This is all I have heard.
http://www.independentnews.com/news/ed-moses-leaves-giant-magellan-telescope/article_8f116aee-3666-11e5-917d-3f74aae93541.html
Ed Moses, former principal associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has stepped down as president of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization “to deal with family matters.”
The organization announced Moses’s departure after rumors had been circulating in the Livermore area for several days, including emails and a short article in the blog, “LLNL the true story,” and national media were starting to inquire.
From LLNL BLog
"Ed did real and lasting damage to GMT in his short time there."
Within the first three months of Eds arrival three of the original GMT staff had left. Two other staff members that had been with GMT for four years also left. Some retired but all left due to changes Ed instituted that showed little respect for the GMT staff or any understanding of telescope design or observatory operations.
The experience lost will be hard to replace as these people each had perhaps 20 years of experience in telescope design and construction and had a deep understating of the design and proposed operations of GMT.
The changes to the telescope and operations plan that Ed produced will need extensive review if they are kept. The original design had already been through a number of reviews.
43 comments:
Any of the LLNL managers would have equally destroyed that project. They would have renamed the project "Giant Telescope Integration" and made the funding decrease every year. And this part about not listening to experts. Hey, at LLNL they decide who the experts (sychophants) are. Let's call them "distinguished members", for instance.
Just remember, Moses promised to produce 50% of the world's energy with LIFE and everybody at LLNL went along with it, or at least stayed quiet. They also promised billions of $ in VC funding for NIF. Oh, and let's not forget ignition. Any manager at LLNL would have been equally awful as the leader of the GMT. Even one of those astronauts that got hired years ago.
For sure Livermore managers have nearly destroyed LANL.
Any destruction at LANL was all home grown.
GMT will be a disaster with or without Moses. The fact that upper level managers left early isn't any proof that Ed had anything to do with it. It was probably a deeply troubled organization before he got there. There are lots of experts in pouring concrete, doing structural engineering and making big optics. We had some of the most qualified in the world in the design and building of the NIF and in large laser science. You can question the target physics, question the utility of ICF for energy, but you can't question the overwhelming success of the >1.8 MJ UV laser driver that powers the NIF.
With infinite dollars (6x overrun) and a taffy schedule (stretched 8 years longer than expected), trained monkeys could have managed the NIF construction. The success of the NIF as a laser isn't any proof that Ed had anything to do with it, either.
"trained monkeys could have managed the NIF construction."
Hi Sept 28,2015 at 11:29,
- time for you to work on the GMT project and insure that it is a giant failure. You sure don't know science, engineering, or construction.
The big failures were in the target designers who had blinders and who were blinded by the thought of getting a Nobel Prize. Atleast Ed and the engineers did their jobs correctly. Can't say the same about the scientists though.
Ed blew the ignition quest himself, when his arrogance led him to direct the target designer work without proper skepticism. He swallowed the whole worm from Lindl and Co., and turned into a blind proselytizer. After around 2006 when he became AD for the directorate, all was lost.
What happened to Lindl anyway? Was he thrown under the bus in a Hurricane?
"Ed blew the ignition quest himself, when his arrogance led him to direct the target designer work without proper skepticism. He swallowed the whole worm from Lindl and Co., and turned into a blind proselytizer"
As a friend of Ed's I'm sorry to say that I think you are correct. Not enough skepticism from the scientific staff. I think they felt bullied. On the other hand we were out of time, and hard choices had to be made. You can't debate forever. Make decisions and move forward, hopefully. I think the general opinion was that ignition would be a 50/50 or less proposition. Very hard but maybe we would get lucky.
Lindl harpooned himself I think, after Moses left. Wrote a paper with only a couple co-authors and included unpublished data, and pissed off many people who probably blamed him already. Edwards was exiled later. The fallout continues.
Lindl harpooned himself I think, after Moses left. Wrote a paper with only a couple co-authors and included unpublished data, and pissed off many people who probably blamed him already. Edwards was exiled later. The fallout continues.
October 4, 2015 at 8:47 PM
The world consists of just two kinds of animal species: lions and gazelles, if you are a lion you mist take chances, sometimes you fail and sometimes you win. If you a gazelle you either break even or lose. There may be a lesson to be learned for
NIF in this, it is for you decide what that lesson is or if there is a lesson to be learned at all.
