So at what point does NASA officially become widely regarded as a bunch of dumbasses who should go back to the drawing board?
Seems we crossed that point a while back.
It was in '73 or '74 a NASA researcher gloomily observed to me a new milestone for NASA: They'd reached 1 administrator per scientist.
Zoom forward a few decades...
Seems we crossed that point a while back.
You may be right on your overall point, but this can not in anyway be construed as a NASA f^ck up, this same situation could happen to any civilian run space program, you can't stop a rock out there from hitting you with todays tech, not gonna happen.
“...So at what point does NASA officially become widely regarded as a bunch of dumbasses who should go back to the drawing board?
Seems we crossed that point a while back...”
We never replaced the STS-1 design with a newer and better STS-2 design, so we’re stuck with a Model-T instead of a Cadillac-XLR to do the manual job of going into space.
If we’re not gonna do it correctly, we should go back and improve the old ‘up-and-down’ technology that we first used to take us into space. It worked for us, and has served the Russians and Chinese well. .................... FRegards