Jeez, what's with this guy
This guy is one smart engineer, with half a dozen PhDs in disciplines that would make you head hurt just reading the titles of the textbooks.
Unlike instant experts like yourself, Dr. Griffin knows that it is smart engineering to not design on the edge of technological maturity. Commercial jetliners fly with amazing safety records and make money doing so because they don't use unobtainium and push the performance envelope.
In case you forgot, President Bush once was a pilot and businessman, and is quite familiar with the downside of technical and business failure - and has learned from it.
"Commercial jetliners fly with amazing safety records and make money doing so because they don't use unobtainium and push the performance envelope."
....as I wait here in the airport because the bankrupt airline (delta) canceled my flight so they could try to fill the next one. Unobtainium is what their reservation system appears to be made of today.
But I agree with you - he's better off admitting the failure that is obvious. And you don't need multiple PhD's to see it. How do you defend it?
Risk is ok. But the risk has to have some tangible reward that pushes the state-of-the art. The Shuttle is way past the point where any useful data is worth the risk of flying it.
What upsets me the most about Columbia is the completely useless "science" that was being performed on the flight that killed these astronauts. They should have been pushing the state of the art in spaceflight - if they had nothing that would accomplish that, they should not have been in orbit.
I am sure there is a place for reusable space hardware - but we know the shuttle isn't it. NASA is no longer a place for innovation - so they should stop pretending.
If Nasa employees really believed in the mission of NASA, They'd quit their jobs - in favor of using that budget to do something that really benefits flight and spaceflight.