NASA's Invitation-Only Stealth Telecon on Project Starshot
Keith’s note: On Wednesday NASA will officially sponsor a teleconference with NASA NIAC grantee Phil Lubin about the Breakthrough Initative’s Starshot project to mount the first interstellar mission. But unless you are a pal of a certain NASA civil servant, you won’t be allowed to listen in live – even though NASA is paying for this event. Indeed, unless this certain employee decides to tell you, NASA won’t even tell you that this event is happening in the first place.
Harley Thronson, a NASA civil servant at GSFC, has operated this series of NASA FISO telecons as a part of his official NASA duties. These telecons use a taxpayer-funded telephone system, are announced via nasa.gov email ([email protected]) and Thronson devotes billable hours to their operation. The telecons are interesting and relevant to the interests of a wide variety people within (and most importantly) outside of NASA. Yet despite an abundance of directives to all government agencies about making their activities open and transparent to taxpayers, Harley and his pal Dan Lester at the University of Texas in Austin go out of their way to not to tell taxpayers that these teleconferences even exist. Indeed, they block specific taxpayers by targeting their IP address (check this page – its what I see when I try to view information on something my taxes pay for) from having the same level of access as other taxpayers do. This link used to say this.
Thronson and Lester also adopt an elitist stance when it comes to who can – and who cannot – access information about these telecons or listen to them in real time. If they do not deem you to be worthy (no criteria have ever been posted) then you cannot dial in – because you won’t know that there is something to dial into. To justify their favoritism they have posted a goofy and arrogant excuse as to why most people will never be allowed to listen to these events live claiming that they are compliant with NASA regulations in this regard because you can listen to things later. Later or delayed access is not the same as live access. And if you do not even know about these teleconferences in the first place, then the whole later Vs live issue is moot. They are operated in a stealth fashion for a hand-selected audience. Dan Lester is clearly ignorant as to the wide variety of open teleconference options that are available – at no cost to participants who dial in.
Wednesday’s NASA FISO telecon starts at 3 pm EDT. You can dial in to +1.844.467.4685 – the passcode is 442398. If you cannot gain access I have posted email and address information for Thronson and Lester so that you can contact them directly.
– Another Stealth #JourneyToMars Telecon at NASA, earlier post
– NASA FISO Telecon Organizers Are Confused, earlier post
– How NASA Quietly Releases Alternate Mars Mission Concepts (Update), earlier post
Good idea for them to keep the general public away from the dial-in info… Can you imagine how the public would screw that up in a heartbeat? The National Weather Service does their briefings the same way – private for necessary participants and then the archive comes up as soon as it’s done. Good move.
Right. You are just as much the problem as Thronson and Lester are.
On second thought, deleted…
I thought he was being sarcastic!
I agree with Keith on this. It makes sense to open the telecon to all who are interested. I have no objection to screening the questions to be answered on the air if the presenters are worried about being asked about UFOs, but anything reasonable should be fair game.
At a bare minimum they could put it live on NASA’s news audio feed and make mention on NASA’s calendar. But Harley Thronson wants this to remain his own little secret thing, so that is not going to happen.
So sick of the NASA BS recently! Citizens are getting tired of it!
Like they can’t figure out how to do listen-only lines? “Dogs barking” my ass.
This really takes the cake. Anyone can do this using one of many free teleconferencing phone set ups. NASA does listen-only dial-in things daily.
Oh, no, apparently they can figure how to do it, and they even acknowledge that people are interested, they just don’t give a stuff. The arrogance on their webpage http://spirit.as.utexas.edu… stinks: “Oh yes, people often ask why we don’t just Webex this, and do video with Ustream or YouTube and all that stuff. The answer is simple. Because we don’t need to.” Coming from a “civil servant”, that statement is neither “civil” nor does it provide “service”.
Exactly.
First, this is a highly technical discussion and including outsiders that do not and will not understand the content. This increases the likelihood that the nature of information will be MISCONSTRUED and MISREPORTED in the media! Second, there are proprietary processes and technologies being discussed as well as ITAR/EAR protected data, making this teleconference a perfect venue for corporate espionage or foreign nationals! I am FOR security, I do NOT like being blown up or for our secrets to be STOLEN!
Uh … if there were ITAR concerns this would not be held on an open dial-in phone system at NASA that can be dialed from anywhere on Earth. If they are talking about ITAR restricted material then Harley Thronson is in BIG trouble. BTW that’s a nice tin foil hat you’re wearing. Does it really block the ETs from reading your mind?
But Uni Texas do make the full talk available after the event. I can understand their limiting the live dial in access, if you’ve ever run one of these for a big, conservative organisation, there is rigidity (you must use this conference provider….) and cost involved (even when there are cheap/free alternatives). Also their previous talks have included some which are very critical of the congressional circus that defines nasa goals and funding.
Sorry Keith, you rock – but I don’t see the issue with this one.
This is a NASA teleconference – publicly announced by a NASA civil servant via NASA email – conducted on an official NASA teleconference system available to anyone with a telephone – anywhere – regarding NASA-funded research. Dan Lester is abusing the system – and Harley Thronson is enabling that abuse.
I find it utterly ridiculous that NASA continues to use some ancient “teleconference” technology for these and many other live events they do. This should be live streamed with video and audio. It’s perfectly possible to have both live interactive guest and a passive audience that can only watch. You can keep them as sandboxed as you want. At my workplace, we use a service called Blue Jeans Primetime that does just that. I think Google Hangouts with a stream out to Hangouts on Air through YouTube would accomplish the same thing. Unlike their real work, this ain’t rocket science!
Edit: From their “dogs barking” page: “P.S. Oh yes, people often ask why we don’t just Webex this, and do video with Ustream or YouTube and all that stuff. The answer is simple. Because we don’t need to. In our experience, participating in other online presentations, video just is an added, and somewhat useless, complication. The speaker would need to screw around trying to connect properly, and in most cases waste a lot of time doing so, unless a lot of time is devoted to preparation. We could also give jetpacks to everyone to let them come to a central auditorium to hear the presentation, but we don’t think we need to do that either.”
So, they’re telling us that the great UT Austin doesn’t provide basic A/V services to their faculty/staff to run a videoconference event, supply and run cameras, microphones, etc.? Really? Sorry, but I don’t find that to be credible.
This has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with unprofessional behavior by Thronson and Lester.
As someone who has been involved in telecons in space physics I can see their point. I have been on telecons where somebody didn’t mute their phone and we would hear music or other stuff going on in the background.
As to why they don’t set up listen only lines and such. Technically they receive no funding for these telecons and the taxpayer line they do use now would go unused if they switched. Which would be the waste of taxpayer money?
Mr. Lester is a university professor. He has other priorities such as teaching classes or doing his own research. He doesn’t get paid for doing this. I can understand why he wouldn’t want to put extra effort into this when the current system works just fine for him and others who are actually involved.
I don’t really see what the issue is here. They provide the slides from the presentations as well as a recording of the telecon. They aren’t keeping it secret. Should they put it on the calendar and provide a link to the archive page there? Yes. That said I don’t see why they have to provide it live to everyone.