I was in town on business yesterday, and later in the evening I watched my friend JoJo dj'ing a foaming at Buffalo Moe's. A very nice time, and it reminded me that I should be on a particular Greek Island, in a hotel, at the bar by the pool, with the Med but several hundred feet away. Please forgive me for not sharing with you further details on the location...

Instead for the last couple of 90 degree days I have found myself dressed in jeans, sweat shirts, and gloves, pulling poison oak out of the ground with pliers. Which leads me to reflect, particularly on the question of how this came about...

My reportage and historical work are well known, and account for some of my time, but I want to take a few minutes to reflect on the tikme I spent using bbs to deflect the Space Frontier Foundation's attack on the ISS.

Initially, Mr Rick Tumlinson, head of the Space Frontier Foundation, had this absolutely insane idea that NASA should cancel the ISS, cancel the shuttle, and use the money "saved" to buy a manned Mars flight from a "private sector", which appears to be Rick's friends. Normally this would have been seen as insane, but in those times it was not...

Why?

Mars is always good copy - and no doubt many are so desirous of sending men there that they are all to willing to ignore the engineering realities. The small rocket companies were always good copy as well, and their owners would alwasy have nice things to say about Rick - ignoring for the moment that they were developing rockets with extremely limited capabilities for which there was no demand.

It must be kept in mind that Dan Goildin was the most prominent supporter of manned Mars fligfht to hold the NASA Administrator's office for a long time. Goldin had a concrete plan in place to do manned Mars flight by 2020: finish ISS, free NASA from the shuttle with EELV's and a new re-usable (Goldin had both the X-33 as well as a backup design team in place); do all the preliminary probes to minimally clear the back-contamination problem, then cut the shuttle over to shuttle-C, and on to Mars.

Tumlinson's attack was ruthless, and would have remained a joke but for several circumstances. First, Representative Next Gingrich wanted to make President Clinton's life as difficult as possible, and what better way than attacking US-Russian ties. Forget the nation's business - no, make your opponent spend political capital to do - , political advantage is all that matters. Newt's attack began September 26, 1998 and was continud by those who knew much, much better.

Then there was the money - tens of millions of it from Walt Anderson, telecommunications magnate. Anderson claims that he was only interested in low cost launches, but these were already available. On the other hand, telecommunications is dependent on both the FCC as well as other regulatory agencies, and the courts, and thus it is political: political ties are paramount.

One of the weird things was to watch Tumlinson appeal to both US as well as Russian nationalists simultaneously, with absolutely little public awareness that hs was doing so. Another bizarre item was the attack on Dan Glodin by Keith Cowing, whose behaviour certainly parallels that of a disgruntled former employee. The messianism - yes, Keith was going to come riding in on his white horse and save NASA from Goldin. The delusoins of grandeur - look how important I am! The neurotic assembly of marginalia, the blowing up of small problems into huge ones, and all of it driven, driven, driven...

What I watched was one pro-manned Mars camp attack another pro-manned Mars camp.

Despite the clear danger Tumlinson's insanity presented to the NEO program ("Let the backyard astonomer's do it!", and "It's not NASA's job.") my own editor refused to publish comment on it. That left as the only tool available to me at the time the MSNBC bulletin board, which Keith and others tried to use as a feed...

I had a feed of my own, one that I felt it was very necessary to get accross. In light of recent events, those who know true value of those US-Russia-ESA-Japan ties will appreciate that feeling quite well. Others, including many here, will be oblivious...

Hour, after hour, after hour; day after day, week after week, month after month....
most attacks on US-Russia ties through ISS stopped immediately oncce Bush Jr took office - trading the national need for political advantage was no longer needed, and there was enough party discipline to stop them -

This continuous battle took a toll on me, and I became more than a little bizarre myself - but then, in comparison with the insanity of others, was it really all that bad? But another side effect is that the process left me with the habit of relieving my own frustrations by pissing off mars nuts... which is really a waste of my time, and something which I should stop, but it is simply too much fun... Particularly given the small number of visitors here - after all, it's less fun ipissing off the Mars Nuts, when very few people get to wtch you do it.

Ah well. The poison oak awaits.

ep