WHAT'S NEW Friday, March 19, 2004

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 19 Mar 04   Washington, DC 

1. HUBBLE: A DISASTER DELAYED ITS BIRTH AND MAY HASTEN ITS DEATH.
Adm. Gehman, chair of the Columbia Investigation Board described
a mission to Hubble as "slightly more risky" than to the ISS. But
in Sunday's NY Times, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe reaffirmed
his decision to let Hubble die rather than risk a shuttle repair
mission.  It's difficult to find anyone who thinks O'Keefe, who
is neither scientist nor astronaut, should be the one making that
decision, and Sen. Mikulski (D-MD) warned O'Keefe not to prejudge
the outcome of a National Academy of Sciences study of the issue.
The irony is that NASA insisted that Hubble be designed to be
launched and serviced by the shuttle.  The launch was delayed for
three years by the Challenger disaster and the Columbia disaster
now threatens to accelerate its demise by three years.

2. MISSILE DEFENSE: UNITED STATES WINS CLOSE GAME AT THE BUZZER.
You can sleep better now; Tuesday, March 16, a computer-simulated
missile attack by a country that looked a lot like North Korea
was repelled without a single American city being hit.  I called
Puff Panegyric in the Missile Defense Agency press office to
offer my congratulations. "Yes, we're feeling pretty good about
it," Puff rasped, his voice still a little hoarse from cheering.
"The goal now is to complete initial deployment of a rudimentary
defense by 2 November."  I smelled a story.  "Golly Puff, is that
when intelligence estimates say North Korea will have a working
missile and a nuclear warhead?"  "That's classified," he said. 

3. POLYGRAPH: IS TELLING THE TRUTH PUBLICLY AS BAD AS LYING? 
About a year ago the National Academy of Sciences completed a
review of scientific evidence on the polygraph, "The Polygraph
and Lie Detection."  It concluded that the use of polygraph tests
for DOE employee security screening was unacceptable because of
the high rate of false positives.  DOE took the position that a
lot of false positives must mean the test is very sensitive, and
simply reissued its old polygraph policies without change. 
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN03/wn041803.cfm  A nuclear scientist at
Sandia National Laboratories, Alan Zelicoff, thought that was
pretty dumb, which it was, and he said so publicly.  Sandia took
disciplinary action, and Zelicoff says he was forced to resign.  


THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.  
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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