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Foam Gluing Flaw Killed Columbia Astronauts
Freshly Exhumed writes "Now it can be told: NASA's Columbia Accident Investigation Board has blamed the faulty application of insulating foam for the loss of the Columbia orbiter. From the chief engineer for the external tanks project: '...NASA concluded after extensive testing that the process of applying some sections of foam by hand with spray guns was at fault.' And further: 'It was not the fault of the guys on the floor; they were just doing the process we gave them'."
This is an obvious troll. If it isn't a troll...
If you can't bring yourself to read the article, at least try to comprehend the article summary before making blanket accusations. That last sentence you tacked on the end of your post references 'functional thinking'. I suggest you try it sometime.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
First off, Clinton cut NASA's budget to the bone - and they were better for it - Sojourner, anyone?
Second off, Bush cut Clinton's budget even further, and they didn't have enough money to stay operational.
Third off, Bush's budget was designed to make the shuttle fail. Do you think there is any profit in the ISS? How about the shuttle? Or any *existing* programs? Of course not! The only way to line the pockets of big aerospace is big new initiatives, so they can burn billions in R&D, that never have to be accounted for.
By grounding the shuttle, and then promoting his stupid plan to go to Mars, via Cleveland, New Mexico, the Moon, and a quick stop on the sun, Bush has given a green light for the big spending spree that big aerospace used to have under the cold war stewardship of Reagan.
When you are spending money to develop something, you don't have deliver shit. All you have to do is make phoney videos and simulations, showing how large the CEO's boat is and shit.
When you spend money to keep an existing system working, like the shuttle, every penny is accountable. You have to produce either a success or a huge failure, not some hokey mockup in a cleanroom somewhere that wouldn't survive a minute in the real world.
Mark my words: in 150 years, when Bush's records are finally unsealed, although we'll be dead, the people who read how gullible we were to believe all this horseshit from that walking disaster area, propped up by a pasty-faced scumsucking bottom feeder, and how they are glad that such willfully ignorant people are dead, and that science can progress.
Remember kiddies! Global warming is junk science, but "the jury's still out on creationism vs. evolution", so says that piece of shit who stole the election, acted like a deer in headlights when the country was under attack, had ties with the people responsible, appointed unelectables like Cheney, Ashcroft and Ridge to serious positions for them to screw up, presided over a GOP breakin of democrat's computer networks, crashed the shuttle and the economy, demolished the evidence against Worldcom and Enron in WTC6, leaked the names of undercover intelligence officers working against terrorism, launched an unprovoked war, joked about the phoney reasons for it (yeah, its real funny), called 12 million worldwide protesters "irrelevant" cut social programs, lost 8 million jobs, said that outsourcing is good, increased the arsenic in the water supply, proposed mandatory ritallin therapy for children, reduced the education system to a series of meaningless standardized tests, ruined our nation's credibility around the world, from food safety, to the Kyoto Protocol, to the World Court, the Geneva Convention, the Nuremburg judgements, etc, etc. This guy is hard to impeach because we can't figure out which impeachable offense to go after him for!
This is from the infamous Saven Marek, the boy genius who insists that his middle school science textbook is right and everyone else is wrong and then stomps off and refuses to listen when they try to explain to him that the same side of the moon does not always face the sun. "Foe" him now, dudes; he's either an irredeemable idiot or a troll.
They can anticipate all the disasters they want to. They didn't occur. This one did. People died. As soon as Prometheus starts, the dead people and large shuttle pieces will be accompanied by a nuclear reactor. It looks to me like NASA can use all the analysis they can get to prevent that from happening.
What NASA really needs is someone with knowledge and common sense they can float things by:
"Okay. We want to slop on some tiles using guys with glue guns (formula for glue attached). Then we are going to slop some extremely flammable super cold fuel into a warm tank so it really splashes all over them there tiles. The fuel will expand and pry off some of the tiles. They will fall as the shuttle is massively accelerating, and fall so frequently that it will be a normal occurrence. Being foam, we don't think they will cause any damage when they hit, but who knows. So, are we okay with this?"
Hopefully the independent sensible soul tasked with double checking this procedure will go "Yikes!", get them to change this (like fixing the gluing process to make the tiles really stick, and pre-cooling the tank so the very cold liquid hydrogen doesn't make a mess), and maybe even order a review of NASA's slop and splash "safety" culture.
Otherwise, one day you are going to be wishing Mothra's red juice was available on store shelves.
Sonora:"New Godzilla reading. He's moving inward toward Tokai."
Shinoda: "The nuclear plants, I knew it.
Sonora: "Afraid so."
Yuki: "Well, that's just lovely. Another Chernobyl."
"Godzilla 2000"
(No, the 1999 Tokai Criticality Accident was only the second biggest in criticality fatalities and stupidity to Chernobyl.)