by Rod Hughes

Dr. Franklin Chang’s Ad Astra rocket lab in Guanacaste and NASA formally signed a cooperative agreement (reported last week in The Tico Times), giving NASA first grabs on discoveries from Astra’s experiments with the plasma rocket engine.

When reported by the English-language weekly last Friday, the only details to be ironed out were negotiations about patent rights. The Costa Rica born Chang, a former NASA astronaut and U.S.-trained physicist, explained that the agreement allows Ad Astra access to NASA research that will smooth the way to the projected 2010 test of the plasma engine.

Although the agreement does not imply any NASA commitment to buy the rocket engine, Chang noted that it does clearly demonstrate the space agency’s interest in it. The plasma engine works like a chemical rocket but, instead of the fuel currently employed, gas is superheated until it gives up one of its electrons. It is cheaper to run than current propulsion and accelerates faster.

by Rod Hughes

Despite the year old Administration that has vowed to set the country to rights, the Ministry of Education doesn’t seem to have things sorted out yet. The Comptroller General’s office reported this week that the ministry has been paying 235 dead people, at least one of which just celebrated his fourth burial anniversary.

The Comptroller team investigating the mess in the personnel section says that hundreds of thousands of dollars have been paid to dead people and in error to some living people as well. The budgetary watchdog agency is not saying that criminal intent is at work here but that the bureaucracy waits up to eight months to report an employee has died, if indeed they report it at all.

The employee who died four years ago not only continued getting paid but was promoted four times! The Comptroller study showed utter chaos in personnel records that failed to register vacations, sick leave and resignations. This accounts partly for the 9.6 million colones (figure about 500 colones per dollar) erroneously paid to 44,000 employees,

Another case was the employee who retired in 1997 but continued being paid for eight years. Even worse, most of this money is lost forever, partly because even if the error is caught, recovery does not even start until three years have passed. Some is irrecoverable because the statute of limitations has lapsed.

The ministry top officials officials have announced an overhaul in the human resources payroll system but it will not take effect until late in 2008 or even 2009. Until then, expect many in the cemetery to grow richer…