Submitted February 27, 2003, 2:03 PM
Have your views of space travel changed over time?
The first order of business is to loose the name. It never has and never will "shuttle"
After the revelation that senior engineers at NASA claimed the shuttles left wing could well burn up on re-entry and that a US spy satellite should be directed to look at the damage done to its heat sheilding tiles before it began its descent, what was done?
Of course the request for the satellite damage assesment was nixed because it might make the bureaucracy look bad. Especially in light of the fact that this type of damage had occurred on eight previous occasions, which should have been fair enough reason to suggest to any organization with any trace of intellectual life left in it that something was seriously wrong.
In "O-ring II; The Columbia disaster" the bureaucracy reacted predictably; ignore the problem and hope for the best, or they might have to close up shop and look for productive work at market salaries. One who isn't an expert on bureaucracies, as I am, would be incredulous that the same bureaucracy could make exactly the same error that brought down the Challenger; that is ignoring obvious life threatening design defects for the sake of the bureaucracies primary mission: public relations.
This behavior is not at all surprising to me because I understand the nature of the mindless tropism that drives the bureaucratic instinct for agency survival. Its simply better to cross ones fingers and hope for the best than bring more bad news to a congress growing weary of the continuous useless drain on the taxpayer imposed by the "shuttle" and it's bureaucracy that couldn't.
Finally another NASA "shake-up" is not in order. NASA cant be fixed; it's the nature of all bureacracies to be perpetually broken. The humane thing to do is let them keep their government welfare and put the "shuttle" in the Smithsonian
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