Atlantis Expected to Launch Today

PreacherTom writes "Following recent delays, NASA makes its fifth attempt to get Atlantis off the launchpad at 11:15 a.m. EDT today. NASA stopped Friday's launch try only 45 minutes before its scheduled departure for a faulty fuel tank sensor: the same glitch that thwarted two previous missions. The launch delay cost NASA $616,000, and if the mission is scrubbed again, the space agency must abandon for a few weeks its efforts to send the shuttle off on a construction mission to the International Space Station."

Comments

Re:Cheesy, but true

[avalys]

And why should the government be spending our tax dollars on "the thrill of exploration, the daring of it" and all that? The government's job is not to entertain and amaze us, which seems to be the only purpose of the manned space program. And hell, recently they've failed even at that, instead causing us to gape in amazement at their lax engineering practices.

I'm all for private space exploration, and I can see the justification for government-funded unmanned space exploration, but the government has no business wasting our money on sending people into space just because it's cool and makes you feel warm and fuzzy when you watch a launch.