:d
Me, too. But jsut because we blow money on one stupid thing, doesn’t mean we gotta blow money on every stupid thing.
And name me one scientific advance made possible by any of the 113 shuttle missions which couldn’t have been achieved otherwise and more cheaply. Blowing up public schoolteachers, as advantageous to the public school system as that may be, doesn’t count.
I fully agree that there have been many, many things wrong with the execution of the space shuttle program. But not to the extent that we shouldn’t keep trying. And by keep trying I mean fix the errors in the program and in the design (with a new craft), not keep sending up the at-this-point-very-broken-shuttles. In my mind, the monetary cost is a mere pittance compared to what the space program has so far taken in manpower, ingenuity, and, unfortunately, lives. But that doesn’t mean it was a wasted effort. I firmly believe that establishing societies and economic networks off the planet Earth can only help us, and these are the baby steps towards that.
I don’t really disagree with anything you said, Rift. The space program has provided numerous benefits and has a large potential to spawn many more and even greater benefits to society; I’m an advocate of an actually expanding the space program. The shuttle, however, is shit - to date, $150B of shit. Its cost far outweighs any benefit even the most imaginative person might dream up. And further, the money wasted on it prevents our spending on programs which actually have a chance of providing a benefit. The shuttle is what’s holding us back.
All that said, I’m very happy to that these people were returned safely to Earth. Mostly because their deaths would have been entirely meaningless and totally unnecesary.
Perhaps the best thing that could happen for the space program would be a fire on the ground which consumed the remaining 3 shuttle orbiters.
No no no. Irony demands that Atlantis suffer some mishap which causes it to end up on the bottom of the ocean.
Heh - you are so correct. Hurricane, pehaps?
SQUEE! applauds NASA and Discovery
Here’s to many, many more flights! clinks her beer glass
Pretty much anything discovered using Hubble. Without the STS and the astronauts performing the EVAs that made repairs and ongoing maintenance possible, Hubble would have been worthless orbiting junk a long time ago. As it is, a shuttle mission was needed early on to install a corrective optics package to fix a defect in the primary mirror because the telescope couldn’t focus properly. Since then, many of cosmology’s greatest advances have been made with Hubble. It’s just not possible to get images of that quaility from ground-based telescopes, regardless of aperture or so-called adaptive optics technologies.
Actually, I’m imagining a computer glitch that causes the engines to shut down prematurely. The shuttle then does a graceful swandive into the ocean.
I know, it’s sick to joke about that kind of thing. But I’ve always thought that “Atlantis” was an ill-omened name.
Hubble isn’t a product of the STS program. It could have been lifted to orbit using an unmanned vehicle. And if the engineering had been properly executed prior to launch, there’d have been no need for repairs effected by humans.
But, yeah, the Hubble eventually became one of the greatest successes of NASA. But it’s not a product of any technology of scientific knowledge originating out of the shuttle program.
Well, I was kinda hoping we could be rid of that white elephant without anymore people dying.
Oh, OK.
Lessee…
How about the shuttle has to abort, and pulls an emergency landing in Africa (Isn’t there a contingency plan that goes something like that?) The crew survives, and gets put on a plane back to the states. The shuttle gets hoisted onto the deck of a big freighter to haul its ass home. On the way, a freak storm sweeps it off the deck and into the briny deep.
Better? 
That’ll work.
Well, rather than wish ruin on the freighter company, how about, while transporting the shuttle to the launch pad, it falls off the crawler?
“Ooops, I knew I forgot to tighten that bolt!”
True enough, but as it happens, the repair mission WAS necessary. So at least that one shuttle mission meets the criteria you outlined above.
I’m not wishing ruin on the freighter. Just enough of a storm to wash the shuttle off the deck.
“Hey, Bob, the waves are getting kinda rough. Do you think we need to throw a few more ropes over the shuttle?”
“Nah. The thing weighs a freakin ton. It’s not going anywhere.”
A few minutes later, a really big wave hits the freighter. The ship survives just fine, but Bob looks out the port window to see the shuttle floating away into the night.
“Fuck.”