We should end the shuttle program and press ahead on figuring out how to launch the rest of the planned flights cargo on expendable rockets…..

yeap it is pretty clear that the shuttle program is just stalled…I dont know how the bad metal got into the tank…but all that says is that the entire system at NASA is pretty weak.

We need to get this thing shut down before someone else gets killed.

Robert G. Oler

it is pretty clear that some substandard material got into ET manufactoring…and made it past process control.

Got to wonder how this happened? And what else has slipped by.

Its time to just end the thing…save the money by shutting the whole operation down and figuring out how to launch the rest of EELV’s fire the idiots who have let this happen and move on.

Robert G. Oler

please let me know when there are updates (Post them on the facebook page maybe?)

I don’t use the Facebook page for anything other than the occasional receipt of a message. There’s a Followers link on the blog page; you might try that for when a new article is posted. Thanks again for the compliments.

you do very nice work and I urge you to continue…please let me know when there are updates (Post them on the facebook page maybe?) I am in Africa and while I am returning soon the last couple of days have been pretty hectic…

did some good amateur radio satellite stuff from a few rare countries though (grin)

Vanguard to me anyway has always gotten a bum wrap. The irony of politics is that the folks who blew Sputnik out of proportion are the folks whoh eventually morphed into the neo cons…(OK Jack Kennedy took advantage of it in the 60 campaign)…but the sad thing is that reason did not prevail and the “military aspects” of spaceflight,, meaning the nutty “goal” things took over.

At one point when the Soviets sent Lunik around the Moon and got pictures of the lunar farside there were some sharp questions to Ike about it and his response to paraphrase (but its close) “I am interested in pictures of the other side of the Moon, but am not interested in unbalancing the budget or raising taxes to do it.”…

But instead we just started doing goofy things…which eventually wound us up in the lunar program which still haunts us today.

I’ve built a functioning model 1 to 1 scale of Vanguard 1…and a scale model of the rocket…

It would have been an interesting progression…but like the politics after 9/11 people just stopped being reasonable or even thoughtful and the Whittingtons of the world just took off…

Robert G. Oler

Lucky fir them; Gov. Granholm left Michigan with a $1.8B deficit

You haven’t been looking hard.

http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2011/01/spaceport-needs-martinez%E2%80%99s-support-homans-says/

FTA: Given our budget realities, additional large investments would be a misguided use of our taxpayer funds. In addition, higher local taxes have been implemented on surrounding counties to help fund the construction of the project. Along with our tax increases levied by the state government, we are placing an undue burden on local residents during these very difficult economic times

Says it all. This reminds me of the ‘tunnel to nowhere’ just cancelled by Chris Christie. “It’s dead, Jim.”