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Launch Date Announced for Shuttle Mission STS-117
chuckpeters writes "After a two day Flight Readiness Review in Florida, space shuttle managers have announced an official launch date for STS-117 to be June 8, 7:38 PM. The launch window will run in two parts — from June 8th to the evening of June 12th when the shuttle must stand down for a June 14th Atlas launch. After that the windows opens again on the 17th. This first opening gives the standard four attempts in five days. If they have not launched by the 12th, they will replenish things such as liquid oxygen and hydrogen for the fuel cells to prepare for the 17th attempt."
The last time NASA really rushed things, they killed three astronauts and landed twelve people on the Moon.
Challenger and Columbia weren't so much due to rushing things, but to rushing things for no reason and doing everything really half-assed.
If Challenger had happened back in the old days, those engineers would have stood up and said, "Hell no! I won't sign off on this, if we launch then that thing will explode!" If Columbia had happened back in the old days then as soon as the shed foam was discovered, NASA would have asked for and received pictures of the damage taken from spy satellites, then when the full extent of the damage was discovered they would have put Columbia into ultra-conservation mode, started a mad rush to prep Atlantis for a rescue mission, and started seeing if they could steal payload space on unmanned rockets to launch supplies.
Instead, the Challenger engineers shut up and sat down when told to do so, and the Columbia management refused to even ask for spy sat photos to evaluate the problem. Result: 14 dead people for no good reason.
I say, go off, rush things, take calculated risks, and kill some more astronauts! But do it because space travel is inherently dangerous, do it because they're accomplishing amazing things, don't do it because you're too dysfunctional to admit when you have a problem and you're flying a crippled, dangerously flawed design and going in circles in low-Earth orbit.