NASA Suspending Shuttle Program Over Foam Debris - New York Times

NASA Suspending Shuttle Program Over Foam Debris
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
HOUSTON, July 27 - NASA suspended further flights of the space shuttle fleet on Wednesday after determining that a large piece of insulating foam had broken off the external fuel tank of the Discovery shortly after liftoff Tuesday morning, the same problem that doomed the Columbia and its seven astronauts in the last mission, two and a half years ago.

The foam does not appear to have struck the Discovery, so the decision will not curtail its 12-day mission to the International Space Station, the officials said. But further flights will be postponed indefinitely, starting with that of the Atlantis, which was to have lifted off as early as September.

'Until we fix this, we're not ready to go fly again,' William W. Parsons, the manager of the shuttle program, said at a news briefing at the Johnson Space Center here on Wednesday evening.

The detection of another large breakaway piece of insulating foam is a potentially devastating setback for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and a bitter counterpoint to the elation of Monday's seemingly perfect launching of the Discovery, a return to flight that was hailed as an inspiring comeback for the space program.

The effort to fix the foam problem had consumed more than two years and hundreds of millions of dollars. NASA identified the area on the tank that shed the latest piece of foam as a risk, but put off redesigning it.

It seems a little weird that you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix a problem and not successfully fix it. This stuff is expensive. The question is why, and can it be done cheaper? The shuttle wasn't actually built to be cheap to operate. However, the current mode NASA is in, that 99.999% mission success is necessary, is incorrect. We need to learn to take more risks in this country. We used to be a country of risk takers, but now everybody seems to be risk adverse.

Partly the mainstream media is to blame. How can you blame people for being risk adverse when if something bad happens, it is all over the news with the most sensational headlines possible.

The government doesn't like to take risks, because every accident that happens will be plastered all over the news even if the incident was an expected possible outcome. Ignite an experimental rocket, it might explode. But if it does, it will be in the news as a big failure. We need to create a more risk oriented approach to our scientific discovery. Not only will it be cheaper, but it will take us back to the cutting edge. Sure people will die, and this is sad, but people will take risks with open eyes for rewards and it is worth it. And afterall, you could get killed crossing the street, or driving your car to the store. Why not let people help society advance, and be rewarded for taking risks, instead of punishing them?

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