Sometimes things go amazing fast. In the land of free enterprise an example of out of control bureaucracy runs amok.
What sort of space pioneers have they created? NASA sent a shuttle to the International Space Station. This we know.
We also know now that they sent it up with three kinds of tile repair kits that probably don't work in space. Its like driving a Ford with a spare tire from a Chev. Its sort of like trying to fix a Van Gogh with duct tape.
Now they are saying that they don't have to fix it because the damage is small. Here is the best opportunity to test repair techniques and materials in that environment. It presents an opportunity challenge to try to see if the technique works.
I was also under the impression that NASA prides itself in designing its fleet on naval experience. In a Navy, the final say over any vessel does not lay with a suit clad buddy of a sad and incompetent political leader who avoided any military duty in any patriotic responsibility. A decision like this was and still is up to the commander of the vessel. The final say on a repair must be left with the Pilot Captain, the mission commander on Endeavour.
But this ambivalent anemic leadership prevails. Then the land based Bush administration picked Shuttle Managers claim that part of the difficulty is that accidental damage may happen to the tiles from the astronaut making hard accidental contact with the alleged fragile tiles. Apparently the spin goes that the space suit is heavy and the tools are heavy... Wait for this... in weightless space.
So in line with these events is that really they can't fix a small point of damage to a vehicle attached to a space station in near earth orbit. And these guys are planning on a trip to Mars?
Are these guys for real?
1 comment:
It's very scary to think of that shuttle re-entering the atmosphere with as deep a hole as they showed on CNN, no matter how small it is.
Just think about that small hole being penetrated by insane heat at high speeds. Wouldn't that cause an effect something like a blowtorch inside the vehicle?
Even if it's only in the cargo bay, you'd think a beam of superheated atmosphere would be melting everything it touched - like flight control wiring.
I can't imagine the captain obeying the suits on the ground if there's the slightest chance they're wrong. After all it's the suits who are on the ground, not the crew.
Captains are generally made of pretty stern stuff.
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