October 5, 2015 at 9:44 PM
If you view the world solely in predator/prey terms, then I feel sorry that you can never be part of a civilized society.
WOW - Why does no one simply state that a bully (Moses) was a total loser - why is that hard for many people. Moses was an ass and he did not understand even the most basic human interactions. He had some (very) limited abilities that could have been useful, but he was unable to use them reasonably due to his own inappropriate ego. Amazing that so few understood that from the beginning, and his negative influence was allowed to be used so negatively at the Lab. What a waste and loss for the Lab.
Many followed him out of necessity, he was chosen by Cambell and he was the leader. It was not an election. Following was a means to an end.
Yes, those 10 or 20 who initially opposed his changes were removed.
Livermore workers are extraordinary loyal to the management. They always look "up" and and manage "up". Even if they're miserable they soldier on, doing what they are told, fearful of losing their jobs or, at the least, getting knocked down in the rankings. People like Moses, Verdon, and Dunning, thrive in that environment. Even astronauts can show up and assume positional power of programs they have no background in. The most loyal workers become "distinguished members". Pathetic place.
In what organization do disloyal, unsupportive malcontents get promoted? Please enlighten us.
Black and white thinking 7:15 pm. Not being blindly loyal does not equate to disloyalty.
The fact that LLNL sold its future to the fusion crackpots is proof of their blind loyalty.
Not being blindly loyal does not equate to disloyalty.
October 7, 2015 at 7:50 PM
In what organization does management allow such parsing of the degree of loyalty of its employees? Please enlighten us.
Adolf Eichmann would be your model employee. Just following orders.
Your apparent belief that "loyalty" equates to "following orders" explains a lot. Members of the US military are expected to be loyal to the service, and to their country, but are also expected to decline to follow any unlawful order. That does not present any logical, or moral, dichotomy to most people.
"WOW - Why does no one simply state that a bully (Moses) was a total loser - why is that hard for many people. Moses was an ass and he did not understand even the most basic human interactions. He had some (very) limited abilities that could have been useful, but he was unable to use them reasonably due to his own inappropriate ego. Amazing that so few understood that from the beginning, and his negative influence was allowed to be used so negatively at the Lab. What a waste and loss for the Lab"
Sorry dude - this is total bullshit ! I know Ed Moses well and none of this is true !
Blind loyalty like the Livermore type goes something like this. You have a high level manager, one step away from being director. He is having an affair with a lab postdoc. He's flying all around the world with her, going to conferences, and paying her way with lab accounts. This just to facilitate the affair, her work being unrelated to the conferences visited. Everyone knows this and goes along. One day he gets caught and has to be fired by the director. The DOE has to issue new travel rules because of the embarrassment. This could have been avoided if someone spoke up early and prevented his illegal activity. But blind loyalty to power prevented this. Get it?
Get it?
October 8, 2015 at 12:14 PM
Yes, but apparently you don't. Why keep on bring up the issue of illegal behavior? It is just a red herring in the argument about what constitutes loyalty.
"Blind loyalty like the Livermore type goes something like this. You have a high level manager, one step away from being director. He is having an affair with a lab postdoc. He's flying all around the world with her, going to conferences, and paying her way with lab accounts. This ...."
Are you insinuating that this was Ed's conduct ? I think you are referring to someone else. Don't mislead the blog readers !
This is one of the most twisted examples of ethical reasoning that I have heard since the Viet Nam war. California has truly gone to hell.
Sorry dude - this is total bullshit ! I know Ed Moses well and none of this is true !
October 8, 2015 at 10:54 AM
I guess I know him better, because it all is true. Even the part about limited abilities, and the GMT fiasco is more evidence of that.
Ed Moses is a true Livermore-style success story. He sold Congress a bunch of baloney. When it failed, he got even more money. When it completely tanked, he got even more money and a new job. Then, when he finally got canned, he's a misunderstood genius.
The head of Omega is even more intolerable than Ed. Super huge ego on an annoying little man. These laser guys always come off as used car salesmen. NNSA should shut that place down. Don't see why an academic institution like U. Of Rochester needs a bunch of crackpots.
