Space Shuttle Columbia arrests - bullshit

The BBQ Pit
81

And I guess you missed where I said

and

Should I put that in italics and 20 point type for you? Because you seem to be missing that, even though I’ve repeated one of the lines before. Nor was I claiming that you said that gruven had done a mea culpa, I was emphasizing the fact that gruven was unwilling to admit that he was wrong in his initial position! IOW, even though numerous Dopers have pointed out that there’s a damn good reason why stealing shuttle debris is wrong (and that people are subject to the same kind of penalties they would be if they were swiping something from the crash of a passenger plane), including those with experience in the aviation industry, gruven still thinks what they’re doing isn’t wrong!

Desecrating a grave site (or even a crash site with no fatalities) simply to snag a souviner or to attempt to profit from it, is a barbaric act akin to our primitive ancestors eating the foes they’ve slain in battle in hopes of gaining the enemies “power.” (And when you stop and think about it, how much power can your foe have if you defeated him? I’d be more worried that eating him would weaken my power, since I’d be absorbing “powers” that were lesser than my own.)

82

Jesus, you really are that stupid. LIVES, not debris. Address the LIVES lost - not the debris.

To make it even clearer. I will repeat.

We have moved on from the stealing of the debris, and instead are discussing the differences of grief between different types of tragedies. LIVES, man, not the criminal prosecution of stealing accident debris. Try to keep up.

And no, your babble about barbaric people eating their dead isn’t relevant.

83

I don’t think that anyone thinks that these deaths are more important than other deaths, but the space program is, to a degree, our future. It progresses in little baby steps. When something catastrophic happens, it is a BIG DEAL to the space program. Some of us think that the space program is pretty important.

Yes, I get sad when I hear about a fatal car crash, and yes I got sad when I heard about Columbia. But my sadness wasn’t just for the astronauts. It was bigger than that.

84

**You mean like when I said

And why not? Aren’t the shitheads trying to steal the shuttle debris (which could include the remains of astronauts depending upon what part of the spacecraft they came from) attempting to gain something from the deaths of the astronauts? It might not be a mystical power, but none the less, they are wanting to gain from another’s death in a selfish manner. That, my friend, is pretty barbaric. And on preview, what Opal said.

85

How people would feel now about either event? Or how people would have felt then?

Either way, IMHO it’s a pretty stupid question. (Try answering it, and hopefully you’ll see what I mean.)

And what does this have to do with this discussion? The space shuttle crew were glorified bus drivers and passengers. They were doing no exploration. Being astronauts simply means that their bus carried them into the nearer reaches of orbital space, where only a lucky few yet go.

[quote]
Warships are expected to go down, so even when it’s an accident, while we recognize that it’s a terrible loss for the families, it’s not necessarily a national (or global) tragedy.

[quote]
And the space shuttle isn’t? I haven’t looked at the stats, but I bet they’d show that six months of duty on any U.S. military craft traversing the air or water is far less likely to result in one’s death than being on a single U.S. space shuttle mission of any duration.

Actually, no. I’m sure NASA turns away far more qualified applicants to the astronaut program than they accept. The same thing is surely not true of the U.S. Army. And I’ll stand by my opinion that the space shuttle program’s effect on human history will be negligible. All it does is consume a lot of money while blocking substantive technological advances as well as the revival of manned space exploration. It’s worse than worthless.

That said, I think anyone who’s enough of a vulture to take souvenirs from a tragedy, whether for sale or for one’s private collection, is a genuine slimeball. If by doing so they are also potentially impeding an investigation into the causes of the tragedy, then a jail term of somewhere between a few weeks and a few months seems quite appropriate to me. But the fact that it’s the shuttle is immaterial, IMHO.

86

$#@! coding - shoulda previewed. What came out as the final quote box in my previous post should’ve looked like this:

And the space shuttle isn’t? I haven’t looked at the stats, but I bet they’d show that six months of duty on any U.S. military craft traversing the air or water is far less likely to result in one’s death than being on a single U.S. space shuttle mission of any duration.

87

I don’t know if the space shuttle program itself will be that important in the end, but the space program as a whole will be (IMO) and the shuttle program is a step. Each step may be rather insignificant by itself, but if you remove a step, the stairs become much harder to climb.

88

RTFirefly, don’t blame NASA, blame Nixon. Andrew L. Chaikin’s book A Man on the Moon makes the claim that Nixon loved the fact that Kennedy’s space program made him look like a hero, and despised the thought that it’d make the next president look like a hero as well, so he did everything he could to sabotage NASA without killing it outright. The fact that NASA was able to go on, despite Nixon’s best efforts at killing it (without looking like he was trying to kill it), is, I think, a testament to the strong belief in the space program that the employees in NASA have.

