Shuttle Politics

TheLoneCabbage writes "Texas Rep. Joe Barton has been quoted today in an AP article saying that he is in favor of grounding the remaining fleet of shuttles. 'If we have to stop manned spaceflight for five or 10 years, then so be it.' The fine gentleman from Texas displays his outstanding grasp of statistics and engineering stating that 1 failure in every 62.5 flights is NOT acceptable. According to OpenSecrets.org this may have more to do with Joe's friends than how much attention he paid to his math teachers." There's also an interesting piece on testimony given by the first Shuttle program manager.

Comments

Re:Why rush?

[jeti]

> As a comparison approximately 129 soldiers have
> died in Iraq out of approximately 150,000.

Surely you mean 129 soldiers of the USA and UK have
died?
I've never seen any reliable estimates, but housands
of Iraqi soldiers have also died. (And unlike US and
UK troops, most of them were pressed into service.)