I'm actually overwhelmed. Coming off my work, I'm going to take a few mintues here to cool down and collect together some loose thoughts, as it were.

It just happens that that earlier piece is an excellent summary of key events - though as Keith points out, it needed to be corrected as Malone et al did not buy his company, but instead purchased his colleague's clipping services. Thus pasting it again was time effective.

You know, Mark, Keith's "moron" comment stung, but then I remembered that I myself called Simberg an "idiot" - of course, I tried to show that Simberg was indeed an idiot, but I still could have used better language - the habits of some of the Habitable Zone's denizens are catching.

In considering Keith, I have to watch my own jealousy at his deal with Malone - the amounts were substantial. There's no doubt he's very good at what he does - for example, key your electornic scan for shuttle - for that matter, set up an news scan in the first place. Also, NASA employees who don't like the way things are going send their gripes to him.

The interesting thing is that Malone et al could have hired their own clippers, probably at a substantially lower cost. But they didn't, and that's probably because of the neurotic intensity Keith and his friend brought to the task. That's also one of their flaws: too much data, which makes it hard to sort out the significant parts.

Another thing is tha Keith watches everything real closely, but he reports issues that engineers are working through as though they're never going to be solved. This hysteria at every glitch prevents real problems from emerging - little things like crew compartment integrity.

You can also notice Keith's biases, as he's never reported anything bad about his friends, including their diversion of some $65,000,000 in US and Russian funds through Mir Corp. I don't think he's ever had a bad word for the Space Frontier Foundation either, for that matter. Do you know of one? Contrast this with the way he treats Zubrin. While I disagree strongly with Bob on many things, I don't think that Zubrin has ever practiced attack politics on the space frontier...

Oh, and by the way, speaking of biases, Keith and Seitzen never did tell you what they really found when they looked at the evolution of W Bush's space policy - nor did they report their own lobbying for manned Mars flight while they were conducting their "investigation".

Again, while people who are not happy with the way things are going forward items to Keth, when you get right down to it, he couldn't investigate his way out of a paper bag - his complete lack of reporting on the ca $300,000,000 TMIS scandal provides excellent proof of this.

Finally, you can notice the delusions of grandeur typical of a disgruntled ex-employee. While Keith's certainly significant, on the cosmic scale of things...

ep