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Snopercod,
Your comments are cogent but unnecessarily cynical. The nation will not turn it's back on crewed spaceflight. ISS is flying with an existing mission. Do you believe the nation wants to abandon it's leadership role in the ISS program?

I doubt it.

If we did make that policy decision, we would have basically handed the ISS to the Russians as a Mir-2 vehicle.

Right now, due to the Clinton Administration's poor policy and planning, we have only one route to space and it's Russian owned.

Having NASA stop launch processing on OV-103 is not surprising. Portraying it as a sign of a bureaucratic decision to abandon the manned space program is really premature.

The reality is that the space agency has little choice. The reality is that the processing needs to be halted because the workforce needs to be retasked on the disaster investigation and recovery operations which are just beginning.

It took several months for the wreckage of Challenger to be located and swept from the Atlantic.

My cynicism is real, and based upon the two years I spent sitting on my hands at KSC after the Challenger mishap.

KSC is the red-headed stepchild of the space program. Their workforce consists of some of the most talented people in the program, yet the "pretty boys" in Houston get all the coverage, budget, and respect.

Note for instance that in the press conference yesterday, they said they were sending astronauts out into the woods to identify debris "because they are the people most familiar with the shuttle hardware".

That's total BS; The techs at KSC are way more familiar. But nobody is requesting their help.

They will be the fall guys in this accident. Mark my words.

>>Do you believe the nation wants to abandon it's leadership role in the ISS program?<<

I believe the nation wants feel-good, multi-culti space TV with no investment in design, engineering or planning for the future of manned spaceflight.

I believe the nation wants a scapegoat for its failure to design and build an adequate reusable earth-to-orbit system, and I agree with the poster who said the KSC boys are the probable target.

I believe (no, I know) the nation wants immunized smallpox response teams but will not tolerate a single case of eczema vaccinatum, to the point that the consent form is >20 pages and over 40% of military vaccine candidates were excluded.

It is a miracle that we have President Bush (really), but we are the same people who elected Clinton (twice), and we haven't changed all that much.

Yet.