NASA’s Sky is Falling—Again
On July 23, 2007, right before the Endeavour took off to the International Space Station, NASA had sent out a new report that said they were now going to begin using a space shuttle hand-held wireless scanner. It was to begin with the STS-118 Endeavour mission for a new and improved inspection method, as compared to “visually analyzing tiles and making measurements of dings and cracks with small hand-held scales.” It is going to replace the manual inspection of the shuttle tiles. Cracks and other “imperfections” will be viewed by technicians using six new scanners to cover the 24,000 tiles on the Endeavour before it was to leave on its mission. But according to the latest news coming out of NASA, they did not work. The astronauts are working on the tiles as we speak…which would not be so bad if they had not been denying there was a problem with them at all.
NASA does not seem to be making a big hit anymore with the average person, or anyone else for that matter, especially the government. This is probably the first time the citizens of our country and the government have agreed on anything–and NASA is it. It looks as if we need the other international countries to simply hold us up due to one error after another. They get their supplies stolen –“oh, well.” There are allegations they let the astronauts drive intoxicated–”we do not” yet for some reason they have made an immediate law that says there is a time limit when astronauts can drink before driving (odd, isn’t it?). They have lost thousands of dollars of money or cannot seem to remember where they put it, to the point the government has had to step in and show them how to handle it. Golly gee—could this be why our government is limiting any financial help to them? One of their female astronauts goes off half-cocked and chases another female astronaut across the country to kill her due to an affair with “another astronaut.” Their minds are really on their jobs, are they no? And let us not forget the Challenger and the astronauts who are lost to us forever. And if that is not enough…
…after repeatedly saying there was nothing the matter with Endeavour’s shuttle tiles, even after having pictures taken, NASA has announced there seems to be tile damage. Surprised? Hardly . . .talk about a white elephant, especially when Europe is sending forth a state-of-the-art spacecraft. There seem to be a problem—hmmm–somewhere. Maybe we should wake up and get some other people behind the cumbersome NASA wheel, or make some serious changes before something else drastically happens.
The University of Texas at Austin, “Studies in Ethics, Safety, and Liability for Engineers,” by Kurt Hoover and Wallace T. Fowler, wrote that the Space Shuttle Challenger accident was not a surprise to many people associated with the NASA space program. They have a history of “grandiose promises, funding shortfalls, political handicaps, and technical compromises.” According to most, NASA is not very good at dealing in a world of serious reality, at least good enough to be active in comparing costs and helping the Shuttles enter space.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 11th, 2007 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Space Agency News, Technical Concerns, The Gear to Get There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