Since there is absolutely nobody at all, not the public, not the press, paying attention to anything regarding lasers (except maybe the Army's new rollout of a new laser weapon), and certainly not nuclear fusion as a source for anything, one wonders how these projects get funded for multiple years in the face of massive pushes from the Obama administration for solar and wind power, to the detriment of fusion, clean coal, and gas. And the current attempt to scuttle a bipartisan House bill to (finally since 1972) allow export of US produced crude oil, based on the objection that the legislation ought to focus on "clean energy" instead, as if they were mutually exclusive. The march to greater insanity continues...
Laser fusion has had powerful backers, Teller for one, and has become entrenched in the Washington bureaucracy. It might have died off except for the test ban, which gave it new life and the NIF under the auspices of stockpile stewardship. Now that DOE has tripled-down, it's not going away any time soon, especially since the NIF hasn't ignited anything. Ironically, if it had succeeded, the subsequent cold sober look at the problem might have slowed or killed it. The magnetic fusion guys got it right, it's better to be one step away, forever, than to succeed.
"Don't see why an academic institution like U. Of Rochester needs a bunch of crackpots."
Another bullshit statement. I worked with LLE colleagues over 30 years and they contributed mightily to the development of laser and target science in the US, much of which contributed and contributes to our economic and national security. Smart group of talented men and women, despite some of the huge egos. And yes they where/are our competitors for DOE dollars.
I worked with LLE colleagues over 30 years and they contributed mightily to the development of laser and target science in the US, much of which contributed and contributes to our economic and national security.
October 12, 2015 at 8:04 PM
Bullshit. Name one thing, had they not done it, would have damaged or reduced our national security. Name one, just one "mighty development." Really, all they did was show up for work - no accomplishments. Your talking points are decades old, and they stink from being way past their sell by date.
Great, LLE contributed to laser ICF. Guess what, laser ICF has failed. Goodbye. LLE also helped develop Livermore's bogus laser EOS program. Most of this has been discredited.
LLE wasn't even needed had LLNL kept Nova open.
And yes, fusion scientists are crackpots. It's well known in the press:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/nuclear_power/2013/01/fusion_energy_from_edward_teller_to_today_why_fusion_won_t_be_a_source_of.html
Economic and national security? How does a capsule of DT that fizzles out contribute to that?
The physics of capsule ignition is well know. The dirty little secret is that above ground facilities don't provide enough energy for ignition and gain. The whole effort has been a waste of time.
The physics of capsule ignition is **not** well known at all, that's a ridiculous ill-informed opinion. The implied reference to below-ground facilities is more evidence of your lack of knowledge.
I don't think the reference was to below ground "facilities."
It's not an opinion. Below ground things work. They worked many, many times. Read Lindl's papers where he mentions the UT capsules that work but he can't talk about. NIF was built on the statement that the UTs show this works. After Nova's failure to ignite, the UTs were pursued to show ignition was at least possible at higher energies. What doesn't work is Lindl's capsule. Don't get me wrong, it's a heroic effort to try, but things don't work above ground due to energy limitations. We know that now. Time to move on. Also, if the physics of capsule ignition was not well established, scientists in the 1980s would not have been able to do those experiments. Maybe they just got lucky?
From the NIF Wiki page
With each experiment, the predicted energy needed to reach ignition rose, and it was not clear that post-Nova predictions were any more accurate than earlier ones. The Department of Energy (DOE) decided that direct experimentation was the best way to settle the issue, and in 1978 they started a series of underground experiments at the Nevada Test Site that used small nuclear bombs to illuminate ICF targets. Test were known as Halite or Centurion depending on which lab ran it, LLNL or LANL. Initial data were available by mid-1984, and the testing ceased in 1988.
Way too much information. Shut the hell up, already.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
It's not an opinion. Below ground things work.
October 13, 2015 at 10:03 AM
Yes, but in a different physical regime. Lindl had something to sell so he glossed over the key differences, but he's well aware of them of course. All downhole proved is, the concept is sound (duh). It didn't light the way for the NIF, and the failure of the NIC showed that nicely. We do not have any computational predictive capability for laboratory ICF, and as it turns out we've never had any.
Thank God this thread is about to disappear. So sick of NIF and Ed Moses.
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