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Dear annalex and SteveH,

The foam dislodgement was a recurring problem that was being looked at by both engineering and management.

The "accident" wasn't the foam dislodgement, however. The shuttle disintegrated because nobody got out to look at the wing, and the wing was damaged and disintegrated on re-entry. The "risk assessment" was done by a new crew -- from Boeing -- using outdated software.

As to my quip about the "markets", it was just an analogy and a look at what impersonal modes of operation result in -- namely, disregard of much that is human.

Kindest Regards

Dear annalex,

He said astronauts would have been ''standing out in the hallways to volunteer.''

We don't want any of these manly heroics. We've got to keep these antics squashed in favor of the impersonal "hands off" approach. It's the impersonal "hands off" approach that makes "markets" the thing of beauty that they are, after all.

NASA never gave 'em a chance. Christ, what a price we pay for some mistakes -- indolence, indifference, etc.

Kindest Regards

Dear SteveH,

[SteveH]Considering they had no way to fix tiles in space, and second, and additional weight of spacewalk equipment degraded their ability to do their chartered mission, there would have been little point to a spacewalk and considerable downside negative publicity of finding and confirming a problem out there that could not be addressed.

You seem informed, are you involved in the space program? I ask because this last paragraph of yours is an excellent example of a very dangerous culture within NASA.

The inability to repair tile damage weighs not at all in the question. If it did, then there was no point in doing any of the engineering analysis -- for there was NOTHING to be done... which is what you state in your closing words. But, of course, NASA never has suggested that there was NO OPTION to the fatal re-entry option, for there were some known options -- and perhaps others may have come to someone's imagination had NASA been aware of significant damage to the thermal protection system.

As for the weight of the EVA equipment degrading any mission... this is arsy varsy reasoning. The mission is suited to the capability of the machine and crew requirements. The payload capacity is calculated after the weight of the shuttle is calculated, so the weight of the EVA equipment ought always to be part of the calculation that LIMITS payload, not the other way around.

Lastly, ask the asronauts whether they would like to know the actual status of their spacecraft. I have, and to a man they have said they want to know -- even if that knowledge is knowledge of impending doom. And, to a man, they have reiterated one thing -- when push comes to shove the imagination is a tremendously powerful tool, unthought-of options come flowing from an enlivened imagination. We saw this in small ways during Apollo 13.

Your reply was much appreciated -- I think it pointed in spades to a problem that needs fixing before we fly again.

Kindest Regards

A wee lament from an old space cadet who actually got to watch Neil Armstrong practice on the lunar lander at Ames Research Center.

Seemed especially appropriate to post this in the wake of the revelations that Boeing's engineers may have done a rather sad job of damage analysis.

Your effort at claiming the old and shameless line that Israel owes every [bold by SwimmingUpstream for clarification purposes] success to America...

Every success? Another resort by you to intellectual dishonesty -- namely, mis-characterizing my posts.

Insofar as you adduced no substantive argument or reply in your last reply, and insofar as you continue to mis-characerize, I bid you adieu.

[SwimmingUpstream] You think America's assistance has had nothing whatever to do with Israel's ability to build a nuclear arsenal?

[Cachelot]Actually, I know so. The first vital component in the Israeli reactor program was the Deuterium, which came not from the US but from Rjukan, Norway. Ironically, that plant also supplied Deuterium to America, I believe. The rest of the key components came from France. The memory of the war was still fresh, and the countries that later became EU had not yet re-Nazified (and not yet been overrun by the Nazi wave of islamists).

Your effort at refutation fails, because it notes only some scientific contributions of others to Israel's reactor program, but does nothing to establish that none of the money or military support given to Israel by the US had a role in Israel's obtaining any of the items to which you rather simple-mindedly attempt to show comprise all that has gone in to building the NUCLEAR ARSENAL that you assert Israel possesses today.

"...When do we get to posthumously award Joseph Stalin the Presidential Medal of Freedom?..."

Don't be a piker.

Our government gave him far more than the "Medal of Freedom", at Yalta.

"...who would YOU nominate?..."

For his stalwart defense, at the Hague Tribunal, of the fullness of individual human nature against the forces of the Contracted Soul---Slobodan Milosevic.

Luckily, you are not responsible for Israel's continued existence ;). Other factors, such as Israel's nuclear forces (the third or fourth largest in the world), will see to that.

You think America's assistance has had nothing whatever to do with Israel's ability to build a nuclear arsenal? If you read what I wrote carefully you will see that I did not state that Americans were responsible for the continuing existence of Israel in its present locale, but rather that Americans are as responsible as any others for that continuing existence.

Your mis-characterization of my post is intellectually dishonest.

Far from "exploding", the American public would probably snivel a bit about how much bad karma America has accrued by not helping the arabs delete Israel from the map. And then they'd start looking for a synagogue to burn.

The solipsism-begotten bigotry in this statement pushes the poster beyond the realm of pedestrian imbecility into the realm of blood libel. But rather than press the abuse button, I shall merely highlight the libelous and bigotted nature of Cachelot's post.

