>My care factor is about as
>high as yours, however these
>people in there did not
>need to die because of
>some idotic bureaucrat who probably
>decided that a couple millions
>was too much to maintain
>a shuttle. Afterall they are
>only going to space and
>coming back. It so ordinary
>now.
Bleh, they could've had less flights and used that money to ensure the ones they did have were more safe. Each flight costs tens of millions of dollars or so. They're properly funded. NASA just need to know how to manage their money.
NASA, of course, will whine that they could've had better safety and checks if they had better funding, but that's more an excuse than a reason. Would more money even help things? I mean there is human error and stupidity at all levels of the process, and money just lengthens the process. Hell, we losts a multi-million dollar satellite just because some idiots weren't using metric. And what was that satellite for? To look at Mars; a completely frivolous venture. If they need money, why don't they scrap some of their less useful plans?
What we need is NASA to "get down to earth" and persue more commercially viable ventures. Space travel is so "ordinary" now because it doesn't appear to generate anything useful beyond a bunch of nice pictures and random experiments. If they want us to really care about them beyond when a shuttle explodes, they need to do more for the public in a big way. Sure, technology has arisen from the space program and it is great stuff, but we don't really hear of it trickling down to the populace anymore. Certainly that technology could have arisen without the aid of the space program as well.
The seven astronauts died living their dreams of travelling in space. Why people are exonerating them as heros is beyond me because they are not heros. They had jobs which were a lot nicer than 99.999% percent of the populace's and it wasn't as if it were some kind of heroic job either. The shuttle burn-up was no more than a glorified industrial accident. More people have, and are, dying in much more heroic ways every day and don't get the kind of press attention, or any attention, that these seven astronauts are receiving.
The truth is, deep down, we don't really care. We have better things to care about, like our personal lives. The supermajority of the populace didn't even know there was a flight going on at all. Even after this accident I can guarantee you that virtually nobody even knows their names without looking them up; I certainly don't. In a few weeks we might see a "this is why it exploded" article tucked into a corner of a newspaper, and it'll generate little more than a "oh yeah, that happened" from most of the populace.
I remember what I said when I first learned that the Columbia was crashing, I said, "Whoa! Cool."
-Xotor-
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[table width=200" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0][tr bgcolor=#000000] [td style=font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 8px] [/td][td align=left" valign="middle" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 36px; font-weight: bold; color: #FF0000; text-decoration: none]PAS:[/td][td align=left" valign="top" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; color: #FF0000] [/td][td align=left" valign="middle" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; color: #FF0000]People Against Stupidity[/td][/tr][tr bgcolor=#000000" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 8px][td] [/td][td align=left" valign="top" colspan="3] [/td][/tr][tr bgcolor=#000000" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; color: #FFFFFF] [td] [/td][td align=left" valign="top" colspan="3]"Ignorance is excusable. Stupidity is not."[/td][/tr][/table][/div]
And you need another jet, a 747 I believe, to carry it up and shoot it like a missle. Maybe we should just use the big gun theory...., would you like to be shot into space? Yes, sir, then, we'll shoot you into space using a really big gun! Just like a human cannon ball!