Space Shuttle- From the Vault Aug 2005

As I was driving to work today, the morning news came on the radio. I abhor the news, but the story was about one of the two topics that I care about, The Discovery Shuttle Mission (the other story of interest being the Supreme Court nomination, for those of you scoring at home). I’m fascinated by this shuttle mission for several reasons:
· The space program rebounding after the shuttle tragedy last year.
· This seems like a real life sequel to Apollo 13
· The pilot keeps doing doughnuts with the shuttle and no one is yelling at him.
· The crew is on Meet the Press second guessing Mission Control about the factor of the launch
· I’m waiting to see if Geraldo Rivera does an remote investigation from space.

So the news story this morning detailed NASA’s plan to address the small piece of material on the underside of the shuttle. It is believed that this small piece will create excess heat on the shuttle during re-entry and might cause an explosion. The suggested solution is for an astronaut to perform a space walk and “Give a gentle tug” on the material and if that doesn’t work, “cut it off with a hacksaw”. The question that popped into my head—When did my peer group get a job for NASA. (To be fair, my buddy Tobe did work for NASA for 3 months, but as a machinist, not Mission Control).

Serious times require serious minds. There is a general consensus in society that the two most educated professions are brain surgeons and rocket scientist. Think how frequently the expressions are used in the course of a normal conversation to show simplicity, “Getting a cup of coffee…It’s not brain surgery” or “You don’t need a rocket scientist to figure it out”. If ever there was ever a time for a big solution to be delivered, this is the time when there should be a rocket scientist working on this problem. Shouldn’t NASA have the highest per capita of rocket scientist on the payroll? Why do the proposed solutions make me think that this is a joke from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour? This event is a Jeff Foxworthy joke waiting to happen. And who knew that a hacksaw was on the packing list for the shuttle launch.

Let’s examine these solutions separately (these are the actual proposed solutions, not jokes that I made up).

1. A gentle tug- This suggestion should always send up a warning flag. Whether it’s a suggestion while working on a copier, coming from your high school boyfriend, trying to fix a loose tooth or someone at mission control, this suggestion should not be used. The suggestion of “gentle” means, were not sure how this is going to turn out, or what else might come loose, but let’s see. This instruction was probably followed by, but if the bottom of the shuttle looks like it’s going to open up like a party favor, stop. Did they consider this? How much duct tape did they bring on this trip? My understand was that duct tape was only good up to 85 MPH (again, according to my buddies). I’m pretty sure the shuttle goes faster than this on re-entry, but I’m not a rocket scientist.

2. Hacksaw it off- This is a true male response. Have something hanging, just hacksaw it off. This logic has been used several times in my past. Door doesn’t fit, get the hacksaw, muffler a little to noisy, get the hacksaw, in grown toe nail… you get the picture. What is truly remarkable about his is that the shuttle commander is a WOMAN! This is where the true blame needs to be placed if this takes place. Guys in a garage can get carried away, especially when power tools are involved and there is a smell of WD-40, stale pizza and Old Spice in the air. It’s the role of women to keep these great ideas in check. Most stupid activates take place in the absence out women. (Example: while re-siding my buddy’s house, we discovered that the ladder didn’t reach the second story of the house. Did we go and get an extension ladder…Hell no! We backed a pickup truck into the side yard and stuck the ladder in the bed of the truck. Problem solved. We didn’t see the errors of our ways until our wives came by and explained the safety issues of our action.) What I’m getting to is, if this was the 1960’s and you have a ship full of men and a control center full of testosterone, this would be understandable, but I expect a little more from the smarter sex.

This small diatribe is a call to action for anyone who has contacts at NASA, or contact to NASA (or at least Kevin Bacon, he should be able to get the message there) to escalate these concerns. If you can’t speak to an actual rocket scientist, at lest get a hold of their wife.