If you didn’t see it already, our friend and fellow space tweep @milesobrien did a great job in his post defending shuttle workers today. It is just too bad that we even needed defending. Apparently a reporter at WESH (Central Florida) misconstrued the facts to make it sound as though NASA was investigating possible actions of its contractor workforce to delay the shuttle manifest. In other words, he made it sound like NASA suspected us contractors of deliberately dragging out the program to delay the inevitable end of the shuttle program in order to keep our jobs longer.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Miles’ article is a great read for explaining exactly why that is such a ridiculous claim. The highest member of management in our company at KSC sent out an email to every employee this morning to let us know that neither our company, nor NASA was contacted for this story, and that the “facts were distorted to sensationalize a story.”
The email went on to ask us to please ignore this irresponsible journalism and not let it distract us from our jobs. We were assured that NASA has the utmost faith in our work and that the claims in the
story were completely unfounded. Nice to hear, kind of goes without saying, but still nice.
The thing that gets me is that anyone could believe that any of us out there could do anything to harm the vehicle or delay launch. Are they nuts? We want more than anything to stay on schedule and achieve milestones and have beautiful launches, but most of all our concern is with the safety of the crew and vehicle. I don’t care how disgruntled a worker may be over the thought of losing his job next year when the program is slated to end, I know that not one of us would dream of actually doing what the WESH “reporter” was insinuating. The whole thing is preposterous.
The only people desperate to keep their jobs are these so called ‘reporters’ who think to earn themselves praise and job security with their irresponsible sensationalism. What they accuse the contractors of is exactly what they are doing themselves!
I applaud the efforts of all the contractors and have the utmost respect and admiration for their work ethic and dedication to the Shuttle program. You guys have given us a beautiful ride that will live long beyond the petty ambitions of a few factually challenged reporters.
Agreed, Jenny. People who “know” what it’s like to work for the space program know that this would never happen. They’re trying to sell a story and make a buck, bottom line. Stupidity at its finest…or not so much.