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In Leaked Email, NASA Chief Vents On Shuttle Program's End
jerryasher writes "In a leaked memo, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin discusses 'the jihad' to prematurely terminate the Shuttle and what that means for the International Space Station. One implication: there may come a long interval when only our Russian Allies are aboard the Space Station. Add that bit of irony to your new cold war kit and then wonder why Griffin discusses why we wouldn't sabotage the Space Station, and how and why the memo got leaked in the first place."
And get something new and awesomer in the skies to replace it.
Something that could get people going wow again would be nice.
I was going to post something about the importance of anonymity but then I saw a comment above yours by AC which just had the word "fag" in it. And suddenly I didnt have the heart anymore.
In a statement issued after the Orlando Sentinel posted Griffin's e-mail, the space agency administrator stressed that the memo alone lacked the appropriate context.
"The leaked internal email fails to provide the contextual framework for my remarks, and my support for the Administration's policies," Griffin said the NASA statement. "Administration policy is to retire the shuttle in 2010 and purchase crew transport from Russia until Ares and Orion are available."
This basically validates the accuracy of the article's source material (the email), although it does insist that relying on the information in the email alone would not respect the context it was written in. In short, you should have RTFA (which contains a lot more information than the original email), and your comment is idiotic and baseless.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I read somewhere that keeping the shuttle fleet active would up the percentage of failure dramatically since they're already in the process of decommissioning. I think it may be smart to just keep the shuttles as a reserve fleet, that way if the Russians were to stop playing nice (unlikely) we could still access the the space station. Only slight issue is that congress would have to fund this, else it'd eat into NASA's budget, the amount of funding needed is a relatively small amount, and a wise investment for the period until Orion gets on its feet.
With Putin doing his best Stalin imitation lately, it's moronic to trust the Russians to be a reliable stopgap until our new rockets and spacecraft are ready. We need to simply accept the fact that we'll be needing the Shuttle for a little while longer, and budget appropriately.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I would imagine he's covering scenarios. But I'm sure someone will manage to read something sinister in to it.
Would it have been more credible if it came from some Fox News announcer?
Yes, many times anonymity brings baseless information, but don't take it as a rule, especially in this world where even whistleblowing about your company for a good cause can ruin your life forever.
He probably is still in favour of shutting down manned space programs, but it's not his call to make. What he's complaining about is that he is expected to keep an American presence aboard the ISS but has not been given the tools necessary to do the job. If it was up to him he'd probably de-orbit the thing, but it's not.
It's a serious question since McCain has already said the Russians should be thrown out of the G8 Summit. How likely is he going to be to continue cooperating with the Russians or how happy are they going to be dealing with some one that speaks openly against them? The Cold War is coming back at a very bad time for the ISS.
"Premature"? The shuttle program should have been terminated decades ago when it was clear it wouldn't meet stated design goals, i.e. low cost transportation to orbit. The termination of the shuttle program is very, very post-mature. The only reason it survived is the number of jobs it provided in the right congressional districts.
Only if the parties maligned actually deny the claims made by those sources.
This is a double edged sword. On the one hand, anonymous sources can help uncover serious abuses, i.e. Watergate. On the other, journalists can and do simply make stuff up and attribute it to these "sources". I recall the case of one American journalist, whose name(ironically) escapes me at the moment, who was caught extorting his victim. He was essentially threatening to publish stories that while they would be damaging to the victim, would not create any legal "liability" for his publication. I'm sure anonymous sources are abused in this way.
Personally, I think that given the low standing of journalism as a profession, anonymous sources are at this time completely without credibility. Nowadays, the default assumption that must be made about any journalist and news story is that they are a spin doctor spinning a story the way their employer pays them to. Under such high G-forces, the delicate anonymous sources collapse under their own weight.
May the Maths Be with you!
When the banks wrote the mortgages and held them, they were less likely to give money to unqualified buyers. When they were allowed to repackage the debt and sell it to other corporations, to no one's surprise, everyone got greedy and started trading the debt.
