On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:55:38 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

No, the real problems are that the Shuttle is too expensive, too
fragile, and every accident make a fleet that's already too small
smaller, by an increasing percentage.

Well there is always the option to buy more, not that they would.

Lives of the astronauts are a secondary issue.

To space travel and space exploration, then yes, but it is clear to
see that the Shuttle was never designed for safely.

No ejection seats, no option but to die in many launch failure
scenarios. And even those forward facing seats can cut them in half in
an extreme event.

NASA has too many of
them, and if they don't want to take the risk, they'd have no trouble
find more who will.

True, but they also won't like you if you keep blowing them up. Still
the day when Astronauts refuse to ride on it due to safety concerns,
then you have problems.

This whining notion (by those whose lives aren't even at risk) that
human life takes precedence over all other considerations is absurd.

That is not the problem.

Such extreme deaths only goes to get people thinking about death, them
in that situations, their families and loved ones, where they almost
make this personal.

And as people do not like thinking about their own mortality, then
that is why they get annoyed and upset.

So if you don't blow them up and put this all over the news services,
then people won't get so upset.

It's not true of any other human endeavor,

Those other human endeavors do not make big media headlines for weeks
following.

and opening a frontier is the last place in which that emphasis should
be placed.

Certainly, but plan for safety in the design.

Cardman.