It’s too bad about NASA’s false start on getting the space shuttle back into service, due to a problematic fuel gauge. The indefinite delay can’t be helping nerves at NASA, either, considering this Discovery launch is supposed to signal that the agency is back in business after the Columbia tragedy. Another regret: that taxpayers spent more than $73,000 sending 44 members of Congress to Cape Canaveral, Fla., for the scrubbed launch.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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4 Comments
It is disappointing though not too surprising that the shuttle launch did not come off. When an endeavour ( shuttle pun intended) is constantly under threat of extinction, those invoved in that enterprise, often err on the side of caution.Long story short, NASA has been starved for funds since the early seventies. Every failure, every glitch, every mis-step becomes grounds for those who want to kill the program to do so.If NASA was funded better, and if it was made widely known and acceptable that any dangerous new thing worth doing is worth the cost, then maybe NASA could shine again, as it did when we went to the Moon.We need an assembly line of shuttles. There is no shortage of those willing to fly them. We need also the best effort in funding to find the replacement for shuttle. This will cost alot granted.But consider; last year NASA’s budget was about 14 billion dollars. For that we got 2 rovers on Mars, still operating and discovering more than a year beyond their expected lifetime. We got spectacular new pictures and science from the Cassini Saturn probe. We got science from the inside of a comet when Deep Space 1 recently impacted a comet.That and more cost 14 billion dollars. Compare that to more than 300 billion dollars spent on the Iraq war, which as far as I know has given us nothing.Space exploration and science is the best thing we do. It ought to be funded and encouraged so that the best and brightest among us may elevate the nation and the world to new levels of understanding and faith in the future.
There goes JR with his vicarious terrorism again. “Do it like the terrorists want or the space program is dead.”
Sorry, JR. The blood of the targeted innocents cries out for justice. We can wait to play in space until after we kill the last terrorist.
Uh Simon? I wrote one sentence about the large cost of the war in Iraq vs. the small cost of space exploration. I also posted about results of each of these expenditures of public funds.Simon? Your simple minded reply to one line in my post demonstates that you are a zealot. You are either a scared little man (as the right wants you to be) or part of the problem, perpetuating the lie. I prefer to stick to the subject.I state again, NASA needs better funding. It is the best of what we do.
Heh