Sputnik Child trembles. The pride of my possessions, my 2.0GHz PowerMac G5 went belly up last week, its disk drive morphing into a small paperweight. It took 48 hours for the service technician to arrive with the replacement, during which I buried my troubles in a marathon game of MOOII on a beat-up iBook. It's taken until this evening to get it back to the way I want it -- I had a back up, but when Version Tracker says you have a 180 programs to update, it's a bit daunting. And I did lose a lot of email, so I need to collect my registration information, etc.
But my problems are just fallout from the Tech Gods main tantrum.
If you've been living in an underground cavern, perhaps you don't know that the Shuttle Discovery has been plagued by the same crumbling insulating foam that led to Columbia's destruction and the death of seven astronauts. The only answer to the frustration I feel is that it must pale before that of the people who work at NASA. Two years of work were fruitless; the Discovery astronauts may (we fervently pray) be saved the fate of their predecessors only by the fact that the insulation on Discovery broke loose a few seconds later in its launch sequence than on Columbia's, and that we were watching for the problem, and could try to repair the damage. The live footage of Stephen Robinson's extravehicular repairs to the Discovery was stunning. Now we just wait with our hearts in our mouths for the re-entry, already delayed for 24 hours.
I think it's time for NASA to face facts and retire the shuttle fleet. They've been in service for more than 20 years. We have new technologies, and we need a new approach. Infinite reusablity may not be the best design objective for spacecraft.
Reusability was a response to people's complaints that the Space Program cost money that could be better used on Earth. My response is that that view blinks the kinds of advances in science and technology that are a direct result of the Space Program. Medical advances, technology to assist the disabled, diagnostic technology have all been boosted by knowledge gained through the Space Program.
Money will always be an issue, of course. There will never be so much money that there won't be people who want more for their projects and less for yours. Unfortunately, we now have to measure the cost of the Shuttle Program in lives as well as dollars, and that calculus is not attractive.
What we need now is some sensible Space Advocacy. For some excellent ideas, try this article from ad Astra, the magazine of the National Space Society