I like certain libertarians ideals, but the fact is that regulation is to industry what police are to neighborhoods. If you take a cop off a beat, crime will go up. If you take your eyes off corporate shenanigans, they will go up. This has been obvious from the days of Enron. What we need is reasonable regulation with national standards, state enforcement, and some new laws against the revolving door between business and government. There should be a separation of business and state, for the sake of both.
Of course, you can always argue that the fact that there was regulation that was removed led to the crisis. But you'd be wrong.
Yeah, it's like defending free speech and having to stick up for Nazis and pedophiles. It's still a worthy cause in the abstract, but the specifics can take some of the wind out of your sails.
Might the Russians decide to sabotage the ISS? How badly do they need us to keep the thing running? Sounds like they don't need us at all.
Here's a wacky idea so bear with me. Could the Russians "steal" the ISS? They have the capability to dock with the ISS but we will not (without their cooperation) between 2011 and 2014. That date of our being unable to reach the station may come sooner if Russia becomes even less "friendly" and the date we can reach the station might be pushed back because of technical difficulties, further budget diversions, etc.
What would they do with the ISS if given free reign over its operation for four years? What COULD they do with the ISS in four years? They could arm it. They could turn it into a spying platform. They could let it rot and fall into the ocean.
I'm sure someone is thinking, why would they arm it? What could they possibly shoot from orbit that they can't already shoot from the ground? If they start to militarize it as a platform for spying then it becomes a target. They might feel the need to put an anti missile defense system to keep the US Navy from putting a SM-3 in a coincident orbit.
That's all crazy talk. The Russians would never use ISS as a military platform, right?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
... then Richard Nixon would not have been caught at all his bullshit.
Anonymous sources must not only be paid attention to, they must be protected in a Democratic society. Thus the laws protecting whistle blowers, and so on.
The shuttle failed to meet design specifications as you state (cost is only one area in which it failed). But unfortunately, all our eggs are in one basket. Nobody did sufficient forward planning to replace the space shuttle... planning that should have begun no later than the day it first launched.
Nevertheless, you don't throw away the only tool you have, even if it is expensive and unwieldly. Granted, we should have had a replacement for the shuttle a long time ago. But we don't, so that means we fly the shuttle until we do!!!
The PRC initially designed the Shenzhou spacecraft with docking technologies imported from Russia, therefore compatible with the International Space Station (ISS). The Shenzhou 8 unmanned space laboratory module, the Shenzhou 9 unmanned Shenzhou cargo and a manned Shenzhou 10 will be docked in late 2010 to form a first step small orbital space laboratory complex. This first step will allow China to master key technologies prerequisites for the following larger permanent space station. The Shenzhou 11 mission will carry the second crew to the complex
You heard wrong. First of all, a 12 megapixel camera has trouble picking up fingerprints here on earth, unless the surface and lighting are conducive. Second, with a 1-meter aperture, the THEORETICAL limit for resolution would be picking up something 6 inches in diameter. With a 2.4 meter aperture (about the limit for optics going into space. It's the size of the Hubble, in case you were wondering), the (again, theoretical) limit of resolution that could be achieved is 3 inches in diameter.
Both of those numbers are, again, entirely theoretical. That's assuming you weren't looking through ~70 miles of turbulent, dusty atmosphere.
So unless the US Government beat the laws of electromagnetic diffraction and didn't tell anybody...
How about stopping to make wars?
Oh no, then those poor bankers could not sell credits and drive us to slavery and our government into obedience anymore... And there could actually be money spent on education and science (like, above 10% of the budget).
