Commander:
Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF
Pilot:
Michael J. Smith, Commander, USN
Mission Specialist:
Judith A. Resnik
Ronald E. McNair
Ellison S. Onizuka, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF
Payload Specialist:
Gregory B. Jarvis
Sharon Christa McAuliffe
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
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4 comments
That is definitely a day I will never forget. I was there. STS-51-L Yeah.
Rest In Peace all.
It is the simple stuff that causes the biggest problems. A different kind of O-ring or a warmer day would have prevented the disaster. It is so simple – after the fact.
Flying and space flight in particular are experimental and inherently dangerous. People are willing to do it because there are new things to be learned. When the US turned against science, we lost the edge that we had in the world. Too many people today are too frightened to learn new things.
This TDS episode sums up the USA totally for me. The first third where Jon brings up the NON-debate on gun control, and how the NRA controls pretty much every -thing -one there. You should watch it, if you haven’t already.
TDS January 16, 2013
“The White House and the NRA debate gun control measures, House Republicans vote against Hurricane Sandy relief, and Jessica Chastain talks “Zero Dark Thirty.'”
When I was in charge of engineering projects, especially those that could easily kill someone or cause a disaster, none of them ever has. Maybe that’s just me, and maybe I am just lucky. Yeah. Then again, maybe I just took my job seriously, and did the work, seriously. And maybe I actually gave a shit about the value of human life. Though, I do have to admit that in recent years, once I discovered that the USA was a major buyer of those machines I and my team designed… I sometimes wish that perhaps I hadn’t been quite so diligent. *shrug*
The original components were probably safe for the temperature limits that were established, but over the years people started to assume that parts were all right and stopped checking them. The suppliers started ‘cutting costs’ until they ended up with parts that failed.
Only a greedy moron buys anything critical from a Chinese supplier. If the supplier screws you, there isn’t one damn thing you can do about it. Boeing is seeing that with the ‘Dreamliner’. They outsourced parts and the damn thing is failing on them. They can’t find the problem because the parts aren’t uniform. They can have all of the quality control in the world over things they build, but they have no way of controlling what their suppliers are doing.
The people at the top don’t care, because they will get their absurd salaries no matter what happens to the company.