Agreed Patrick. You know, if the people involved are ready and willing to risk their lives to go into space for whatever reason, whether it be for the thrill or because they are altruistic and want to try and help advance knowledge and technology for human kind, then I feel that neither I nor anyone else has the right to question them or hold them back. Sure, NASA needs to make things as safe as they possibly can with the knowledge and technology they have at the time, but like it or not, sometimes the biggest advances in knowledge, understanding and technology come out of tragedies. People learn the most from their mistakes generally speaking. It is ridiculous for anyone to think that NASA is not doing their best to keep their astronauts safe. They invest huge amounts of time and money in these people and from everything I've ever seen, the people who work on a mission are all very close knit. That is so obvious if you ever watch the NASA channel and watch the control room, etc. The people who work there are some of the world's best and brightest, a very commendable and committed bunch of people. For anyone to imply that they are anything less than that is rather insulting. Patrick Wiggins <paw@trilobyte.net> wrote: Warning: The following could be considered pontificating (something that I very much favor on this forum, whether I agree with what is being pontificated or not.) I just watched another interview with William Parsons (no, not the 3rd Earl of Rose, rather the guy in charge of the shuttle program). It's a good thing I'm beyond the "throwing things" phase or I might have thrown my tea mug at the TV. Seldom have I heard such inanity coming from questioners. (I'd say "media" but I don't want Joe to think I lump him in with what I've been seeing today.) My biggest regret just now is that I can't be within earshot when the good Mr. Parsons is with family and friends and says what he really thinks of some of those questions and comments. It would have felt so good to hear him come back to one of those "Don't you think you were stupid to put all those live at risk?" questions with something refreshing like, "Look, no one ever said spaceflight is safe. Right or wrong the only way for the US to get people into space just now is with the shuttle. It's an old machine based on even older technology. But it's all we've got. We are humans so we sometimes make mistakes. But we do what we can (and have done some pretty wonderful things) with the meager resources alloted by a bunch of politicians that don't know their butt from a black hole and who can't see past the next election. So back off and let us try again to find and fix the problem." _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com --------------------------------- Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page