Patrick wrote: | 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 allotted by a bunch of politicians that | don't know their butt from a black hole and who can't see past the next | election. And Kim says: Sure, astronauts are volunteers. But your comments, and those of others who responded to your post beg the question of other costs. The Space Shuttle, in my opinion, has always been extremely wasteful in terms of resources and dollars. Maybe NASA should be weighing the dollar costs as carefully as they do astronauts lives. I, for one would welcome it. So what if the fleet is grounded permanently? Better to do so now than waste more effort on this old and failing technology. I see this as an opportunity to finally abandon the Shuttle and the ISS and take that step-by-step course into space that was first envisioned. By the way, no one responded to my posting the other day about that. Now's your opportunity to rip me apart if any of you disagree. Or, pat me on the back if you don't. ;-) | So back off and let us try again to find and fix the problem." Sorry to point out the obvious, but NASA has had 2 1/2 years and a whole lot of money already to "try and fix the problem." If it can't be done, admit it and throw in the towel. Now.