The same thing happened with the Shuttle. They spent two years trying to fix a problem - that was solvable just by switching back to the friggin' old foam. You knew it. I knew it. 98 percent of FR knew it. This isn't a difficult concept - go back to what worked. But they couldn't bring themselves to do the obvious because they are programmed to not think outside the box any longer. And now the fleet is grounded again.
Government has gone from the can-do attitude of WWII and space exploration in the 1960s to a "we can't do it" attitude we see today. They don't think outside the box, they work every day on making the box even more impervious to new ideas. And it's rife everywhere. I hate to digress on this thread, but it's the same symptom we see with Jamie Goerlick on the 9-11 Commission. Or Congresscritters offering a choice with Social Security reform between the government keeping the IOUs or us keeping the IOUs - without bothering to save that money and avert an entitlement shipwreck that any sane person sees coming.
Throw in the Clinton cover-ups. And Rathergate. And 9-11 itself and the intel failures. And now this fiasco.
It is beyond my comprehension. It looks more and more like what Rome must have looked like before the barbarians came. And it is becoming more lethal with each passing year - and apparently no one friggin' cares.
There is a huge difference between making disaster preparations and sending a man to the moon or fighting a major war. It's very easy to have a "can-do" attitude when you're dealing with something that doesn't have any cost limitations built into it. Disaster planning doesn't work that way, and in one odd respect you almost don't WANT it to work that way -- because entire cities could basically become uninhabitable if people are expected to evacuate the place several days before a potential catastrophe.