Nasa to resume shuttle missions

BBC News ^ | October 30, 2004 | Daniel Lak

[sevry]

NASA has become a soccer mommy organization.

When you create a bureacracy - you get bureacrats. You need special teams, special units, with the resources needed or available to them, in order to finish certain projects. It should be an agency with bold, aggressive thinking. Safety first, as always. But it can't be the only 'global test', as it were.

I suspect you've always had a battle between the explorer and science nerd (or to be fair, bureacrat nerd). Explorers like checklists, and safety features, and good design. But there is something that tells them to get a move on, as well - to get out there and explore.

[Moonman62]

With something as complicated as the shuttle, and considering it's pretty much just a huge bomb, which, when working properly, the explosion is controlled and directed out the tail nozzle, I think it's pretty remarkable.

Maybe, but the causes of both accidents were rather simple and preventable.

[Paul Ross]

Glad we don't stop all cars from driving on roads and highways for a year or two every time there is a major wreck or death on the highway...... Life is fragile, handle with care and prayer. But you have to go on.....

Indeed, just so. The resumption of American manned space flight is the only fitting tribute to these heroes...

[petercooper]

[Flightdeck]

Go manned space flight!

[Flightdeck]

"Give me a space ship commanded and staffed with Navy & Marine pilots and a couple US Army Special Forces guys."

Every single commander and pilot of every space shuttle is a Navy or Air Force pilot. You think another five pilots with egos as big as the moon are going to just sit in the back and twiddle their thumbs or ineptly perform experiments. The way the have it now works just fine.

[Alamo-Girl]

Bump!

[Paul Ross]

Uggh! Why don't you warn people about these visual affronts before you post them?

Any rate, if any of you have the time, and wish to honor those of our REAL heroes, and the REAL astronauts, please consider visiting the memorial for the Columbia which is found here: I think you will find this well worth going through every item.

Particularly poignant is the video, "The Best Among Us."

[Physicist]

Glad we don't stop all cars from driving on roads and highways for a year or two every time there is a major wreck or death on the highway......

Same here. On the other hand, if we learned through bitter experience that there existed a 2% chance of an incident that would destroy 25% of all the cars and kill their occupants, a hiatus might be in order.

The shuttle is the wrong spaceship for the wrong mission at the wrong time. Soyuz is the right spaceship for the wrong mission at the wrong time.