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HP's Fiorina aims to put Bush on the moon

Gives new meaning to offshore

Not even the sky is the limit for HP CEO Carly Fiorina.

Fiorina has added to an already rich transportation resume by joining the Presidential Commission on the Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy. The HP exec will blast off with seven other people hand-picked by George W. to advise NASA on a manned trip to the moon and possibly beyond. The commission is meant to give advice on technology, raise interest in the sciences and bring in private sector expertise to push the lunar plans forward.

Bush could not have picked a better technology executive for the mission, as Fiorina has a storied history in the transportation field.

When moving from Lucent to HP, Fiorina negotiated a swell $187,500 relocation allowance. This sum included funds to transport her 52-foot yacht from the East Coast to San Francisco Bay. In addition, Fiorina's new contract at HP included provisions that said she was "expected" to use "company aircraft for personal use," according to Peter Burrows' book Backfire.

Fiorina would go on to expand HP's Air Force, even though previous executives had looked to trim HP Air and related costs. Just last year, HP was busy trying to fill positions and keep the Air Force running in style.

But these travel exploits are only part of the story surrounding Fiorina's appointment to the Bush on the moon program.

Fiorina was also hand-picked, pardon our language, by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to help with the Gropenfuhrer's transition from Hollywood to Sacramento. And now we find Fiorina on Bush's select list. It doesn't taken an Itanium processor engineer to see where this agenda is heading.

Fiorina will work without pay for the President, serving for just a few months. The rest of the commission members are as follows: Laurie Ann Leshin, a planetary geochemist at Arizona State University; retired Air Force Gen. Lester Lyles; Paul Spudis, visiting scientist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Former Rep. Robert S. Walker of Pennsylvania; Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Michael Jackson of Virginia. ®

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