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NASA To Send Luke's Lightsaber Into Space
Verunks writes "In honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, NASA will launch Luke Skywalker's original Jedi lightsaber into space along with the crew of the space shuttle Discovery. The launch is slated for October."
Rutan recently said, "Admitting that the shuttle was wrong is an honest thing, but there is not the courage to actually try something we don't know will work. It means that we are absolutely, positively guaranteed to not solve the problem" of the dangers and expense of spaceflight.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm not much of the sort to care about this thing usually but I have to question what the point is of sending a expensive cultural item flinging off into space is? Shouldn't the thing be in a museum or something somewhere? Or perhaps sell it and get the Astronauts some new cupholders?
Yu know, I have to wonder if sending the damn thing up is really as cheap as you think. I've worked at NASA for well over 20 years and not much of anything that flies is cheap - if for no other reason than than the testing which must be done first and I am not talking about the testing required to ensure functionality in the on-orbit environment. I am talking about safety of flight issues. Just about everything we fly is tested for things like: 1. If it gets broken will it spew nasty little fragments into the air - fragments which in a weightless environment might float around intil they were inhaled by a crew member of mucked up some piece of equipment. Think about the average broken light bulb here. 2. If per chance it were to be invloved in a fire what if any toxic gases would be released? 3. Out gassing - what little nasty things could be released into the cabin's atmosphere when exposed to the reduced pressure found in both the shuttle and the ISS crew cabins? This is just a short list of the many things NASA checks for before sending an item up - so did NASA wive some of their own safety requirements to send this object up, or are they admitting that they often go overboard with the expensive testing because no one wants to be the one who takes the risk of admitting that some of this is overkill?