Five years ago today ...

[unixronin]

"Buildings shook in Texas.  Columbia was coming home."

And no, sorry, no cut here.  Thanks to Master Sergeant wcg for the reminder and the Bill Whittle pointer.  Because we should never forget.

What Bill Whittle says is true:  Those astronauts knew the risks, and they flew anyway.

Also true is that NASA worked wonders making the Shuttle fly, somehow, on a budget not nearly enough to do it right.

But they shouldn't have had to.  We should have done it right.  We owed it to the men and women who were going to risk their lives riding it.

And now we're talking about going to Mars.  Will we do it right this time?

We owe that to the memory of the men and women who flew the Shuttle, in full knowledge of the risks, and didn't make it home.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

yeah. They tried to make it do too many things without putting enough money into it to actually make it that capable. Conflicting requirements. If the military wanted a fast-reaction launch system, they should have developed their own tailored to their requirements, but they couldn't get the money, so they took over NASA's project instead. The usual thing resulted that almost always happens when you try to make something do too many jobs: it doesn't do any of them well.