Because this is a science site, we're going to discuss it when a taxpayer-funded agency is found to be squandering valuable dollars on junk and waste that instead could he used to fund actual transformative research.  Unlike the rest of the science blogging on the Internet, we (okay, I - virtually no one here agrees with me) don't circle the wagons around every project just because it claims to be science and instead want money to be used efficiently and for maximum impact. 

Budgets are finite.  If science funding is wasted, good science projects won't get money from some additional magical pool, they won't get funding at all - and that is a shame.  

People rightly note that plenty of money is wasted in other areas, like the military, but that is subjective; few progressive science bloggers complain about neo-con imperialist action in a sovereign nation that is no threat to anyone outside its own borders (Libya - done by Obama) but science blogging could have co-branded war protests about the previous instance (Iraq - done by Bush, a Republican) but here is an example everyone across the political spectrum should be outraged about.

This case is interesting because not only does it involve a military spending boondoggle but also legitimate environmental protests and even some weird international payola - the very rare trifecta of silliness.

Able UK is a shipyard in northeastern England and, somehow, in 2003, they got a contract from the U.S. to dismantle some 'ghost' ships(1) from Virginia even though had never demolished a ship before and didn't have permits to do so.  Cost:$17.8 million and also included in the agreement were the  ex-USNS Benjamin Isherwood(T-AO-191) and the ex-USNS Henry Eckford(T-AO-192), two of the Henry J. Kaiser fleet of refueling oilers, which carry fuel to Navy vessels worldwide and are some 660 feet long.

What of them?  They are among the more famous maritime boondoggles in history - a cost to taxpayers of $300 million even though they were never completed and will now be scrapped and no money at all recouped by the government.   Both ships were built at the Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Co. in Philadelphia under a 1985 contract but the company defaulted on its Navy contract in 1989.

The ships were over 80 and 90 percent complete but various government mismanagement issues prevented that from happening. Able UK was able to navigate the environmental/toxic dumping issues and fulfill enough of its contract with the US Martime Administration to take ownership of the two vessels, their idea being to complete them for NATO or someone else - but in modern times tankers are required to be double-hulled and these are single-hulled.    So they sat as ghost ships, though they called them part of James River Reserve fleet. 


Military Sealift Command oiler Benjamin Isherwood (T-AO-191) tied up at the Norfolk Ship Building and Dry Dock Corporation.   Credit: Wikipedia

Now Able UK is sending them to Texas to be dismantled - yes, the company that got the contract to dismantle ships is now sending ships to be dismantled by a US company - but they won't say how much they are getting.    We just know none of it will go to taxpayers.

Said Joseph Keefe, a global maritime commentator at MaritimeProfessional.com, "it will close one of the saddest chapters in American shipbuilding and for that matter, federal fiduciary folly."

NOTE:

(1) This group was from Newport News but we have one out here also.   I used to like driving over the Benicia-Martinez Bridge on I-680 and seeing all of the parked ships, mothballed or not I have no idea.  

I am not the only one.   San Francisco photographer Scott Haefner loved seeing the ghost fleet in San Francisco Bay and knew some veteran ships of four wars were going to the scrap heap so he rigged a car battery to an electric motor (silent running!) on his rubber raft and invaded the ships, one each weekend, sleeping during the day and exploring at night.

His pictures are darn incredible (two linked below) so go check it out if you like cool old ships that have seen better days.   Pretty nice way to spend your weekends, too.