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.
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.
Comments
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you view the world solely in predator/prey terms, then I feel sorry that you can never be part of a civilized society.
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.
Sorry dude - this is total bullshit ! I know Ed Moses well and none of this is true !
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.
Are you insinuating that this was Ed's conduct ? I think you are referring to someone else. Don't mislead the blog readers !
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.