9.28.2005
Oopsy!
NASA administrator says space shuttle was a mistake (USA Today):
"The space shuttle and International Space Station — nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades — were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday."
"It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path."
"Asked Tuesday whether the shuttle had been a mistake, Griffin said, 'My opinion is that it was. ... It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible.' Asked whether the space station had been a mistake, he said, 'Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.'"
But on a brighter note, in a Q&A this weekend, Griffin said humans will colonize the solar system and one day go beyond. "Now, you know, in the sense that a chicken is just an egg's way of laying another egg, one of our purposes is to survive and thrive and spread humankind. I think that's worth doing. There will be another mass-extinction event. If we humans want to survive for hundreds of thousands or millions of years, we must ultimately populate other planets." (Washington Post, req. req'd)
That's more like it. Onward and upward. To quote Nat King Cole, it's time to "straighten up and fly right."
