[Timesink]

Yeah, the magazine's practically a house organ of the DNC, but it's an interesting read, nonetheless.

[AmishDude]

Ping.

[TankerKC]

You know, back in 1980 I told a friend of mine not to by a Fiat. I told him that is was a death trap.

Fast forward to 1998. I read in the paper that there had been a terrible accident involving a Fiat, and, get this--the driver had been killed.

Whew! He owes me one.

</stupid hindsight>

[Shermy]

FYI - some of the Orlando TV websites are the best catalogs of stories, national and local, on the shuttle disaster. Better than any national media sites, IMO.

WKMG

WESH

[Ford Fairlane]

The thing is, most of what he says is accurate.

The only way space exploration will ever be practical is to allow commercial enterprises to run their own.

Rockwell (I think) had a replacement for the Shuttle designed in the late 80's, NASA wasn't interested & the company was told they would not be allowed to launch it themselves (commercially).

[jjm2111]

Long, but good read.

[You Dirty Rats]

Apollo had a clear goal: Land a man on the moon & bring him back. The rocket was designed for that purpose and that purpose only and was highly successful.

The Shuttle was a mess from the start. It's astronomically costly as a cargo-carrier, and it's also foolish to risk people to do something an ELV can do on its own. It's also way too big and inefficient to send people up into space. As the author points out, the craft really didn't have a clear goal or mission at any point.

At this point, the remaining fleet will need to be evaluated to be sure it is safe. Assuming it is, one then has to ask if whatever missions it is doing are worth $250 million per launch or not. The military abandoned the shuttle after Challenger. Commercial satellites have, for the most part, gone to the ELV Ariane. It's pretty humiliating when the FRENCH are more efficient than NASA.

We landed men on the moon. We don't need manned space flight for prestige. If there are legitimate reasons to send men and women into space, then design a spacecraft to do it safely and efficiently. We definitely need to upgrade our unmanned capabilities. Most of all, we need a clear-headed fresh look at our space program.

Let's also be sure we don't repeat the prior mistake of building yet another of these white elephants. There's no need or justification for it. Spend the money on space, yes, but do it imaginatively and efficiently, not on another 60's technology space truck.

[boris]

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

"Fool" is too polite an epithet for the author.

--Boris

[jim_trent]

There is a conspiracy thread at DU (I thought they always said conspiracies were an invention of right-wingers). One of the comments I got a kick out of was one that said (paraphrasing), "This is a metaphor for the Democratic Party. Without their left wing, they too will crash and burn."

[GoreIsLove]

with tuesday morning quarterback on the shelf for a while, it's nice to see some serious articles from easterbrook. thanks for the post.

[Petronski]

EXCELLENT FIND. Thank you very much.

[Petronski]

When Columbia's tiles started popping off in a stiff breeze, it occurred to engineers that ice chunks from the tank would crash into the tiles during the sonic chaos of launch: Goodbye, Columbia.

(No pun intended:) This is a chilling level of prescience.

[hripka]

I have heard different NASA estimates that the estimated failure rate was around 1 in 400, or in some cases, much much higher.

Since there were about 110 flights of the Space Shuttle, and there have been two catastrophic failures, based on the "short" run of Shuttle flights, the failure rate is about 1 in 55, or about 2%.

Considering that this was written before the Columbia ever even flew, the warnings are chilling. Amazingly prophetic. Thanks to "Timesink" for posting it.