its current form.

Rand, I recall you posting a disturbing story about the "insulating foam" issue being known about before the Columbia launch, and how it was kept from the astronauts, preventing them from making a completely informed decision about the risks they were taking with their own lives. This story about the culture of Astronauts in managerial positions doesn't seem to jive with that story. In their zeal to protect the Astronaut culture, why would they have kept this from their "brethren"? Or was this information only known higher up where no (former) astronauts had positions of power?

I don't know who had the information.

And actually, it wasn't the foam issue that was kept from the astronauts--it was the fact that Atlantis had had a wing breach on entry.

Another factor that I don't think Oberg mentions per se is that up until very, very recently astronauts in management jobs had reasons not to raise any troubling questions about safety or any other management decisions- and it didn't have anything to do with astronauts sticking together. It's been documented that George Abbey, the director of JSC, used his control over flight assignments to make sure that anyone who raised too many questions never flew, which is a powerful threat to people who have spent their whole lives trying to be astronauts. It's been suggested (and I believe) that the increasing use of astronauts as managers was Abbey's idea, since it gave him managers he could easily control, and that he may even have been behind the expansion of the astronaut corps- after all, the more astronauts you have, the easier it is to lose certain inconvenient persons in the shuffle.

Sound familiar to anyone, or am I just being paranoid?