Thursday, August 27, 2009

One Launch Scrubbed, One Send-off Not

Like a horse in the stall before the race, the shuttle, a potential forefather to the next generation of heavy lift rockets (cough cough), is working through a temperamental moment before it comes to life.

Its forlorn cousin, the five segment piece of spaghetti rigidly attached sideways to the ground waited prayerfully for its cue to send fire down the valley. It never came. Instead, the career ending exclamation point came not from what it did do, but from what it didn't.

A fitting silence punctuating the going away party.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You nailed it on Steve Cook's departure from NASA.

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, ,dangerous complex and never. one more Bush administration lie exposed. I wonder how many NASA engineers were threatened with torture if they mentioned that going back to the moon on a flat budget was impossible.
Remember this supreme example of bullshit:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/54873main_budget_chart_14jan04.pdf
From the people who 'created' their own reality
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/06/01/rhetoric/

Anonymous said...

Apparently the scrub was caused because the TVC system died. I seem to recall the DIRECT guys suggesting deleting the SRB TVC system entirely. The engines under the core stage have sufficient control authority where a side mounted solution would not be able to because the engines are already offset too much. Those guys do seem to be strangely ahead of the curve on lot of these issues.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry. Direct is as badly busted as ARES we just haven't
seen the problems yet.