This of course can't be! Because then people would start to think, and kill those power-greedy bastards in an instant.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1188/1
Time is short. Senior NASA management is committed to beginning the destruction of the tooling used to construct the Space Shuttle's External Tank as early as next month. This destruction is completely unnecessary to support the current Ares 1 production plan because the floor space NASA plans to use is not occupied by the External Tank tooling. The only apparent objective of beginning the destruction of this $12-billion national asset next month, used by both the Space Shuttle and Jupiter Launch System, is to maliciously eliminate any competition to the current plan. In an attempt to put a halt to this unnecessary destruction of government property, the Senate version of 2009 NASA authorization bill sought to make this imminent action of the NASA administrator explicitly illegal. Specifically, the Senate provision directed the NASA administrator "to terminate or suspend any activity of the Agency that, if continued, would preclude the continued safe and effective flight of the Space Shuttle Orbiter after fiscal year 2010." Unfortunately, this provision, that cost us nothing to include yet wisely keeps our options open, was removed from the Senate-House conference bill just before the summer recess.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yeah, it's like defending free speech and having to stick up for Nazis and pedophiles. It's still a worthy cause in the abstract, but the specifics can take some of the wind out of your sails.
It shouldn't. Nobody wants to censor talk about mom and apple pie. The right of free speech only matters when it comes down to speech that somebody finds offensive. If you aren't willing to defend the freedom to speak about stuff you find offensive, then you didn't ever really believe in free speech to begin with.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The shuttle was supposed to be retired in... what? 1988? The damned thing was built when freakin' Jimmy Carter was president! If we don't retire the damned things we won't HAVE to worry about retiring them,because they will blow up and take the crews with them. Hell,if we are that damned desperate and need something to fill the gaps why don't we whip off another couple of the old Apollo designs. Surely it shouldn't be hard with today's tech to whip off a 40 year old design,and those "tin can on a tube" would be a lot safer than trying to send up Jimmy Carter era junk that was supposed to be retired while Reagan was president. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm not particularly happy about the forthcoming gap in US manned launch capability, but your post really seems to come out of left field. It also jumps all over, from space based resources to tank destroying weapons to spying.
But what really threw me was the mention of Toynbee Tiles. You suggest that it would "behoove" me to find out about them. So I did. Behoove would suggest that it is of no small importance to learn more, but...
How is this relevant at all? The tiles are certainly interesting, but only from an artistic and "huh, that's odd" angle. Going from a space flight capability gap of about 5 years to resurrecting life on one of Jupiter's moons (Europa, I suppose) is one enormous leap to make.
You are likely preaching to the choir when it comes to putting people and things into space and space exploration in general. But trying to "strengthen" your argument with a serious mention of Toynbee Tiles makes it all seem a bit, well, nutty.
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
"Vents On Shuttle Program's End" - That just sounds so wrong.
Table-ized A.I.
I hate apple pie and will do my best to censor any talk about it!
I was very young but I think the thing went like this: Flight. Study of safer flight. Assessment of safety of various methods of flight. Cost assessments of various safe methods of flight. WAR. What were we talking about again? Oh, yeah. Civil rights. Drug war. Popular topics. TV. Moonwalk denial "reality TV". American Idol.
So who do you think will win the American Idol challenge this year?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It shouldn't.
Why shouldn't it?
Nobody wants to censor talk about mom and apple pie. The right of free speech only matters when it comes down to speech that somebody finds offensive.
Right.
If you aren't willing to defend the freedom to speak about stuff you find offensive, then you didn't ever really believe in free speech to begin with.
Bullshit. Freedom of expression is just one universal human right, and like anything, when it its in competition with other universal rights a balance is struck that effectively curtails it.
The right to free expression conflicts with the right to be free from harm. If your expression is causing harm then perhaps your expression should be curtailed.
The fact that most people accept a limit to free speech doesn't mean they "don't really believe in it", rather it means that they aren't single minded idiots that can't hold two thoughts inside their head at the same time. It means they can see the conflict between the ideal of free expression and the ideal of avoiding harm and have struck a personal balance, such that the imperative of protecting free speech becomes progressively weaker as we become increasingly in conflict with the principle of avoiding harm.
