OT re: Columbia (long diatribe)

J.C.Wren wrote: As am I. Numbers, numbers. For a while there on the BBC website they were citing a failure rate of 2 per 113 as being equivalent to not surviving a month if you took your car to and from work every day. They (later) added that taking into account hours flown, space-flight is about 4 times riskier than commercial flying, and taking account miles travelled, space flight is the safest means of transport. So which is it? Of course it is risky, always will be, but so if crossing the road to catch a bus. We live is a world of risk. I wonder how many pioneering aviators were killed in the first 40 years of flying, that is from 1903 to 1943 - several hundred I would imagine (anyone know of the figures). Was that too high a cost for the (possibly debatable) benefits of commercial flying today. The difference is, I think, the media. Whereas pioneering aviators who died were reported relativly anonymously in newspapers, days or weeks later, today we have instant replays of almost the entire lives of each crew-member and all their families the same morning. It makes it a much more personal affair and people react emotionally. Don't get me wrong, I feel of the families who lost ther loved ones yesterday, but it stops there. Those brave astronauts knew the risks, accepted them willingly, and performed magnificently. Given half a chance I would fly the shuttle tomorrow. What bothers me is the possibility that NASA will be forced to quit on manned spaceflight and the nay-sayers will (finally) manage to kill a project they see as a waste of money and effort. The shuttle itself as originally designed was a fully resusable vehicle. Budget cutbacks and naysayers resulted in the hybrid version we know (and love) today. How much safer (and in the long run cheaper) would that original design have been? Sorry for the rant, but I needed to get it off my chest. Normal programs will resume shortly...... -- hbp