NASA’s Big Decision

First off, a warning: This posting is purely editorial in nature and will not contain any new information and is purely my own opinion based on available facts.

NASA has finally grown a pair! After 50 years of ass-kissing and ground-licking, the administrators and engineers have finally stood up the politicians and said, “Wait a second, this isn’t safe so we’re gonna check things out first, so back off and let us do our job!” And I for one am very proud of them.

For a very long time now, NASA has used substandard equipment and under-par safety checks to send men and women into the inhospitable reaches of outer space. As it was put in a popular movie: “Did you know we are sitting on … a thing with 270,000 loose parts that was built by the lowest bidder? Kinda makes you feel good don’t it?” The politics involved with sending a human into outer space is tremendous, I am sure and politicians are continually getting involved. They (politicians) are always on the lookout for new contracts for equipment that can be built in their own back yards by people who vote for them, which could and often does lead to substandard equipment being built by inexperienced people. Tolerances are continually being adjusted and safety checks are sometimes ignored in order to ensure that the shuttle launches on time. To be fair, it’s not as if there are politicians on the phone saying, “Launch anyway” whenever problems arise, it’s more like NASA has been promising much more than they deliver and delays cost money. To clarify that statement: NASA scientists have not invented enough “space-age” technology or discovered enough advances in medical science to justify the sheer overwhelming dollar amount required to fuel our forays into space, and members of congress are continually pointing this out while they attempt to cut NASA’s budget to stop the hemorrhaging. Once an Administrator promises a certain advancement (such as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) and then promises a certain date that this advancement will be achieved, failure to achieve that advancement will be used against them when they next beg for more funds.

Right now, NASA’s problem seems to be an old one:

In an internal email sent Friday at NASA and posted on Aviation Week’s website Tuesday, Hale says the sensors probably were never reliable since the current shuttle fleet came on line in 1981.

“It seems to me likely that we have been flying the entire history of the program with a false sense of security, that is a really sobering thought,” Hale said in his message to shuttle security engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

And instead of bowing from pressure from the inside (NASA Administrators) and outside (Congressional backers), the engineers and safety personnel agreed to stop a launch in order to discover what the hell happened. Way to go NASA! One behalf of the people of the world: Thanks for not killing any more people for political gain!

Can’t Get Excel To Sort Columns! »« Big John McCarthy Retires