In other words, at some stage up around advocating the raping of children most normal people find that DESPITE believing in free speech, they are uncomfortable with the harm they perceive it to be causing, particularly when they perceive that its PURPOSE is to cause harm and has no value beyond that, and perhaps they even perceive that they are being MANIPULATED into providing protection for that harm by the perpetrator... why should we be critical that their resolve to protect that instance of speech has significantly been diminished, perhaps even to the point that they elect to curtail it?
This is the action of a sane and rational person.
Nobody wants to censor talk about mom and apple pie.
I'm allergic to apples, you insensitive clod!
I'd rather no-one mentioned those unfortunate fruits.
It's not so much auto-focus as taking multiple pictures over time and eliminating the blur. Obviously slightly less useful for moving things than stationary things, unless you can define the movement accurately and input that into the algorithm (for example a car moving in a straight line at relatively constant speed)
I'm posting this not so much for you as for other people reading "automagic" and not understanding there's actually science for that magic :)
(what can a TLA do with an unlimited budget? I shudder to think. Probably waste (unlimited - delta) of it. What they do with the delta though, that's interesting.
Does anyone else still remember all the videos shown on Discovery Channel and the like on the Lockheed Martin "VentureStar"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VentureStar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-33
I know they had some technological problems, but somehow I've always had the feeling that the project was canceled /way/ too soon!
I especially like the idea of the Aerospike engine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospike_engine
But the moment they canceled that project, it was for me a given that they would run into problems with the Shuttle in the years 2010-2015-2020.
Lack of persistence, vision and looking ahead IMHO.
Who said anything about safer? I'm sure they'd be able to find plenty of very stupid people that would get on if the odds were even only 1 in 3 of coming back. I'm talking about COST. As in another couple of failures and we won't have to worry about it anymore because NASA will end up getting its plugged pulled. Not to mention I don't want to know how many hundreds of millions were spent of the cleanup and investigations of the last 2 shuttle disasters.
Look at it this way: If NASA said they could strap rockets on a 1976 Pinto and use that for the next launch vehicle,would you ride in it? Would you think it a good idea to launch it,or that it would do wonders for our nation when the thing failed and blew sky high? The shuttle is junk,and not great junk at that. The Russians had a shuttle too but canceled it in 1993,probably because their engineers saw it wasn't a good idea. We are the only country trying to fly something THAT old in space,and frankly the whole "reusable" idea wasn't the brightest idea anyway IMHO.
So if we want to keep picking up shuttle pieces when they are blown all over the country,go right ahead. NASA will become such a giant embarrassment they will get their funding pulled and we'll end up having to hitch rides with the other countries or stick to unmanned rockets. But if we are going to stay in this game we are going to need SOMETHING to fill in until the next designs come online,and the shuttle ain't it. It is just too damned old and been through too much to continue. At least with a couple of Apollo capsules we would have new ships instead of 30 year old junk,and the cost should go down compared to trying to keep those old shuttles in service. Lets face it.the shuttles belong in museums,not in space. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I certainly agree that we should be more interested in reviving Apollo-era technologies. And, along with people inside NASA I certainly agree that they've got a real clusterfuck going by now and really could do lot better.
But, oddly enough, we're actually far less capable of doing things like building Apollo-scale systems than we were back in the seventies. Ya see, that's what happens when a country outsources all of its manufacturing for an entire generation. The manufacturing infrastructure gets torn out to make room for condos and nail salons.
Truth is, we're screwed, We simply don't have the industrial base to build that kind of thing anymore. Not to weld tanks that are big enough. Not to move cargos by rail through as many places. Not to even have the population of machinists and glassblowers and chemical plant technicians to populate the assembly systems.
Should this be a call to arms? Yet another reason to require that kids take industrial arts (as I had to) and that government agencies buy American-made-products? Yes. But for now, we're S.O.L.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Yes. That's an unreserved YES! If they think it's got any chance of making orbit and they'll have me - I'll go!
