Possible Conflict of Interest with NASA’s Algae Research
There may be a conflict of interest with the head of NASA and the OMEGA algae research currently taking place at the agency. It seems that NASA Administrator Bolden also has hundreds of thousands if not close to a million of dollars worth of stock in an traditional oil company.
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden doesn’t believe in OMEGA and has sought to slow it down.
The reason: He was advised against it by Marathon Oil the Texas-based company on whose board Bolden sat until he was named NASA administrator last year. The former astronaut and Marine Corps general also still holds as much as $1 million worth of Marathon stock.
He says that there hasn’t been any conflict and while I don’t know the particulars more than what this story offer, I tend to believe him. Algae research is still in its early stages and to think that he would knowing sabotage the research success seems to almost garner ‘conspiracy theory’ status. If the research is successful, algae is still likely decades away from a point where it could threaten oil and by then, oil companies could co-opt algae technologies to boost their profits (IE ExxonMobil with Synthetic Genomics).
Anyways, NASA’s algae research is fairly novel in their approach and deserves to be researched thoroughly. Here is what they are trying to do:
According to Jonathan Trent, the lead scientist behind the project, it starts with algae being placed in sewage-filled plastic bags, known in NASA-speak as “offshore membrane enclosures for growing algae” or OMEGA. The semipermeable plastic was originally developed to recycle astronauts’ urine during space missions.
Trent’s idea is to grow the algae in huge bags suspended in the ocean by feeding them wastewater. The algae which pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere would feast on nutrients in the sewage, turning it into clean water that would be released into the sea through the bags’ one-way membranes. Wave action would keep the algae mixed and healthy, producing fat-soluble molecules called lipids as the plants grow that would then be harvested for fuel.
If a tsunami or hurricane strikes, or if the bags leak, Trent says, seawater would kill the algae, and the lipids would break down naturally.
Read more of the article here: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-nasa-administrator-scandal-20100620,0,4126603.story
