Just a couple of minutes ago, I saw the BBC new ticker say that ‘NASA is grounding the Space Shuttle program because of foam that hit the shuttle’. You’ve probably seen the succesful launch of the Discovery, yesterday. Currently it’s still breaking news so no (actual) link available. The NASA site mentions nothing at all except for that the shuttle was going to dock to the Space Station tomorrow, as scheduled apparently.
I think I’ve mentioned it before here, but I don’t believe the Space Shuttle should be part of the US’s active space program: the technology behind the Shuttle is too old. As a teenager I was amazed when I saw the launch of the first Space Shuttle, the Columbia. I was shocked when leading scientist Richard Feynman (then part of the board investigating the circumstances of the Challenger explosion) likened NASA’s mentality to a Russian Roulette game. I was reminded of Feynman’s words when news broke that the Columbia was gone.
“A kind of Russian roulette. The Shuttle flies and nothing happens. Then it is suggested, therefore, that the risk is no longer so high for the next flights. We can lower our standards a little bit because we got away with it last time. You got away with it, but it shouldn’t be done over and over again like that.”
Over and over again. Maybe it’s time to focus once again on unmanned flight, particularly looking at the successes in that area. There’s a lot more exciting (scientific) things to learn about our Solar System by landing spacecraft on comets.
update: BBC got the scoop.