And if you're too much of a Nancy to stand the risk, well, there's five billion more where you came from. Stay home. I'm sure whoever was picked from the thousands of volunteers will send you back pictures.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It is interesting how both source and the discussion here is almost entirely about the USA versus Russia. The fact that Europe is also involved, and now actually has it's own (unmanned, but there is talk about a manned version) space vehicle to reach the ISS (the ATV) independent of either Russian Soyuz/Progress or American Shuttle flights, is completely ignored. Europeans will also continue to fly aboard Russian Soyuz flights (certainly now Kourou is ready to launch Soyuz rockets).
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
I'll take Griffin's assertions of context at face value and assume he thinks it's the right thing to replace the STS with Constellation.
He did, however, say the retirement of the STS was not based on engineering. I can see why he might say that.
The most incredible thing about the STS is the main engine, both incredibly amazing and incredibly problematic. The development of those machines as been long and winding. Here is a nice summary of the problems they had just up to first flight.
The thing is, work on improving those engines has continued non-stop since 1972, and finally their performance and reliability is in the ballpark of where is was originally spec'd to be.
Mainly due to new fuel and oxidizer turbopumps.
And now they throw it all away. I just don't get it. It's too Arrow-esque for me.
Why not re-do the STS instead of re-doing Apollo?
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
You can blame Bush as much as you want for the Fannie Mae debacle, but if you actually have been following the issue for twenty years, you would find in the Op Ed web pages of the Wall Streetn Journal a steady stream of Republican voices arguing that the finances of these two institutions are basically crap and have been that way for decades. Democrats have resisted any sort of legislative effort to bring reform to these two agencies. In fact, if you look at whose donating to whose campaign you could see that Wall Street overwhelming prefers Obama because they are look for the big handout to shareholders whereas Republicans are always more inclined to let companies simply fail.
This is my sig.
The primary problem is that it's a lot harder to convince people to allow speech than it is to convince people to ban speech. Give people an inch and they'll ban everything that they don't like.
Myself, I always default to believing that speech should be free unless it's completely clear that the damage caused by the speech cannot be counteracted with more free speech.
On a related note, I wish that no one was allowed to say anything on TV without first taking a legal oath that what they say is true under penalty of perjury. (And they would further be prevented from adding "I think" or any other prevarications to their talk.) The Republican party would essentially be barred from advertising in any way.
Nevertheless, would I ever want to disallow their hateful damaging lies by actually passing a law that made it illegal for them to spew their economy and world damaging nonsense?
No. And honestly, it's a LOT harder for me to say that than it is for me to stick up for neo nazis or other hate groups. That's because, unlike neo nazis, the Republicans are actually successful with their hate speech. Seriously, they actually have people convinced they are a party of small government. (biggest lie ever)
But, I still want it all protected.
Cow Cube
Yes. That's an unreserved YES!
Me too, unless the uniform included a red shirt.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
If your expression is causing harm then perhaps your expression should be curtailed.
But who gets to choose this? I think Madonna should be able to screw around with a crucifix on stage. If you are offended by this, join the club. If you think it "interferes with your natural rights", then you are way, way, too delicate.
Sorry, but unless someone is put in some kind of actual and direct danger, I don't support other people deciding what is and isn't acceptable speech... "Fire in a crowded theater" being the classic example.
In the example of advocating the raping of children... does anyone actually advocate this? I think you chose an example with a "think of the children" element so that people wouldn't disagree. That aside, what about a website advocating lowering the legal age of consent to, say, 17? How about 14? How about 9? Too young? Too old? Are you going to throw the book at the guy running the 9-year-old site but not the 14-year-old site? Why? Because you think one is "rape" but not the other? Who gets to decide? What about other cultures with different ages of consent? Are they rapists?
Conversely, let's say I put up a website advocating raising the age of consent to 21. Here I have a website intent on stripping millions of their legal rights... Isn't that harmful?
See the slippery slope?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The right to free expression conflicts with the right to be free from harm. If your expression is causing harm then perhaps your expression should be curtailed.
