Keith Cowing says that NASA continues to dig itself deeper into its hole of irrelevancy to our future in space.

[Update at 9:15 AM PDT]

As Keith correctly notes in comments, those are my words, not his. I should have written that he provides evidence of that (in my opinion), not that he says it.

I understand Keith's point from the stand point of the questions being asked might just come from taxpayers, who deserve an answer. However, if that is the rational for objecting to this policy, then by all means, get rid of the PAO office altogether (I think Keith would appreciate that considering past experience in dealing with them). On the total of it all, I really don't think it is a big deal.

When I worked at NASA, I didn't receive emails from Joe taxpayer asking me about NASA. When I did (maybe 1 or 2 which were really spammers), I ignored them. I had friends ask questions, but they'd get the answer just the same if they asked me while visiting at home or elsewhere. I did volunteer to be a member of the NASA Quest team, and did provide information in that manner.

Honestly, I think this effort by PAO is to prevent people from providing information that is not fully informed. NASA has its share of David Davenports working for it that don't quite grasp the whole picture, or at least have an agenda that is more their's than the Agency's.

For the record I never said "NASA continues to dig itself deeper into its hole of irrelevancy to our future in space". One of my readers (more or less) said that. Alas, I do find it rather hard to disagree with the statement when goofy directives like this find their way to the email accounts of every person in the agency. For all intents and purposes it tells them not to be responsive to taxpayers. I guess that is yet another big step down the path to irrelevancy - one all employees have been formally directed to take.

[ NASA has its share of David Davenports working for it that don't quite grasp the whole picture, ]

Well, explain this whole picture to me. Is ATK Thiokol now the master artist painting NASA's picture?

[ ... or at least have an agenda that is more their's (sic) than the Agency's.]

Your are correct! My agenda does differ from that of "the Agency."

-- david.davenport.1@netzero.com

I have to giggle at this. I work at NASA. It's very rare that I get an email from Joe Public. When I do, dependent upon the question, I either pass it on to the person whom I think might be able to respond, or I pass it on to PAO if I don't know who best to send it to or if the email is a genuine question from someone with out a clue about science but an obvious sincere interest. A coworker of mine is a scientist and PAO passes on questions in her area of expertise for her to answer. This has been the standard procedure for the years I have worked there. Of course peers are not considered Joe Public. They are generally refering to those emails of "Hey have you NASA guys ever thought of this superfabulous idea I came up with?" That's what PAO handles. One thing they do require is that if I go speak someplace to the public, I can't do it as a NASA representative without approval (and training). So I just go and make perfectly clear I am not representing NASA and the thoughts and opinions are my own and that NASA is in no way paying me to be there, blah, blah, blah. One thing I have noticed though is that each site is different so I can only speak to my site--JSC.