To begin with, neither did my father and father-in-law seek out sanctuaries of worship to bomb in retaliation for the bombings of Pearl Harbor, nor have I, nor have any papists of my acquaintance, sought out mosques (or synagogues, in your tortured reasoning) to bomb in retaliation for the multiple bombings of the WTC by radical moslem culture warriors -- in which children perished in greater numbers than in any school attack on record, to my knowledge. We have striven to throw off some of the fanaticism that was an unfortunate part of an ancient inheritance.

More than 100 years ago George Santayana gave expression to an insight that shines light deeply into Cachelot's post:

"...Throughout its tranformations, however, Christianity remains indebted to the Jews not only for its founder, but for the nucleus of its dogma...

...What was condemnable in the Jews was not that they asserted the divinity of their law, for that they did with substantial sincerity and truth. Their crime is to have denied the equal prerogative of other nations' laws and deities, for this they did, not from critical insight or intellectual scruples, but out of pure bigotry, conceit, and stupidity. They did not want other nations to have a god. The moral government of the world, with which the Jews are praised for having first asserted, did not mean for them that nature shows a generic benevolence toward life and reason wherever they arise. Such a moral government might have been conceived by a pagan philosopher and was not taught in Israel until, selfishness having been outgrown, the birds and the heathen were also placed under divine protection. What the moral government of things meant when it was first asserted was that Jehovah expressly directed the destinies of heathen nations and the course of nature itself for the final glorification of the Jews.

No civilised people had ever had such pretensions before. They all recognized one another's religions, if not as literally true (for some familiarity is needed to foster that illusion), certainly as more or less sacred and significant. Had the Jews not rendered themselves odious to mankind by this arrogance, and taught Christians and Moslems the same fanaticism, the nature of religion would not have been falsified among us and we should not now have so much to apologize for and to retract......"

The suggestion that most grieving American fathers would rush from their child's broken body in search of a synagogue to burn, the bigotry expressed against my ancestors, me, and my posterity by Cachelot's post is an affront I could not let pass.

PS, is it truly wise to blood-libel those who are as responsible as any for the continuing existence of Israel as a nation state in its present locale?

I agree with your assessment of Saddam, in the main.

Your analysis seems to point towards a conclusion that radical moslem culture is distinct from Marxist ideology.

This pertains more to several other threads here that have been arguing whether radical moslem culture was "Marxist", or not.

It will be interesting to see whether a trend towards de-secularizaton (de-Marxism) develops in Islmic nations with "secular" regimes -- in the wake of current events.

My view is that radical moslem culture is not a perversion of Islam, nor is it heretical. There is a historical component to Islam -- its imperialistic, jihad aspects -- that will have to be discounted to insignificance by the "moderate" leadership of Islam if Islam is to become truly "peaceful". A difficult task.

Thank you for your insights.

Kindest Regards

Dear Reilly,

"Marxist secularist" is an appelation others I respect have given to Saddam. I ask you what I have asked them:
Granting arguendo that this is true, is it your view that his secularism merely renders his Islamic faith subordinate to Marxism, or does it annihilate it?

Kindest Regards

Here we see less of the "bastard child of marxism" analysis of Mr. O'Sullivan and more of the proper view that a great part of Islam isn't so "moderate" as it is anti-West (Jew, Christian).

Cheers

FYI -- both the original article and my #22.

Kindest Regards and Very Best Wishes

The US supported some of the folks who became part of the "terrorist network" the US government is now at war with. Does that mean that Osama bin Laden is capitalist?

The framework of this argument cannot support the conclusions that many are trying to hang on it.

Regards

Thank you for this interesting, but essentially false analysis, by Mr O'Sullivan.

It is always difficult to see things from the perspective of others. Mr. O'Sullivan correctly points out that there has been a resurgence/revitalization of fundamentalist Islam, but he fails to look at it from the perspective of fundamentalist Islam.

Every culture survives on the allegiance of its members. Retaining that allegiance is a fundamental task of every cultural leadership. What is the cultural basis of Islam? Not merely the Koran, but the Hadith -- a collection of sayings and actions by the Prophet. It is normative in that it relates the proper way of life for an moslem. The Hadith is a part of the sunna -- the sunna is the record of the life and sayings of the Prophet. The Sunni part of Islam -- approximately 90% of Islam -- derives its name from the fact that its followers follow the example of the sunna .

From the Hadith:

Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24:

Narrated Ibn 'Umar:

Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform at that, then they save their lives an property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah."

When one examines the events of the Industrial Revolution one sees an incursion by the West into the oil producing regions of the Arabian Peninsula. This incursion produced a much needed counterpoint for fundamentalists in Islam. It gave them something to fight against -- something that could attract the allegiance of folks to the fundamental ways of Islam.

Islam was always political and imperialistic as a religion. It is not heretical when it seeks to fight the West -- any manifestation of the West.

Marxism was heretical vis-a-vis Christianity, but not heretical vis-a-vis the enlightenment project.

So, a proper analysis of Islam reveals that it is not heretical and perverted in the same way Marxism was, nor is it a "bastard child" of Marxism.

Kindest Regards

FYI

You may want to take a peak at the interview I link in my #13.

Kindest Regards

Returning a favor -- fyi (you may want to take a peak at the interview link I posted here, too).

Kindest Regards

Dear Cicero,

Here is a link to an INTERVIEW of Bat Ye'or on this subject.

Kindest Regards