Remember when we started launches these bad boys? It was going to be just a matter of years before there was a Holiday Inn on the Moon overlooking the Sea of Tranquility and we were all going to enjoy ourselves in a great big dome with a pool.
I guess that went the way of flying cars, robot maids and teleportation. In fact, it appears to me that when we got to the moon there wasn't anything to really see anyway nor anything more interesting to do then collect rocks so we decided not to go back for the foreseeable future.
But the Shuttles, they were going to take us to new worlds! They were practically airplanes. We could pack in there and fly to new worlds in luxury with an in-flight movie (Star Wars? Seinfeld? Madagascar?) and ginger-ale. We were going to do it all Star Trek style, polyester unitards, go-go boots and Captains mating (and most likely contaminating) with the local population at every stop. We were going to toss around words like docking station, rear thruster and warp field. We were going to bbe able to yell up to the bridge, she can't take anymore, man, she's fixing to break apart! Make it so!
In the thirty years we've been launching shuttles off into the great beyond we've launched a 114 Missions give or take the current one.
Of those 114 approximately 42 were on the date scheduled and most of those were not within the estimated launch time (although they were within the launch window). Now we here at Novelchick support any and all efforts to keep people safe. Although we question whether people who are in fact donning helments (and what are these going to do for you ina SPACE emergency exactly unless they have itty bitty escape pods in them) and launcing themselves into non-oxygenated atmospheres in aluminum cans are really concerned with personal safety, but we feel someone should be.
So the question arises. What's the hold-up? What are we doing with all these missions? Why can't they launch on time? And when will that Venus time share I bought pay off? I want to glide through the stars like they do on BSG. I want to do Mission:Space for real. I want to go where no man has gone before.
Unfortunately, it looks like we can't go anywhere there might be foam lurking about.
Apparently foam is the mortal enemy of the Shuttle. It's the Kryptonite, the fatal bee sting and the blind date with a comb over. If there's foam and we were to bump into it...well, it wouldn't be good. Foam and weather seem to be the two reasons that we aren't proceeding at a brisk pace toward being able to check out the Scientologist's story.
It costs 1.3 billion dollars to launch a shuttle. Launches are delayed more often then not for safety reasons (which often include the word foam in them). I'm okay with that until I begin to check out what qualifies as a safety reason. Here's a partial list:
- heavy fog
- lingering thunderstorms
- light rain
- high wind
- cracked foam
- tiles falling off
I don't mean to be...critical but if something that costs over a billion dollars can't be launched if it's drizzling then how exactly can it operate safely in space?
For example, Mission STS-121 launched on July 4, 2006, at 2:38 pm local time after two previous launches were scrubbed because of lingering thunderstorms and high winds around the launch pad and the launch took place despite objections from its chief engineer and safety head. A five-inch crack in the foam insulation of the external tank gave reason for concern; however, the Mission Management Team gave the go for launch.
Is this what it comes down to? We'll never achieve warp drive because of a light drizzle and cracked foam? I'll never know the song of the Crab Nebula because a tile dislodged during re-entry. I'll never get to say "Damnit, Jim!" Hasn't NASA heard of Gorilla Glue? Or duct tape? I mean you might actually use it ON ducts in this sort of situation.
Clearly women aren't held in high regard as Shuttle designers because we would have gotten out a stapler, some hairspray, a sandwich bag and fixed whatever was wrong to get that thing off that pad on time. We know the importance of arriving promptly for soccer games, carpools and three year olds birthday parties. Foam? We laugh in the face of foam.
I'm depressed by it. My money keeps being spent to send five guys in poorly designed (Heaven FORBID aliens come upon them and think they are some sort of fashion statement for the rest of us) janitor coveralls to launch more satellites and to repair the crap that falls off the space station. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my Direct TV, I do. But I'd enjoy it more if I was watching it in my cool dome and foam house with funky egg shaped furniture and wearing bizarre spandex outfits on Jupiter.
The Shuttle program is scheduled to be retired in 2010. The Shuttle's planned succesor is Project C. So maybe I can retire on Mars and just take a beach chair into my personal holodeck when I get a hankering for Hawaii.
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