First of all, there are cranks in every single entity you can name. Pick a disaster or mishap or accident and you can find a Ralph Nader "I told you so" somewhere with a current or past association who'll rush to a reporter or a tv camera to claim "they were warned!!"
Secondly, to believe NASA was lacking in safety checks is to be purposely ignorant or blind of their history, especially since Challenger. They've delayed more shuttle launches than you can care to count...most of those delays are over safety issues.
Finally, the failure rate of the shuttle flights is remarkable, considering their rarity. Two missions out of what? 113? That's a 2% failure rate. Too damn high, I agree. But guess what? THIS IS ROCKET SCIENCE. Literally.
The astronauts and everyone knows the science is pushing the limits of technology and human knowledge. Incredibly, 98% of these missions are a success. America will rise above this tragic accident and learn from it.
God bless America.
Why didn't I think of that?
Great post...this IS Rocket Science.
The STS design probably does carry a failure rate in the 2% range.
The program as designed requires hardware with a 0.00001% failure rate.
The hardware and the program design are incompatible. This disconnect between reality and fantasy, maintained for almost thirty years now, has led to increasingly politicized leadership at NASA, and, I suspect, a go along to get along culture (because those are the only sort of people who will follow leaders like that).
I weep for the brave astronauts, but I also weep for my country which here, as in so many other areas, is dying of inadequate development-intellectual, moral, physical-and is using fantasy to cover it up.