No it does not, and to claim otherwise is to make a false analogy, just watch as you do it:
In other words, at some stage up around advocating the raping of children
You should rape children. GO! Do it now! You will really like it!
Harm is not caused by speech. Harm is caused by physical action. People like you who falsely claim to believe in freedom of expression are just conflating the two because, like all censorship, it is easier to identify and squelch speech about harmful actions than it is to identify and stop individuals who actually commit those actions and cause actual harm. You get the warm fuzzy of appearing to do something about a problem with high emotional content without all the cost of actually making a real difference.
By the way, bonus points for using "But think of the children!" as your example. I can't think of another meme that has been so widely abused to justify censorship with such little actual reduction in harm.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And so we are witness to the start of the great liquidation sale of the US. It's been going on for years but now we see program after program get closed, slashed, reduced and buried. Is Rome burning yet?
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
Err... Are you completely ignoring emotional harm and mental health?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Dammit do we have to let the rest of the world own space? Did you hear? There's a lot more space in space than there is land on land. And more resources. There are entire moons made of hydrocarbons.
The thing is, once those people are out there they're not likely to be overly impressed with this idea that folks back on earth "own" their hydrocarbons. That sort of thing didn't work for us Brits and your colonist ancestors, and I wouldn't lay money on it working for the spacers and you.
The best you can hope for is that when they get there they'll still be friendly and let us go and visit from time to time. They'll be governing themselves in their own best interests, just like the rest of us.
Warning: May contain nuts
Err... Are you completely ignoring emotional harm
"Emotional harm" is not a sufficient justification to infringe on free speech. Grow a spine and realize that your "right" not to be offended doesn't trump my right to speak my mind. If you don't like what I'm saying then start shouting an opposing point of view or walk away. Don't whine about "emotional harm" and try to censor me.
and mental health
If your mental health is so unstable that you can't handle listening to free speech then you probably shouldn't be leaving your house. What was that old adage about sticks and stones?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The shuttle was supposed to be retired in... what? 1988? The damned thing was built when freakin' Jimmy Carter was president! If we don't retire the damned things we won't HAVE to worry about retiring them,because they will blow up and take the crews with them. Hell,if we are that damned desperate and need something to fill the gaps why don't we whip off another couple of the old Apollo designs. Surely it shouldn't be hard with today's tech to whip off a 40 year old design,and those "tin can on a tube" would be a lot safer than trying to send up Jimmy Carter era junk that was supposed to be retired while Reagan was president. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
So let me get this straight:
You want to retire equipment from the Carter era and replace it with equipment from the Kennedy-Johnson era?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You are talking to the wrong person. I am not one to be easily offended. I, however, am not the majority of society. I'd suggest that you spend a few days walking around calling every woman you see "cum dumpster" (to her face) including your time at work. Lemme know how that works out for you.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I'd suggest that you spend a few days walking around calling every woman you see "cum dumpster" (to her face) including your time at work
If I did that at work I'd be fired. Free speech != freedom from the consequences of that speech. Saying it elsewhere would probably get me slapped -- which I suppose would technically be assault but I'd deserve it (again, free speech != freedom from the consequences)
Do you actually think it should be illegal to walk up to a woman and call her a cum dumpster?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I didn't see a link to the memo, here it is:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=29133
That would be great if Orion didn't reuse the Crawler, Launch Pads, Assembly Buildings, Gantries and all of the other Launch infrastructure that the shuttle uses now, same as Apollo and the Shuttle couldn't cohabitate because the equipment they are reusing has to be repurposed for the new system. Launch facilities and equipment are reused to save the costs of building an entirely new infrastructure for each new launch system. What really concerns me is that we had parts of the launch pad fly off when the Shuttle launched with Kibo because it was the heaviest launch ever. Isn't Orion supposed to be heavier?
I strongly disagree with the sentiment that a reusable vehicle capable of spaceflight is something impossible to design.
