And now for a slightly different take on the Columbia disaster, and the recriminations that started soon after.

After the Challenger accident in 1986, a commission was convened to investigate. One of its members was the Physics Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman, who recounts the commission’s work, and the obstacles entrenched NASA administrators put in its path, in his second book of memoirs What Do You Care What Other People Think? (a sequel to Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, both make for a rollicking good read and are included in the anthology Classic Feynman).

I am sure many of Feynman’s trenchant observations will remain relevant as the various commissions reveal the tensions between (expensive) safety requirements for the shuttle (specially in terms of the shuttle project’s human infrastructure), and the cost overruns of that white elephant in the sky, the International Space Station…

Many NASA critics question the need for human involvement for tasks that could be done just as well by cheaper and expendable robots (no life support systems needed). But apparently NASA’s bureaucrats have decided only the drama of humans cavorting in space will hold the public’s attention long enough to fund the space program. To quote Jerry Pournelle (I don’t usually agree with his politics, but here I think he is right):

Saturn was the most powerful machine ever made by man; and NASA took two working Saturns and laid them out as lawn ornaments so that they would not compete with Space Station and Shuttle. This was deliberate destruction of the people’s property, but those who did it were promoted, not sent to prison where they ought to be. Perhaps that is too strong: but they ought to be dismissed with prejudice, barred from ever working on any government or government financed or government approved project whatever. It was done for pure politics to ensure the need for Shuttle. And it was criminal.