[ale] OT: Space Shuttle Columbia

[James P. Kinney III]

On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 00:40, Jeff Hubbs wrote:

> I don't really know.  My opinion (and that's all it is, ok?) is that
> Vietnam pretty much put the kibbosh (sp?) on all of the Great Space
> Exploration things we were told of as kids.
> 
> - Jeff

Not Vietnam. That was before Apollo. It was Reagan's great war of cash
with the former Soviet Union. The economy had taken a slip during the
"oil crisis" (we sort of missed that "warning shot over the bow", didn't
we?) and congress played with the engineering designs of the next thing
for NASA. Partly through local district greed (I want that part built in
my home town) and partly through budget cutting compromise, the shuttle
was the best thing they could come up with for the cost at the time. Sky
Lab had "failed" and Congress didn't want to fund any more "failures". I
use quotes because I am a scientist. I understand that most science
experiments are "failures" in that they don't work as desired. It is a
process of pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

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GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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