Uncle Al wrote in message ...
Mark Folsom wrote:

Just read in the NYT that NASA will not fly the scheduled mission to service
the Hubble telescope. The one thing they've done with the Shuttle that was
worth doing, and now they've chickened out. What a bunch of turkeys!!

How can Management be held responsible when they never lift the heavy
end? Management makes decisions, workers make mistakes. American
zero-goal education comes to the US space program: Make the average
low enough and every mission is above it.

Uncle Al sees a bright bright day when the Space Scuttle will be
hauled out to its launch pad, fueled, diagnostics run, defueled,
diagnostics run, and hauled back to its hangar. Mission accomplished!

COMMENT:

This month's Popular Science had a an article on fixing NASA, and with
it as intro picture, a classy photo of the last Saturn V, lying on its
side in Florida, with a handicapped parking space in the parking lot
in front of it.
Welcome to the 21st century.

My heart lept for about 10 seconds, as I thought that they were
actually going to do a piece suggesting that NASA's problems stem
partly from the switch from a culture in which the prime motivator was
to get the job done, to one at present in which the prime motivator
seems to be to provide equal opportunity jobs, out of congressional
pork (see most of the rest of goverment).

But no, although the author made a number of good suggestions, not a
single (politically incorrect) word was spoken about the need for a
strict performance-based institution. Such things are, after all, now
illegal, where as they weren't in the 1960's. You can have equal
opportunity employment mills in academia, where the only difference
that results is that the number of papers is the same, but they are
crappier ones, and nobody notices because the reviewing standard has
fallen also. But in engineering if you do this, not only do bridges
tend to fall down, and things tend to fall out of the sky also. And
hit the ground or water faster than they should. Wups. With NASA,
people have noticed this happening, but they would rather literally
die (or more specifically, kill more astronauts) than fix it.

Well, at least the astronauts who are hamburgerized these days are
properly ethnically, racially, religiously, and sexually diverse.
Killing a liberal lady schoolteacher is good for the NTA, as it
reminds them that they are still here on planet Earth with those laws
of nature which pay absolutely no attension to who does or doesn't get
"left behind" when it comes to math and physics. No matter how hard
politicians and management would like to pretend otherwise.

SBH