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The Device NASA Is Leaving Behind
iminplaya writes "After years of delays, NASA hopes to launch this week a European-built laboratory that will greatly expand the research capability of the international space station. Although some call it a milestone, the launch has focused new attention on the space agency's earlier decision to back out of plans to send up a different, $1.5 billion device — one that many scientists contend would produce far more significant knowledge. "...it would be a true international disgrace if this instrument ends up as a museum piece that never is used.""
""The credibility of the United States is at stake here, because NASA made a commitment to bring Columbus and AMS to the space station," said Samuel C.C. Ting, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who conceived the project in 1994 and drew in collaborators from 60 institutes in 16 nations to build and fund it. "After all this work, it would be a terrible blow if the instrument cannot be used.""
Precisely the sort of narrow minded, exclusionist, inflammatory, idiotic, (and, not least, entirely self-interested) comment that would serve as a useful reminder that Nobel Laureates are not the fonts of Socratic wisdom some purport them to be.
The credibility of the US is at stake here? Some needs to write Mr. Ting a memo, reminding him that since that commitment is made, not one but TWO shuttles have been blown to flinders along with their brave crews.
This is tantamount to you promising to take your neighbor to work, since he doesn't have a car. Overnight both your cars BLOW UP. The next morning, as you're staring at the wreckage of your garage and both vehicles, holding the bicycle you're going to have to ride to work for the foreseeable future. If your neighbor shows up, insisting on a ride on your handlebars since you "committed" to taking him to work, well, I'd frankly hope you'd punch him.
-Styopa
Why would it produce "more significant results"? Oh yes, of course. Its American.
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