Well, They're Back -- Shuttle Lands in California

The space shuttle landed at Edwards, successfully completing its two-week mission. Hurray!

But, [and it's a big "but"]

AP reports:

From the Johnson Space Center to Capitol Hill, the relief was obvious when space shuttle Discovery safely returned to terra firma....

Their relief was shared by some families of the crew of space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated over Texas during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere 2 1/2 years ago, killing its crew of seven.

....
Long after touchdown, the tension of the two-week mission and the pre-dawn landing still was apparent.

Read it here.

The source of the tension was not just the difficulties encountered on this shuttle mission, but comparison in the minds of observers with disastrous missions in the past. Shuttle flights, it is now understood, are very dangerous things.People die in shuttles.

NASA used to pride itself on its respect for human life and contrasted its system redundancy approach with that of the Soviets [remember them?] who were, presumably, more willing to waste the lives of its cosmonauts than we were our astronauts. The message was drilled into the public time and again -- "we care about people, they don't."

Well it is clear now that the dangers associated with shuttle flight are so great that every mission has become a nail-biter and merely the safe return of the crew is a tremendous relief for all involved. One is compelled to ask, "where is the respect for human life here?" We keep sending people up in these things, risking their lives, and for what?

This current mission has been described by NASA administrators as a "test flight." In other words, it had no purpose other than to ascertain whether the shuttle could fly and return. There was no external benefit gained from the whole exercise.

Enough with the testing, already! We know the results. The system has already been shown time and again to be too dangerous, too expensive, and too wasteful to be continued.

In a separate article AP also reports:

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said he did not know when a space shuttle will fly again, but that it won't happen until the problem is solved with the piece of foam insulation that broke off during launch.

"We're going to try as hard as we can to get back in space this year," Griffin said. "But we're not going to go until we're ready to go."

Read it here.

Given the huge costs, extreme danger, and negligible benefits associated with shuttle flights the question must be asked: "Why do they want to keep flying this thing?" "Why go at all?" The simple answer is bureaucratic and budgetary inertia. NASA years ago committed people and money and cannot change that committment without endangering its very existence. So they will plug ahead, wasting people's lives and taxpayers' dollars and achieving very little if anything. Where is the respect for human life in all of that.

Faugh!

Rep. Ken Calvert R-Calif., chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, said today,
"Ultimately, I know we must retire the shuttle and replace it with a new vehicle."

Amen!

AP photo.