h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Lord,
I know it's silly to make so much of spaceship,
when there are bus and train and plane accidents almost daily...

But,
I pray for those who die in going to space
and I pray for those who will have to follow them,
hoping that it won't happen to them.

I ask for courage for the families who
have always known this might be possible,
but who probably hoped, as I did,
never to see the image of a shattering
shuttle repeated,
over and over again on the television...

I know that there are many important things
and many lives at risk in the world
right now,
yet, I know that I am not alone
in focusing on this.

Forgive me, please, for joining in
their weakness.

Amen.

GRAVITY SUCKS !

Don't know if it's a true story, but at least it sounds like that:
a reporter asked one of the Apollo astronouts: 'So how do you feel on such a spaceship?'

Answer:
'Well, just the way you feel when you know that every single part was the cheapest one available for its purpose'.



What if there was a rule to have managers in charge pull straws, so that for each flight one of them is chosen to board the craft?

to err is human, to really foul things up you need a computer, but for infinite devastation you need a manager or three

taking clives NoNoNo!! statement just a little further

feelingalittlebewilderedsincewarningisouttwodaysnowatmyspace

Hi, guys....

see, I watched the last one play out live on my birthday, in '86.
I remember where I was and what I was doing...

the old joke about going up in a craft built by the lowest bidders is a Jose Jimenez joke from the album 'Jose Jimenez, at the Hungry i, released 1/61 on Kapp records. A selection from the Astronaut piece was played for John Glenn while he was awaiting count-down.

The space program has used a lot of pilots, most of them military.
Each shuttle mission leaves the ground with the kind of sensibility that bomber crews had during WWII. You do the best you can with the machinery, you trust your mechanics and technicians, you keep a good thought, and leave the rest up to God.

The shuttle is just a glorified plane.
One of the Wright Bros had a man killed when he crashed a Flyer and severely injured himself and Otto Lilienthal died during glider experiments that inspired the Wright Bros.

The history of space will always have Boot Hill.

Now, the thought has occurred to me that there are enough big money corporations who could put together a better machine than the shuttle, faster, designed within an inch of it's life...

But, when you think about it... we're pretty fortunate to have gotten as far along as we have...
Those stubby grandsons of a V2 have to punch their way up through the atmosphere. Too fast and they burn up, too slow, and they fall. Then they have to come back and do the exact reverse. They have to fall... at just the right angle, the right rate of speed. Too fast and they burn up, too slow and they flip and tumble and....

It's easy to second guess the only game in town.
NASA has done a lot of stupid things over the years.
Considering what they had to work with, the level of micro-management and bureaucratic ignorance, I'm surprised that they managed to get anything into the air before 1969, let alone made it to the moon.

Unlike the Benz, or the Morgan, or the VW, or the Wright Flyer, which are famously the end result of the efforts of one man, two men, or small groups, the shuttle is the product of thousands of people who have, more often than not, done their jobs, sometimes under pressure that I cannot imagine.
Many, if not all, of those people are second-guessing themselves today.

"Some times your best is not good enough.
Some times your worst is better than all the rest."


Chuck Yeager has to go through it all over again...
some times, survival is not the good thing it's made out to be...

Like the original prayer. Difficult to do more than pray in such circumstances. I don't know enough to offer opinions.

Thanks.

To tell the truth, neither do I...
but that's never stopped me...