Columbia lost

[Scuba Steve]

Another Space Race is just what the doctorb orderd.

[Wobbo]

With whom?

[Wildman]

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.

You would think so, but nothing much changed (funding, direction) after Challenger. I saw on the news this morning that they are talking about building another shuttle. They don't have too many options at the moment.

I don't know why people are shocked when something like this happens. Here is a link to an article from Feb. 2000:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000EAEF0-ABD8-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=2

The current system is flawed and has been for a long time.

And here is where NASA wants to go:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006EF0F-EE08-1CCE-B4A8809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=2

The telling part in the last article is the fact that they are still in the investigative phase--which means it will be a long time before we see any replacement (if we ever do) to the shuttle.

To me it is amazing that in a decade we went from no space program to landing on the moon. You would think we could build cheap, safer alternatives for near space exploration today if the government was really serious about space travel.

[Little Faith]

The problem is that for all the resources a well-developed space program requires the threat value is very minimal.

[mewse]

Psyonisis said:

Paint chips flying in orbit don't do much... they make impacts too small to be seen with the naked eye. However, stuff that's the size of a pea orbiting earth is equivalent to a 400 pound object flying through the air at 60 mph on earth. THOSE ones can cause visible damage.

i've seen a picture of a paint chip that made major cracks in an orbiting module's window.