$424 MILLION DOLLARS...FLUSH

Another reason why NASA is committing suicide:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It looks like the rocket carrying an Earth-observation satellite was in the Pacific Ocean after a failed launch attempt early Friday, NASA said.

The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted off around 2:10 a.m. PST from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

A half-billion dollars for one satellite and they dump it in the ocean.

How is it - that after over fifty years of putting things into orbit - They STILL have these failures because something as simple and basic as a cover didn't work right?

The NASA report:

Investigators spent several months testing hardware, interviewing engineers and reviewing data and documents. The probe did not find evidence of widespread testing negligence or management shortcomings, but NASA declined to release the full accident report, citing sensitive and proprietary information.

Note the bit about "widespread testing negligence or management shortcomings". That says volumes all by itself.

But I know how these guys think. Translation:

If we told you what really happened we would end up with egg on our face, lose some funding and have to fire some of our very close friends and buddies. Some of us might even have our careers negatively impacted!

And maybe you taxpayers might start demanding some real value in return for all those hundreds of millions we squander on grotesquely overpriced pieces of hi-tech flim-flammery that are really hardly more than exotic pieces of orbiting test equipment.

You know what? They could have put those detectors that were to "analyze how airborne particles affect Earth's climate" on the space station and let the station crew operate the equipment... Thereby getting a bit more work out of those incredibly expensive boys and girls we put into orbit.

What was it we built the space station for anyway? Other than to be a platform for exactly something like this?

There are those who believe the space station has returned close to zero for all our investment, that it's hardly more than an incredibly expensive playhouse for our orbiting Ken's and Barbies.

There are positions in NASA's management that - perhaps even knowingly - seem dedicated to the destruction of our space effort.

We lost a space shuttle because a piece of insulation separated from the fuel tank and hit the leading edge of the wing. Why did the insulation fall off? Because some idiot in NASA management forced a change in the glue that held it on. The new glue was inferior, but it was a an all-new more earth-friendly GREEN glue. NASA knew it was inferior, so the survival of the spacecraft and crew became less important than NASA showing us how it could be green.

NASA is doing a sterling job of screwing itself.

Stay tuned. It won't be too much longer to when the Houston space center will look like just another part of Detroit's industrial districts... Rat infested and deserted.

A lesson NASA refuses to learn:

That an engineer who graduated Magna Cum Laude from a prestigious University and can design a trans-warp galaxy-crossing spaceship usually can't physically build anything worth a damn, no matter what they believe or claim. It takes experienced Craftsmen to build stuff that works the first time - every time. But NASA no longer employees real craftsmen. They now employ only highly educated engineers that build over-engineered contraptions like the shroud that failed... resulting in Half a billion taxpayer dollars down the drain.

But what the hell - it's only money. Just print some more.