Columbia lost

Brief bios of each astronaut.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77254,00.html

Opulent said:

Q: Why didn't the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia take a shower before the flight?
A: Because they knew they'd eventually be washing up on the shore.

That's kinda funny (but wrong). Where'd you get that...or did you make it up?

the station has an escape pod??

anyway i am sure they would be able to make an extended stay. though it may be unconfortable i am sure it would be better to save that escape pod for a real emergency. hey atleast it was not the station that exploded, cause that would suck. personaly i think we should be pushing for more and better space technology. though it may be expensive it is worth it in the long run.

Vulg@r said:

That's kinda funny (but wrong). Where'd you get that...or did you make it up?

Seems to be a modified version of the J.F.K. JR joke with a very similar punchline.

Sephiroth said:

the station has an escape pod??

anyway i am sure they would be able to make an extended stay. though it may be unconfortable i am sure it would be better to save that escape pod for a real emergency. hey atleast it was not the station that exploded, cause that would suck. personaly i think we should be pushing for more and better space technology. though it may be expensive it is worth it in the long run.

They can stay until June. The escape pod is an X-38 I think.

BBG said:

Seems to be a modified version of the J.F.K. JR joke with a very similar punchline.

I'm a bit uncultured. What's the J.F.K. JR joke?

Q. Why didn't JFK, Jr. take a shower before he left for the Vineyard?
A. He said he'd wash up on shore!

It was the Sally Ride joke from many years back.
how often do you get to use it? hehe

yes, the loss of innocent and productive lives is sad; but that goes without saying.

We laugh to help us cope with the loss and the pain.

Yes laughter is good, but we shouldn't laugh at them or make them a target of our jokes.

Bah, just try ignoring your sadistic, demonic nature... it'll gnaw at you from within anyhow.

Good point. There's a fine line between humor and mockery/insolence/irreverence. At least I think it's a fine line.

7 dead in shuttle crash =14 hours up to now, non stop CNN, 40 dead in train crash in Zimbabwe = a ticker tape at bottom of screen

fodders said:

7 dead in shuttle crash =14 hours up to now, non stop CNN, 40 dead in train crash in Zimbabwe = a ticker tape at bottom of screen

Something's wrong...something's amiss. Of course The Media always plays "god" like that. They choose what takes precedence, thereby skewing the perception of the folks who watch the news. I hate how much control they have.

fodders said:

7 dead in shuttle crash =14 hours up to now, non stop CNN, 40 dead in train crash in Zimbabwe = a ticker tape at bottom of screen

call it the "9/11 complex"...
drop a nuclear bomb on Jerusalem... now that would be huge. 5,000 die and 4 billion dollars lost in Manhattan -- that's small change.

No, it's just a matter of what's closer.

The death of my friend last year affected me more and was more important than September 11 (to me).

40 people dying in a train crash in B.F.E. is no contest to seven heroic god-fearing Americans (OK so maybe one or two had the misfortune of being born somewhere else) dying in a giant explosion at 200,000 feet while coming back to earth in a 20-year-old bucket at 16,000 mph at the expense of many billion dollars paid for by the viewers of the network news programs and which will probably set back the manned space program by years and may cause a radical shift in the largest and most advanced space agency in the world...

Linguica said:

40 people dying in a train crash in B.F.E. is no contest to seven heroic god-fearing Americans (OK so maybe one or two had the misfortune of being born somewhere else) dying in a giant explosion at 200,000 feet while coming back to earth in a 20-year-old bucket at 16,000 mph at the expense of many billion dollars paid for by the viewers of the network news programs and which will probably set back the manned space program by years and may cause a radical shift in the largest and most advanced space agency in the world...

Hmmm..... Ya know, you do have a point...

This was a terrible event, as is any loss of life.

Whatever happened to the X-33 project anyway? I thought those would be replacing shuttles.

NASA is old news. The spcae program has been failing in recent years, half due to underfunding, half due to overpricing. The government has no interest in space anymore. After they beat the Russians to the Moon, there really wasn't anything else to do. Then the end of the cold war came, and there wasn't any point. If we seriously want to get anywhere with our space exploration as a human race we should look to other sources. One possible course would be to encourage private comapnies to do their own space programs. This would create competition which would make each such corporation to try to best the other. Plus, there are many corporations with plenty of money to spend on such an endeavor. The main risk would be human life, which wouldn't factor in for a while since most of the exploration for the next step (namely exploration for the colonization of the Moon or Mars) only requires automated machinery. If such a thing were to happen, we could see the first humans on Mars as early as 2015-2020 instead of 2040-2050 as NASA's plan predicts.

