Never Ask NASA a Simple Question
NASA Awards Two Robots to University Groups for R&D Upgrades
“Humanoid robots will be helpful to astronauts on our journey to Mars, so NASA has awarded prototypes to two universities for advanced research and development work.”
Keith’s note: I asked NASA HQ and LaRC PAO how many colleges or universities submitted proposals. I was interested in how popular this whole idea was with universities across the U.S. Gina Anderson from LaRC HQ PAO replied “it’s not our practice to share information about the number of proposals we received or which proposals were not selected.” I replied “Its not your “practice”, So, do I need to file a FOIA request? I am not sure why a simple number is not something that you’d readily supply. My interest is in how many school across the country were interested enough to try. I am not asking which schools they were.” Gina replied “The program didn’t provide that information. Here is the link to the FOIA page: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/foia/index.html“ My response “I asked NASA PAO how many universities/colleges applied – that’s all – and you refuse to tell me because “the program didn’t provide that information”. Can’t you ask them? I mean, that is usually why someone asks PAO.” You are requiring that I file a FOIA. Is that what I am going to post? OK. (shaking my head)”
So .. I guess I will submit a FOIA request.
I would also notify the staff of the Congressional oversight committees. It makes no sense such information is secret, especially when it involves our tax dollars.
It’s probably a pretty small number – the RFP had a requirement that the proposing university had to be a competitor in the DARPA Robotics Grand Challenge to propose, regardless of existing capabilities and facilities. In fact, I recall that a large chunk of the evaluation wasn’t just that you competed, but how high your final score was.
Wow, it’s almost like the RFP was written in a way to favor a very small number of university groups (like perhaps the two that “won”).
That is typical of NASA PR people, they don’t do anything useful or have any useful info – to have any would mean they would have to do something else besides yap on their cellphones and take breaks between calls.