On Sat, 08 Feb 2003 08:01:19 +0000, Ian Woollard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>He's pretty unreasonable. NASA got into this mess because everyone was >way too reasonable. > >Is Richard Stallman a reasonable man? No way. But Linux almost certainly >would never have been heard of if it wasn't for Mr. Stallman; it would >have gone the way of Minix without the GPL. > >What is it that is said about unreasonable men? That they don't work in government bureaucracies? Shuttle was and is a government program. It operates by committee and consensus in and out of NASA. Unreasonable positions doesn't survive consensus decision making unless they have powerful, charismatic champions. With von Braun dead, neither Shuttle nor NASA have any powerful, charismatic champions, and reasonableness is the inevitable result. We don't have to like it, and I don't, but we have to recognize it. If Easterbrook's ravings had received a serious hearing in Washington, we would have no American national space program. Now I've said for years that NASA should have canceled Shuttle when Congress gave them less than half the money they needed to build it - but does anyone think that was ever really an option? It wasn't. NASA built the best vehicle they could with the money they got, and damned if the thing didn't eventually fly. Many times, even. It may be time to start seriously, really seriously, really *really* seriously (think Repo Man) looking at a successor to Shuttle. They may even do it; it wouldn't be the first time NASA has done something we long championed as a voice in the wilderness. But don't look for Shuttle to be canceled or even retired before its successor is flying. -R -- Every complex, difficult problem has a simple, easy solution - which is wrong. [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