Comparing the shuttle to the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria is wrong (that honor is reserved for the first manned ships to reach an Earthlike world around another star, IMHO), the shuttle is more akin to the first sea-going canoe built by man. The Columbia astronauts struck a hidden reef, and went down. We mourn the loss, as our ancestors surely must have mourned the loss of the first souls to die at sea. Those ancestors have long since been forgotten, and I imagine that in centuries to come, those of the Columbia will be forgotten as well, but each time someone who is a pioneer in their field dies in the pursuit of their dream, an echo of the grief we feel now (and that of our ancestors) will surely resound in the hearts of those who mourn them.

The shuttle was never allowed to be what it could have been, and truly the time has come for something better to take the field. (After all, how many other prototypes do you know of are still being used some 30-odd years after they were first designed?) If you haven’t already done so, sign the petition linked in my sig, and if you’re a US citizen write the President and your elected representatives and tell them how you feel. The only way we’re going to get something better than the shuttle is if enough of us let our voices be heard to those with the power to make things change. (And hell, if you’re not a US citizen, write the folks running things in your country! Somebody’s got to start doing something about getting us off this rock!)

89

Wouldn’t that be kind of hard to get, having it fall into the ocean and all of that?

90

I attend church with a NASA employee. He said that while he and his co-workers were sad to lose their friends, they were comforted that the astronauts died living their dream. They didn’t consider their deaths near as tragic as say a family dying in an auto accident.

91

Kinda, sorta. It was off the coast of Florida, and lots of folks in that region have boats, so they could have headed out and tried to fish out what they could, or snag the floating debris.

92

A lot of the Challenger debris washed up on the beach.

93

…and even 12 years ex post facto, occasional pieces still wash up. And may for decades to come, as well.

94

I mean, I know of significant debris that washed up in 1998. I didn’t mean it was 12 years since Challenger.

95

Rug Burn, the investigation is going to take months, maybe years. If there ever even is a definite conclusion, NASA may still need the tangible evidence. And if they don’t, I still can’t see them keeping a list of “Sheared rivet: Mrs. Oleander Twinklebop, 123 South Street, Vainbijou, Louisiana.” What would they do, mail it back or have people come to claim it?

But I do wonder about something else. Okay, so you want to be a good citizen (and a sensible person), so you leave the debris untouched and call the NASA hotline. But what happens then?

And in the meantime, how long will it stay on your property before someone in authority takes it away? What if it’s in your backyard? What if you’re a farmer, and it’s contaminating your land? The debris is scattered across a very wide field, and it will take a lot of time and personpower to gather everything.

96

Rilch, what I’m able to gather from obsessively listening to news accounts is the following:

1.) When NASA gets a call that someone’s found something from Columbia, the nearest local authority (cop, National Guard, etc.) goes over to investigate it. If they determine that it could have come from Columbia, they get on the horn to NASA.

2.) If the debris is located in a place where it could be easily disturbed, or is likely to cause a problem for someone, NASA get’s the appropriate folks there ASAP. In the meantime, the local authorities stand guard over the debris.

3.) If the debris is some place fairly remote, NASA’ll send someone out to identify it. If, at that time, they find it to be a critical piece of debris (say the remains of one of the astronauts or part of the left wing), they’ll get someone there rapidly. Again, the local authorities will keep watch over the item until those authorized to take the debris away arrive.

4.) If the debris is in a remote area, but after the NASA rep checks it, finds it to be relatively unimportant (a slightly singed flight manual, for example), the local authority will attempt to maintain a guard over it, but if at the end of the guard’s shift, there’s no one to replace him, he’ll just leave it there, and NASA will collect it once they’ve gotten the higher priority debris gathered up.

Apparently, every astronaut NASA has, even those in the early stages of training, are out evaluating the debris, and in the cases where human remains are found, they stay with the debris until it’s picked up. I don’t know, but I’d imagine, anyone and everyone at NASA (and no doubt the various contractors) who can be spared to go check the debris is doing so. In the early days of the space program, when a couple of astronauts in training were killed in a plane crash, NASA mishandled the whole situation, and has since gotten it’s act together. Last I heard, if an astronaut’s killed, NASA immediately sends the spouse of another astronaut over to the deceased’s house to inform them of what’s happened. A little while later, NASA will send an official over to explain things in greater detail and answer some of the questions that the spouse of an astronaut might not be able to.

Oh, and I can’t see the families of the deceased astronauts agreeing to NASA handing back the debris to the people who found them once the investigation’s over.

97

Now a cop’s been arrested for trying to steal debris!

Fucktard!

98

Tuckerfan:

First post: Thanks for the info.

Second post: Crimeny crumbcake.

99

To give you an idea of how thorough NASA’s being with the investigation, they’re going to be inspecting the plant where the tiles were made! Presumably to make sure that there was no way defective tiles could have been placed on the shuttle.

100

The spouse of an astronaut? What, are they hired employees too? Why would a spouse be any better informed, or able, or even willing, to provide comfort?

If my wife were in space, and endangered or killed, I’d be VERY offended if NASA sent over somebody’s spouse to inform me.