Michael Griffin Archives

NASA’s administrator Michael Griffin said he made a mistake the other day and for many people that was enough. People do make mistakes and he said he was sorry.

Griffin was answering demands from the public and the press about his agency’s refusal to release safety data that might well affect the people who ride on the nation’s air transportations system. The reason for NASA’s refusal was just plain silly … they were afraid they might scare people and damage the system if people heard the truth.

Some nice public affairs person must have gotten to him though by telling him how incredibly stupid that statement made both him and the thousands of smart people at NASA look. This is a place after all, where people really are rocket scientists.

NASA now says it is going to come clean, but I still can’t figure out what the big deal is.

Everyone within the aviation industry knows NASA has been collecting safety data for decades … and it’s OK with us. We’ve been freely offering NASA aviation safety information through the Aviation Safety Reporting System because we thought we were going to help better the industry, not just to expand some huge government database that would never see the light of day. I’m thinking this must all be the same data everyone is talking about. And most of it is already public. [Read more…] about Psst! NASA … The Safety Data is Already Public!

The only thing I find surprising about the revelation that NASA has been sitting on a mountain of aviation safety data is that anyone is even remotely surprised about the way that agency operates.

OK, maybe the fact that NASA sat on the data – 24,000 interviews – for years because they didn’t want to scare us caught me napping a bit, but just a bit since I thought keeping people cowering in fear was considered a White House strategy these days.

In a NY Times editorial, NASA’s administrator, Michael Griffin said, “NASA should focus on how we can provide information to the public — not on how we can withhold it.” The newspaper agreed.

I feel a whole bunch better now. In fact, I’ll bet Griffin is shaking in his boots, maybe even losing a minute or two of sleep over what the White House might do if they cared as much about people here in the U.S. as they do about promoting their agenda overseas.

Twenty-four thousands individual data sets is no small amount of data and NASA, quite honestly, should be embarrassed. And FAA should be embarrassed because they knew nothing about this as well … if that is indeed the case. [Read more…] about NASA Safety Data Coverup Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone