Space Shuttle Columbia Has Broken Apart Upon Re-Entry

[Zygomaticus]

Originally posted by SE_Vader_536

???

 

This republican gov't sux! Bush is trying to go to war with Iraq when theres North Korea. I mean is NK more dangerous than Iraq? its really much to obvious.

Like said by Tie Guy in the "Bush is a moron" thread, he that hides what he has is more dangerous than he that admits what he has.

[Dagobahn Eagle]

I hate to say it, but what does NASA EXPECT to happen? They send those shuttles up multiple times, and all of them are based on the same design from 20 years ago!!! I'm surprised that it took this long for another disaster to happen.

They need a severe redesign if they're going to keep sending those things up.

 

Many airplane designs are that old, and how many planes have crashed? Has to be in the thousands. Do they still send up aircrafts from the Boeing line? And small Cessna planes? And helicopters? Definetly. Yes to all three questions.

 

NASA depends on shuttles for maintenance and such of satellites. I think, however, that space stations like ISS and Mir are not what humanity need right now. Now to sound ungrateful to the great people who do, but we don't need people to risk their lives for whatever is researched up there.

 

As for the crash ratio: You can't compare the death statistics of space shuttles with that of, say, airplanes. Why? Because it's so much more challenging. It's airless, high-pressured, high-radiation space. Just getting there is so tough. It took humanity so long after the first cute Chinese attempt (some kind of chair fitted to 47 small rockets and several kites that ended catastrophically) for us to actually get into space. You can't expect us to do it as easily as we do with regular aircrafts.

 

We still need shuttles. My god, do we still need shuttles. And replacing them is way too expensive. What's NASA supposed to do, abandon the shuttle program and let Eurasian Space Association or Russia or the Chinese (who have a space program, but are hopelessy behind) make space shuttles that can go up there and fix them?

 

Here's what we need sats for:

 

• Communication (I couldn't easily call my friends in Eurasia without sattelites, could I?)
  
• Global Positioning System (I've used a GPS receiver. I know how effective and vital they are)
  
• "Safe", legal reconnaisance (most nations have agreed spy sats do not violate air space treaties, and secret projects can be hidden in buildings anyway).
  
• TV
  

And I'm sure there are more than that. Now what if one of them breaks down? Should we forget it and send up a new one? Look, the orbital corridor (whatever it's called) is already almost full of sats and spaceships and Russian spacedogs and who knows what else. Add to that all the debirs, and you get why we can be a "throw-away space society": Eventually, the debris would become so plentiful that space travel would be impossible until we found some extremely costly way of cleaning up the orbital corridor.

 

Keep the space shuttles, but reduce the amount of missions and make sure procedures are followed. And if the US government (not just the ruling party, but also the Democrats, when they were/are elected) can learn how to prioritize correctly and actually spend some money on the program.

 

OT: Krkode, Groovy, Rhett, TIE Guy, and Vader: Don't turn this into a political discussion thread against Republicans or Iraq. TIE Guy: Sent you a PM on liberals.