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>"Talk about space tourism or even manned missions to Mars, discussed in space circles until Saturday's events, are now inappropriate."

There is a profound
political dimension
to this disaster.

Many reports say
Bush was about to announce
an initiative

for a manned Mars trip.
This would have ear-marked billions
to the aerospace

industry, mostly
the same military folk
the left wing types hate.

This new disaster
precludes Bush from announcing
and implementing

this new space program.
It's unsettling to wonder
how the politics

of deep new funding
plays some role in the current
deaths and aftermath.

Let's take the billions being sent overseas " to fight aids" and spend it on the space program were it can do some good.

The fundamental flaw in the shuttle program is the design of a spacecraft that hauls both astronauts and cargo. The shuttle is a huge, extremely heavy vehicle. The rocketry that is necessarilly required to lift such a heavy payload into orbit is correspondingly more hazard-prone than would be the case with a lighter payload. A large and massive shuttle diving through the upper atmosphere means a large surface area of tiles, all with extreme stress applied to them. The entire system is extremely complex, increasing the probabilities that something will go wrong.

We have had two catastrophic failures in a little over 100 missions, suggesting a catastrophic failure rate probability of 1:50, or 2% per mission. This is a much higher risk than has previously been acknowledged by anyone in the space program, and even by many of its critics. (Richard Feynman speculated that the risk might be as low as 1:100.)

Is it an acceptable risk? Everyone understands that manned space flight is inherently dangerous, and that it is probably impossible to drive the risks down to zero. But the real question is whether or not there are feasible, less risky alternatives.

There has been considerable research and discussion regarding smaller reusable "space planes" designed for human payloads only. Such vehicles, being so much smaller and lighter, would need much smaller rockets to lift them into orbit; perhaps the inherently dangerous combination of solid fuel rockets strapped to a huge liquid fuel tank could be eliminated altogether. A smaller space plane might still have to be lined by tiles, but there would need to be fewer of them, and thus fewer points of vulnerability. If a smaller space plane was our primary manned vehicle, the system could be designed so that each mission would include at least the capability to rendezvous with the ISS. This would at least allow a close visual inspection of the tiles by ISS personnel before a re-entry was attempted. Should the space plane be damaged, they could use docking hardware (which would be standard equipment on all space planes) to dock with the ISS and use the ISS as their "lifeboat" until a rescue or repair mission could get to them.

As for bulky and heavy cargo, this should be boosted into orbit on unmanned rockets. Given this tried, true, and reasonably economical option, I have trouble seeing any good reason to put astronauts lives at risk just to haul cargo into orbit. There may indeed be things that need to be done with cargo once it is in orbit: satelites need to be deployed, lab experiments need to be tended to, etc. We also need to have a repair capability in space. Thus, a space plane needs to be equipped with a remote-control arm, and also an airlock so that astronauts can perform EVAs. A lighter spacecraft with more fuel on board might actually be able to climb into higher orbits than is usually done with the shuttles, thus making it more useful for a wider range of missions.

Would it be more costly than the shuttle? I am not so sure about that. Sending bulk cargo into orbit on unmanned boosters is clearly more economical than using the shuttle. A smaller space plane would require smaller, fewer rockets, yielding some small savings there. It is possible that a smaller, simpler space plane system might result in a quicker turnaround time between missions, thus requiring a smaller fleet of vehicles. A smaller, less complex spacecraft should cost a little less to build.

I am forced to conclude that the shuttle is by no means the best possible solution. Less risky, and possibly less costly alternatives should have been researched, developed, and implemented years ago. Time is past due to seriously look into them now.

I in light of recent events, I think our focus and direction should be development of new space craft and the lunar surface, instead of jumping to the planet Mars.

We have barley explored the lunar surface and a small manned lunar base would make an excellent platform for scientific exploration and study. I believe it is critical that we get back to the lunar surface and develop this manned scientific outpost, and throughly explore the lunar surface, before leaping to outer planets.

And it's my opinion that the ISS is doing nothing more than siphoning off money that could be used in other, more practical, common sense areas, like a manned exploratory base, on the lunar surface.

I've heard a lot of talk today that even though they knew about the problem with the insulation impacting the space craft they decided to go ahead as though nothing had happened because there was nothing they could do about it anyway. (indeed, they knew this was an ongoing problem since they changed the insulation for environmental reasons)

From all appearances, NASA decided it was to much trouble to insure there wasn't a problem and instead chose to stick its collective heads up its collective derriere and hope for the best. ( I know its only been three days and the jury is still out)

This is a radical change from the NASA that put men on the moon. If NASA had felt and acted this way when Apollo 13 happened, there would still be three corpses orbiting the moon today.

The problem with today's NASA is that, as with all other Federal programs, it is more concerned with politics and appearances than with the purpose it was originally created to accomplish.