Off it goes.......











(Courtesy: NASA)

Well.. Well.. Well..NASA after a looooong and costly investigation of the failed Columbia mission, successfully launched Space Shuttle Discovery and it has also successfully docked with the International Space Station. For the past two days, it has been fun to watch NASA Live TV where the action is shown live right from the chatter talk between the Shuttle crew members and Ground Control, and some knowledgable commentary by NASA PR people. It is literally awesome to see earth from the perimter of the Space Shuttle. Good job NASA for the great images..
Well, after all the ravings lets start the ranting. The mission is not without its grey area. In contrast to NASA's overconfidence on the external fuel tank's insulation, a chunk of insulation did fall off. This has severly dented NASA's confidence with the safety of the tank and so the safety of the Shuttle crew, thus ground the future (foreseeable) missions to a screeching halt. It is highly surprising that even after NASA knew that it wont be able to completly correct foam shaving problem from the external fuel tank, all it did was to just patch up the faults in the foam coating design and not totally re-design the entire fuel tank. Its easy to say that it all boils down to dollars, as the tank is reused and it is cheap to just refine what we have than redo from scratch. But if NASA doesnt fix the foam problem, it is highly unlikely that the Shuttle program would continuue or would be used to its fullest extent before retiring it in 2010.
Coming to the next point, has the Shuttle program lived upto its expectation in the last 25 years. If one compares the overhyped Shuttle with clanky Russian Soyuz, it would be crystal clear that Soyuz has a better safety record and much cheap mode of transport between earth and space station. If that is the case, why NASA still sticks with its risky Shuttle design? First EGO, that Americans always design a better product.. Its bullshit.. Even a first year Mechanical Engineering student would say that during renentry path the lesser the amount of space area exposed to heat, the better chance of shielding from it and returning to earth safely. Soyuz fits as a glove to do the job of shuttling the astronauts and supplies back and forth and safely bring them back home.. It is clunky, small but due to its compact nature has less area to be shielded from renentry burning. While, the US shuttle are beautiful to see and has large space, but it is one of the most complex thing ever built by human being and most flimsiest. Most people dont know that the tiles used in space shuttle are so flimsy that it cant even land back on earth when it is drizzling.
The ISS program is being boasted as a joint collabration program involving a dozen countries. For the success of the program and for the advancement of science, let hope that NASA put some logical thinking and be rational in whatever it does.