nasa declares no room for antimatter

NASA Declares No Room for Antimatter Experiment

Y'know, some time, the decision being made is SO DUMB, you really have

got to laugh your head off and wish someone would smack these people

on the back of the heads.

The International Space Station (ISS) has been ridiculed by many (and

certainly by Bob Park) as being a glorious orbiting piece of an

expensive junk whose purpose probably is an eventual tourist

attraction. So, if you are a NASA Administrator and someone actually

proposed a viable, highly-praised experiment that can piggy back onto

the ISS, wouldn't you be all over it like a cheap suit just so you can

now deny these critics that the ISS is worthless? You'd think so,

wouldn't you? Of course you would, because you're smart and rational.

But not if you're Michael Griffin, the current NASA Administrator. I

have no idea if his decision is being made by others higher ups, but

this is just mind-boggling. Reported in this this week's Science

(Science 16 March 2007):

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is a model of international

cooperation, led by a dynamic Nobel Prize winner, and promises to

do impressive science in space. But it may never get a chance to do

its thing.

The problem is that NASA has no room on its space shuttle to launch

the $1.5 billion AMS mission, which is designed to search for

antimatter from its perch on the international space station.

"Every shuttle flight that I have has got to be used to finish the

station," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told a Senate panel on

28 February.

What exactly is he rushing to finish here? A floating.... er.... what?

Bed and Breakfast? You can't call it a laboratory, since that would

require actual scientific work to be done.

You have to read the rest of the article. It is frustrating when

really silly things like this are being done.