Shuttle launch today

[Starman]

Against recommendation of some NASA safety personnel.

If there's an accident, is it the end of the manned space program?

They've already decided to scrap the shuttle program in 2010, and another accident would mean a couple years of investigation and renovations, etc etc. which would carry them up to about 2009, plus the Bush administration is not wildly enthusiastic about space anyway.

Another shuttle goes down, they pull the plug on the whole deal.

 

[heyabbott]

Setbacks in the space program are only opportunites for Hailburton to make money

 

[Monday Morning Sportswriter]

Some safety people are always going to have concerns. Heck, it's a flying bomb, I'd have concerns, too.

Godspeed to the crew and those who watch over it.

 

[Bubba Fett]

Here's the launch blog from nasa.gov: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/sts-121/launch-vlcc.html

There's also a video feed on the site.

 

[patchs]

I'm watching it on HD.Net and it is amazing in HD.
Thank you, Mark Cuban.

 

[hungryhungryhippo]

Why are we even spending billions to go into space anymore? We beat the Commies to the moon...

 

[Pilot]

Why are we even spending billions to go into space anymore? We beat the Commies to the moon...

I can't answer that question, but I'm still all about spending money on it. I guess I never got over wanting to be an astronaut.

Also, Bush's admin is against going to space? I thought he was all for it with the go-to-Mars thing?

 

[imjustagirl2]

I thought it was on hold? Are they still doing it? Isn't launch in like four minutes?

 

[Football_Bat]

I just put it on ABC; they are still showing golf.

 

[Football_Bat]

Launch postponed to 3:26 p.m. EDT tomorrow (Sunday.)

Back to World Cup.

 

[DyePack]

The "go forward at all costs" mentality has pervaded NASA. Safety takes a back seat to launching.

The whole program is an ox waiting to be gored.

 

[imjustagirl2]

The "go forward at all costs" mentality has pervaded NASA. Safety takes a back seat to launching.

The whole program is an ox waiting to be gored.

Um, except they didn't launch?

 

[DyePack]

The "go forward at all costs" mentality has pervaded NASA. Safety takes a back seat to launching.

The whole program is an ox waiting to be gored.

Um, except they didn't launch?

Merely a delay. They'll get around to risking the crew's lives and billions of dollars tomorrow.

 

[imjustagirl2]

But maybe the skies will be clearer tomorrow?

 

[Pilot]

The "go forward at all costs" mentality has pervaded NASA. Safety takes a back seat to launching.

The whole program is an ox waiting to be gored.

Um, except they didn't launch?

Merely a delay. They'll get around to risking the crew's lives and billions of dollars tomorrow.

Yeah. The part I hate the most is how they take these poor kids and force them to ride that damn space shuttle. What a joke. This is all Bush's fault.

 

[DyePack]

The "go forward at all costs" mentality has pervaded NASA. Safety takes a back seat to launching.

The whole program is an ox waiting to be gored.

Um, except they didn't launch?

Merely a delay. They'll get around to risking the crew's lives and billions of dollars tomorrow.

Yeah. The part I hate the most is how they take these poor kids and force them to ride that damn space shuttle. What a joke. This is all Bush's fault.

That's exactly what I meant. After all, everything boils down to a two-party political argument. :

 

[Starman]

Why are we even spending billions to go into space anymore? We beat the Commies to the moon...

I can't answer that question, but I'm still all about spending money on it. I guess I never got over wanting to be an astronaut.

Also, Bush's admin is against going to space? I thought he was all for it with the go-to-Mars thing?

Typical Bushie hot air: set a pie-in-the-sky dream-castle objective, underfund the present-day program and create a lot of shuffled priorities and mixed messages. He can't spend money on NASA (virtually the entire program outside the shuttle program, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the most effective scientific instrument in the history of the human race, is being shut down), because he has to throw hundreds of billions of dollars away in Iraq.

You know why we quit the Apollo program when we did? Because Shrubby's spiritual grandfather, Tricky Dicky, Darth Dickcheney's mentor, had to spend billions of dollars on Vietnam, years after he promised he'd have us out of there. No money to go to the moon, we have to pay for those Cambodian dike-bombing missions.

Bush might as well have set a national goal of landing on the planet Krypton by the year 3000.

 

[pallister]

Unbelievable.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Star's rhetoric is a bit over the top, but he's dead right on the facts. Anybody who thinks Fredo's Mars mission was anything more than something to get him through a news cycle has been asleep since 2001.

 

[Starman]

T-minus 60:00. Let's see what happens.