h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message ...
On 3 Nov 2003 21:38:23 -0800, in a place far, far away,
(Tom Merkle) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

I'm sick to death of the zero-defect mentality that has infected our
society, largely due to media pressures, in the past 30 years. This
mindset considers any failure that is retroactively preventable, no
matter how tenuous the chain of events to prevent it, to be a
"self-inflicted disaster." The term 'disaster' to describe the failure
of an experimental vehicle is itself a misnomer.

It's kind of disingenuous to redefine the Shuttle as "an experimental
vehicle" after the fact, when it was declared "operational" almost
twenty years ago (I remember, because I was there when President
Reagan did it).

If the Gehman commision wants to recommend that it be so reclassified
now, fine, but everyone wanted to pretend otherwise through the end of
January of this year.

Too true. Well, the shroud has been lifted now.

Tom Merkle