Well, it's required by law; specifically it's a provison in the USA PATRIOT Act. Any financial institution doing business in the United States is required to collect your SSN if you are a US Citizen (living in the US or abroad).
Your SSN is bounced against fincen.gov and can be placed by the bank into the SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) http://www.fincen.gov/reg_sar.html
This was all created because of the terroist bull3hit but now it's used for any 'suspicious' activity. And, just like those people who can't fly anymore without a cavity search due to their name matching a 'person of interest', this can really screw your finances up...
Under NASA's own guidlines, the rate of use of the shuttles were beyond the safety limits. One of the major limiting factors being the high maintnance timeframes required betwen flights for a complete check and overhaul. And that was with 4 shuttles in rotation. Now there are only 3. I don't care how safe you make it, parts fail and when you take 25% of the fleet out...
Next, with a Saturn V (the rocket used for Apollo), one flight would have been able to carry almost all of the currently existing space station up there now! And would have cost 1/10 of one shuttle flight - with a 100% safety record. (This does not include the Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 because neither of those involved the Saturn V launch vehicle.)
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Well, it's required by law; specifically it's a provison in the USA PATRIOT Act. Any financial institution doing business in the United States is required to collect your SSN if you are a US Citizen (living in the US or abroad). Your SSN is bounced against fincen.gov and can be placed by the bank into the SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) http://www.fincen.gov/reg_sar.html This was all created because of the terroist bull3hit but now it's used for any 'suspicious' activity. And, just like those people who can't fly anymore without a cavity search due to their name matching a 'person of interest', this can really screw your finances up...
Under NASA's own guidlines, the rate of use of the shuttles were beyond the safety limits. One of the major limiting factors being the high maintnance timeframes required betwen flights for a complete check and overhaul. And that was with 4 shuttles in rotation. Now there are only 3. I don't care how safe you make it, parts fail and when you take 25% of the fleet out...
Next, with a Saturn V (the rocket used for Apollo), one flight would have been able to carry almost all of the currently existing space station up there now! And would have cost 1/10 of one shuttle flight - with a 100% safety record. (This does not include the Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 because neither of those involved the Saturn V launch vehicle.)