NASA's sad story

NASA's top officials congratulated themselves Saturday at a post-Flight Readiness Review press conference for being open-minded enough to listen to the space agency's experts tell them the shuttle is too dangerous to fly.

They've decided to fly anyway.

Stunned reporters asked them to clarify their statement. "How would I distill this for an editor," one asked. "You're saying you asked your engineers if the shuttle was safe to fly, and they said no, and you're flying anyway?"

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin spoke a little more slowly so the densest members of the press would get it.

"Yes," he said.

Dr. Griffin went on to explain that although many people who work only on the shuttle program don't think the vehicle should be allowed out of a locked hangar, the people who see the bigger picture, like himself, for instance, understand that the completion of the International Space Station requires a certain number of shuttle missions, and the last thing he wants to see is a crush of six missions in one year, sometime down the road, if they fall behind schedule now.

Dr. Griffin stressed that the crew is not at risk, in his judgment, because NASA will take pictures of the shuttle after the launch to see if it has been damaged by a flying chunk of foam in that unfortunate way that causes catastrophic immolation on re-entry.

He said the crew might be able to repair the shuttle, and if they can't repair it they could fly it to the International Space Station, and then NASA could fly another shuttle up to get them, and if all else fails there's that retro Russian emergency capsule that bounces into Siberia like an animated outtake from I Dream of Jeannie.

That's NASA's idea of a well-thought-out plan.

While Dr. Griffin said he's confident the space shuttle crew will not be at risk, he admitted that the shuttle itself might be lost to a foam-strike incident. If we lose another vehicle, he told reporters, he would say it's time to close the shuttle program down.

There are two things that are really sad about this story.

First, the NASA Administrator who is so willing to take risks to keep construction of the space station on schedule told USA Today last September that "it is now commonly accepted" that the space shuttle program and the International Space Station were mistakes. Michael Griffin said then that the agency's resources would have been better spent on space exploration than on the shuttle and the station, which cost more than a hundred billion dollars each and never leave the Earth's orbit.

And second, the foam strike problem that NASA's engineers can't solve was solved, or at least was significantly better, before environmental regulations forced NASA to stop using Freon in the foam manufacturing process. After the agency began using an ozone-friendlier process in 1997, the problem of foam shedding escalated dramatically.

No one at NASA cared to argue with the EPA or the environmental lobby. This is an agency that vowed never to repeat a 1998 science experiment that sent pregnant mice and baby rats up on the shuttle because schoolchildren were upset when they found out the experiment ended with scientists killing the animals to study their brains.

These are not rational scientific decisions. These are rational public relations decisions. They are not designed to lead to actual scientific progress. They're designed to lead to asinine, ignorant, childish, wishful, daydreaming visions of moon colonies. Oh, and tens of billions of dollars in government contracts in key electoral states like Florida and Texas.

That's what it should say on the astronauts' memorial. They died for pork.

Copyright 2006

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