I would agree, however, that the Shuttle should have been kept as a prototype and have gone through several more revisions since its original development. Furthermore, relying upon only a single vehicle type was a massive mistake for NASA and should never have happened... at least beyond the initial deployment of the Columbia and perhaps the Challenger.
Vehicles like the DC-X, Dynasoar, and a whole bunch of other failed NASA designs... many of which never even made it beyond a paper study, even though some of them had actual hardware built as well.... should have either received more political support or at least should have been deployed between the early 1980's and today. Unfortunately, the last manned spacecraft design to make it into space that came from a NASA engineer/designer was the Space Shuttle... and that was originally drawn up in the 1960's by Von Braun's shop in Huntsville even though Von Braun wasn't directly responsible for it. At least they were real rocket scientists who had flown actual hardware before they made that design.
I'd suggest that you spend a few days walking around calling every woman you see "cum dumpster" (to her face) including your time at work
Free speech != freedom from the consequences of that speech.
This happened to me last week. Here I was, minding my own business calling some women cum dumpsters at the office, when my boss charges in and fires me. Then some random woman in the street starts slapping me about just because I gave her a colorful nickname.
I have since then hired a lawyer, and am now suing the government for allowing such a dangerous thing as this "freedom of speech" to exist. My lawyer said I could get somewhere close to 2 million, but unfortunatly the judge didn't approve when I called her "Your honorable cum dumpster".
When I went down to Marshall Space Flight Centre last year, I saw it all laid bare. NASA is still stuck in the Cold War.
All the presentations were highly nationalistic, and the histories omit the Russians except as adversaries. The TVs at the cafeteria were set to Fox News. And in private moments, the engineers are still griping about the switch to metric units for the Ares rocket. Some of them don't even know what a Newton is!
I don't know why NASA continues to persist in this mindset, but it's not going to help them in their long-term goals.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
... they are openly trying to suggest mankind is mostly a bunch of morons.
Um... I hate to break it to you, but mankind IS mostly a bunch of morons. :-) ...However, as you imply, there is a very small percentage of mankind that are the great minds that have put us where we are today.
When Hernando Cortez arrived in Mexico, he ordered his ships to be burned. As there was no turning back, no options left open other than to proceed ahead, his men were incredibly well motivated.
I'm going to propose that having the shuttle program intact is possibly the biggest hindrance to advancement. As long as it is there, any viable alternatives are so easily canceled by Congress whenever they need an influx of cash by cutting NASA's budget, just as they've done dozens of times before over the last couple of decades.
However, with the Shuttle program completely disassembled, their ships burned as it were, and the embarrassment that would be seen that the United States has no viable space program while China and India are out doing spacewalks, Congress will be well motivated to make sure that NASA has all the funding they need. While it could just be the romantic in me, or simply wishful thinking, this provision might perhaps bring in a golden age of space that we've not seen since the race to the moon with the Russians in 1969.
The
"Emotional harm" is not a sufficient justification to infringe on free speech. Grow a spine and realize that your "right" not to be offended doesn't trump my right to speak my mind. If you don't like what I'm saying then start shouting an opposing point of view or walk away. Don't whine about "emotional harm" and try to censor me.
I'm sure you wouldn't mind if I followed you around, taunting you, calling you at work, leaving threatening messages, drawing pictures of your family getting murdered and raped and leaving them where you can see them, issuing anonymous police reports that I saw child porn on your laptop. Following your 6 year old daughter around telling her I'm going to kill her mommy and daddy, and putting bestial and necrotic pornography with your head photo shopped onto the models on the side of my van parked on your street.
Grow a spine. If you and your family doesn't like it than start shouting an opposing point of view or walk away. I'll just shout louder though and I'll be here when you get back. And I won't stop.
If you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't leave your house.
Or maybe, just maybe, you should have the right to live in peace. You shouldn't have to spend your whole life locked up in your home, or shouting at the top of your lungs whenever you do go outside.
Censorship is bad. But using your freedom of speech to harass someone or some group is bad too.