So typical of the Administration of the Simians, another pronouncement from on-high that is fraught with potentially perilous consequence made by someone sitting safely behind a desk. Subject: the up-coming shuttle launch.
NASA managers have rejected last-ditch pleas from their top safety officer and chief engineer to scrap next month's shuttle launch, saying that they will press ahead despite potentially catastrophic risks.
The head of the US space agency, Dr Michael Griffin, overruled warnings that there was a "relatively high" chance the shuttle's external fuel tank could shed some of its solid foam coating when it launches on 1 July, carrying seven crew including Briton Piers Sellers, an Edinburgh University graduate.
Oh, but wait...it gets better.
... Dr Griffin gave the final nod for next month's mission ... "We have elected to take the risk," he said."
Really "Dr" Griffin? So you're going to mosey out to that pad and strap a couple of million pounds of rocket fuel to your lilly-white doughy ass too? I was not aware you had made it through the Astronaut program in your tenure at NASA.
If there's an accident (let's all hope not), wanna bet that they'll be rewriting history to have "Dr" Griffin fighting bravely to kill this launch, but finally conceding because of the stifling bureacracy of NASA and the 1600 Crew?
posted by Jo Fish on 06.21.06 at 09:52 AM
Comments:
The shuttle has been a death trap from the minute the Nixon Adminsitration starting slashing the budget to build it way back in the day.
Thanks to The Trickster, it went from a vehicle sitting on top of its booster (so foam couldn't hit it) to one next to the booster. It went from a vehicle which could achieve high earth orbits so it could put satellites into geosychronous orbits by opening the cargo bay doors and letting the satellite float out to one which had to "launch" those types of satellites itself from low earth orbit, thereby reducing its usefulness by whole orders of magnitude.
Now of course, under the Cheney Administration, what was implicit is now explicit -- no one cares whether the Astronauts live or die, it's all about PR for the Boy King.
posted by: fbg46 on 06.21.06 at 12:36 PM [permalink]
