I recently submitted documented evidence of the serious violations by licensed Professional Engineers who were my instructors at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, to the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. These violations (detailed later) include theft of services, slander, and misrepresentation – any one of which carries serious penalties, up to jail time. The P.E. Board responded to my allegations saying that none of them were valid because “… they do not involve the practice of engineering.”
I had received a Masters Degree in Aerospace Engineering, and done all the work for a Ph.D. but the dissertation. I had a 3.7 GPA and was in good standing otherwise. My research project was an optimization of the Earth to Mars trajectory. Seventy percent of the missions to Mars over the last thirty years have failed, and there is credible evidence that much of the problem is in the flight path. I made a computer model of the mission and found a faster, safer, more efficient trajectory to Mars – using 25% less fuel or arriving 30 days faster, and on a very safe, predictable approach path. Not long after I was expelled from the University because nobody in the orbital mechanics group would be my advisor.
The UT Austin Aerospace Department is the leading academic department in the NASA community. The Center for Space Research at UT Austin is second only to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In fact, whenever you see TV shots of the JPL control room (or any other NASA control room, for that matter) at least 60% of the people you see are UT Austin graduates. What my situation says loud and clear is that NASA does not care in the least about a safer, faster mission to Mars.
I appealed my dismissal for two years, through the whole University bureaucracy. I even kept appealing after the final decision came down from the President of the University. Just a few months ago I was told by the UT Vice President of Legal Affairs that I was prohibited from contacting anybody in the Aerospace Department involved in my appeal (which is essentially everybody in the orbital mechanics group). So, even though I have a Masters and a good academic record (I kept taking graduate classes during the two year appeal process, and have a very solid math background now), I cannot get any references and so I cannot get a job. What this says is that NASA is violently opposed to a faster, safer mission to Mars.
My last couple of years in graduate school I signed up for 40 hours of supervised research classes. I was hoping to get some help in my research, but during all that time nobody helped me at all. I complained about this up through the bureaucracy, and finally went to ABET – the licensing authority for college engineering programs. A month later I was expelled, with malice. My advisor at the time wrote a letter to the Chair of the Department saying he quit because of that latter I wrote to ABET. That is retaliation for my taking part in a protected activity, i.e. appealing to a higher authority. The US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in Dallas told me so, but would not prosecute the case because I could not produce the original letter to ABET – even though my advisor had admitted in so many words, on University letter head, that he took retribution on me for doing what was my civil right.
So, the University is guilty of theft of services – taking my money for the 40 hours of “supervised” research classes, but providing nothing in return – and violating my civil rights. You might also say the Administration is guilty of conspiracy, for covering up all these facts during the appeals process – denying these facts to members of the Texas state Legislature I talked to; members of the media; and so forth.
The official circumstances of my dismissal are that my original advisor, an expert in Celestial Mechanics, retired and nobody would take me on after that. In fact, there are no longer any professors at the University who are versed in Celestial Mechanics. Yet, the University continues to advertise a major in the field, both in analytical research in the Aerospace Department and in numerical or computer modeling in conjunction with the Texas Institute of Computational Mechanics. My research falls in the latter category. So, in dismissing me, the University as much as said their Celestial Mechanics major did not really exist at all. That is misrepresentation, an extremely serious offense for engineers.
I even got a job as a staff columnist on the Daily Texan, the student newspaper at UT Austin, and tried to promote my situation there. I was a little too assertive, as I was fired from there too – despite my status as a Special Disabled Viet Nam Era Veteran.
These facts clearly indicate that the problems that led to the Challenger disaster last year, which the investigating panel attributed to the “NASA Culture” should include as a part of this NASA regime, those institutions like UT Austin that are an important part of the U.S. space effort. My own situation suggests that if my research had been supported and assisted as it should have, and my work published four years ago; then it is quite possible that the failure of the Japanese and UK/European missions to Mars earlier this year could have been avoided, or at least mitigated. Indeed, the two
U.S. missions that failed a couple of years previous might have been avoided as well.
Be that as it may, this whole situation begs attention to how our tax money is being spent in higher education, if a smart, motivated student with an important research project can be expelled – and then black listed – to the point of neglecting potentially vital research on the U.S., and world, space effort. The situation is even more important because UT Austin is a lead institution not only for NASA but the Department of Homeland Security, and is in fact – with Bush as President – the lead research institution in America. It is baffling how so many serious violations of the law can be perpetrated against a decorated disabled veteran, in clear violation of every civil rights statute on the books.
Moreover, having sought help from every imaginable agency and authority, it is clear that the system is not working at all – not when a person must run as a candidate for President of the United States just to have proper attention directed to grievous flaws in research institutions that have a vital role in our national defense, our economic prosperity, and the war on terrorism.