Just my 2c on the space program.

Well, you lay can this whole thing at the feet of Washington. They have consistently cut back on the operating budget of the space program, and according to an AP article I just read on Yahoo, it was affecting safety procedures (according to a former manager at NASA).

You have politicians keeping a piece of crap space ship going because they get several million dollars a year in contributions from the company that builds the thing.

Engineers have been saying for years that the shuttle should be replaced. Not only is it terribly inefficient--it has the worst cost per payload of any space vehicle--it is dangerous.

There are alternatives to the shuttle that can be created, but without funding, none will ever see the light of day. The Navy had a very promising system it was working on, but it ran into some technical trouble. Instead of trying to work it out, they scraped it altogether. Why? Because NASA had too much invested in the Shuttle program, according to one of the engineers on the Navy system.

I tell you, it makes me sick when I see Bush or Hutchinson (R. Texas) get on the television and say how tragic this is, and how they will do what ever it takes to keep things going, when it is these people who are making the backroom deals to keep bad programs alive, selling democracy to the highest bidder for a few votes, without considering the consequences of their actions, just so long as they stay in office.

yea i see the point about the cutting of funds, and bush. personaly proir to 9/11 i thought the missle defence program was bull. hey i still do, however a tatical defence and homeland security may be better ideas. He wants a war to boast weapon company profits. if he really cared about stuff he could use a small group of men to do a job, like spy on iraq(insert other bad guys now).

but hey no country has a really good government, all of them have curruption and other problems.

really the shuttles are ancient, over 20 years old.

as for other comapnies in space. well the government would not like that. they would see it as a threat, as they currently control that. i think the space program needs more money and increase in technology.

Maybe a Major incident such as this, could prove useful for NASA in illustrating lack of funding and the need for a new Shuttle.

stphrz said:

The predominant emotion is one of deep and profound disappointment. With all the bad stuff going on in the world today like the prospect of war, terrorism, the AIDS pandemic etc, the space program is like a shining bit of hope that someday maybe humanity can rise above all this. Hope that perhaps mankind does have a future. A good future.

When something like this happens it dashes that hope. It's like our future has been set back.

Well said. This whole event is a giant blow for the space industry and a tragedy for the families and friends of the astronauts. I hope this disaster will motivate politicians to invest more in space exploration.

Scuba Steve said:

Maybe a Major incident such as this, could prove useful for NASA in illustrating lack of funding and the need for a new Shuttle.

I hope so. It would be a shame to see the spaceprogram end like this. I'm not done with Hubble and those beautiful pictures myself. I'd love to see more, and better telescopes up there.

Opulent said:

Q: Why didn't the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia take a shower before the flight?
A: Because they knew they'd eventually be washing up on the shore.

Not funny. You've displeased me.

gatewatcher said:

This was a terrible event, as is any loss of life.

Whatever happened to the X-33 project anyway? I thought those would be replacing shuttles.

Here's something from the X33 History Homepage:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/x-33/menu1.htm
---------------------
Spacenews.com staff writer Brian Berger reported today that testing of the X-33 aerospike engines at NASA's Stennis Space Center has stopped following NASA's decision not to fund X-33 beyond the end of March 2001. The second of nine planned test firings of two linear aerospike engines in tandem was scheduled to take place on March 6. Stennis spokesperson Paul Foreman told Berger that Stennis officials had decided to remove the remaining eight engine tests from the schedule. No order has been given yet to remove the engines from their test stands.
---------------------

I know that there were some technological "issues" with the X33 / Venture Star concept which appeared to block the timely development of X33 and indicated that schedule and funding needs would grow beyond the bounds that NASA could sustain.

I guess the money are being used elsewhere.

After all all that space sillyness is over now. Now it's time to use the rockets for something serious:

Nukes!

With American shuttles grounded, if I were the Russians, I would send a crew up to the space station, slap the astronauts around a bit (hey who's gonna stop me? ) and start stripping the station, bringing stuff back for selling. By the time America got space bound again the station could be an empty shell :P

Perhaps the chinese will be the first to land on Mars. (They seem to be the only ones currently worrying about status projects of non-military nature).