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The life of a porn addicted housewife.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Welcome Home Discovery Crew!!!! 

Welcome home to the Discovery Crew!!! Job well done!!!

I watched the landing in it’s entirety this morning and I admit that I held my breath through most of it. After the last disaster I was a bit nervous.

All space shuttles missions scare me. In January of 1986 I was pregnant with my daughter when I watched Challenger explode right in front of my eyes. We had a great view of the launches from our back door. I watched the initial launch of Challenger on the television and then ran to the back door. Just as the shuttle cleared the trees it exploded. It would have been upsetting enough on a normal day, but at the time I was 8 months pregnant and horribly emotional.
It was immediately evident what had happened and I remember standing in the doorway and bursting into tears. I could see the shuttle blow apart into a bunch of pieces and then fall. I was horrified. When I couldn’t see any more I went back to the television and watched in stunned silence, tears and nose running full steam. Of course I did not know any of the crew of the Challenger, but after watching them on television so much prior to the launch I felt almost like I did know them.

In 2003 when the Columbia disintegrated on re-entry I was listening to it on the radio. Again it literally made me cry. All I could think of is how scary that had to be for the astronauts at the end. We have all seen the sci-fi movies dealing with the same type of thing, but this was real life. Things like this are not supposed to happen in real life.

There are many people (conspiracy types) who do not believe that we, or any country, have ever actually gone to space. They think that it is all a giant scam run by the government. I disagree with this because for one big reason.
The space program is a big deal with the Super Power countries. When you stop and think about how bad the Challenger explosion and the Columbia disaster made our space program look, I would REALLY doubt that our government would have done that on purpose. What purpose would that have served?

I do feel that the US’s space program is in sad shape. The shuttles are too old and really need to be redesigned. For example, Space Shuttle Discovery was built in 1981! It is not scheduled to be retired until 2010.
Stop and think about the condition of most cars built in 1981. Would you want to just hop in and drive it across country? Of course you could make it drivable, which is what they have done with Discovery. But just as with cars, just because you fixed “this” and “this” and now it runs great doesn’t mean that “that” isn’t ready to break down.

I believe it’s time to hand over the space program to private companies. The government is not capable of running a business such as NASA. Of course the government would regulate space travel, just as they regulate all air traffic now. But think about how much better things would be built if it were to be handed over to companies such as Lockheed-Martin. Shuttles would be updated much more often and I truly think the cost would be much more reasonable. Can you explain to me why it is going to cost ONE MILLION DOLLARS just to fly the shuttle back to Florida??? The government is notorious for over pricing everything they touch.
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