#111 For Shuttle

When I watched the shuttle take off after so many delays, I was understandably apprehensive. The launch had been cleared even though no one had found the source of a faulty sensor reading that had been troubling it for weeks. The expert conclusion was the equivalent of: Well probably doesn’t matter anyway, might as well launch. Now, I understand the sentiment. I’ve expressed it myself from time to time, like when I wasn’t sure of a word spelling and sent off an email anyhow or when I didn’t have a minor ingredient in a cake I was baking. But you’d think that the country would be behind erring on the side of caution given the fate of the last shuttle and its fiery reentry. Due to the loss, I might add, of a seemingly inconsequential piece of tile damaged by an equally insubstantial piece of insulation.
It’s probably just me, but I think a temperature sensor is a notch up the scale in consequentiality from a piece of insulation. So what’s the big hurry? Where’s the fire NASA? It’s been a couple of years. The space station guys are doing okay with Russian assistance. What piece of science is so important that wondering about the effects of zero gravity on it can’t wait till we fix a sensor? Do the super-materials industries really need the zero-gravity nano-formulation you promised them back when this shuttle program was being pitched to congress?
It’s not that hard to figure out. There’s only one thing that could get our super cameras lofted in the air so urgently despite the safety concerns engendered in the wake of Columbia’s cataclysm. The shadow shuttle. Yep, our super-secret shuttle spy missions. It’s been two and a half years since we lofted a camera capable of picking out pimples on the bald spot of Osama’s head. And it’s high time we got a look at what’s shaking down in camel country. Deep canyons and jutting rocks are hell on little robot camera drones but the super-overhead view of the shuttle is perfect, especially in a land of no trees.
So NASA was understandably unhappy when a review of the new launch indicated that something flew off the shuttle again. And a little bit relieved that that something wasn’t one of the many new monitoring cameras they installed. That would have been too much to take. Real time damage-monitoring camera falls off, damages shuttle. Yikes. Instead it was another chunk of, you guessed it, insulation. It was two chunks actually, and one of them was from the area where Columbia’s insulation failed and so was an area that had especially been concentrated on for fixing, with new design, new insulation, and apparently someone who had sniffed too many fumes from his hot glue gun. One other thing: The chunk damaged a piece of tile. At this point NASA is saying they don’t think it’ll be a problem. Too bad it didn’t take out that faulty sensor instead.
One good thing about the launch, though. I finally figured out why they launch in Florida and land in California. When I saw those solid rockets fire up and those big black billowing clouds shoot out it was obvious. They can’t launch in California ‘cause they’d never pass the emission standards.
America, ya gotta love it.