Zerin Sakech

How could Nasa employee's do this to us! We trusted nasa with billion of dollars and they spend it on jewlry and gift cards?! I mean the iPods and video games are understandable, we're only human but come on, abusing our unlimited plastic cards comes only so far, cause then you gatta pay up.

I am sure they are making more then enough for the job they do. Use their own well earned money to get the luxuries. How pathetic. Ill do her job for half of what she makes a year.

I was furious when I read this. With so many short sighted people who question the value of NASA, any excuse will be used to cut NASA's budget. I am a practicle man. The contributions to the developement of "spin offs", from almost every scientific ( as in pure science) can not I feel be overstated. From an industrial point of view, just two of the contributions that are a direct result of NASA R&D, are energy and medicine. In the near future if we have the commitment, we can place large orbital solar cells in orbit for 24/7 energy transmission down to Earth. And we have the ability to access vast raw materials on the moon and asteroids. The abuse of NASA funds by some, is an insult to the American people, and even the world. Not far fetched, it's cntributions in so many areas should demand a secure budget and robust R&D efforts with very practicle benifits to us on Earth.

In an organization with thousands of employees, this isn't way too shocking, and its really hard to judge how rampant this is without knowing what percentage of these purchases were illegitimate. Ten bad purchases in half a million isn't so bad.

Furthermore, it cannot be understated that many cases of this type of abuse are being caught and dealt with, including the case cited in this article. Something is working.