PunkAssBlog.com

This sounds like an excellent idea:

NASA decided Saturday to schedule the launch of the shuttle Discovery for July 1, despite the concerns of some top safety officials that the space agency has not solved the problem with flaky insulating foam, which brought down the shuttle Columbia in 2003.

Public Relations 101: When launching a shuttle for the first second time since a piece of foam broke off and blew the last shuttle up, do not dismiss concerns over foam breaking off.

I know foam is irritating, especially when it’s all flaky and not warm and smooshy (it looks like it should be warm and smooshy, dammit), but you can’t exactly fight a battle of wills with it. I reckon foam’ll do whatever foam’ll do.

And based on the words of the chief engineer and head safety official, it may get ornery:

Two members of the shuttle-management team, chief engineer Christopher Scolese and head safety officer Bryan O’Conner, recommended the launch be delayed because of worries that foam on 37 brackets attached to the shuttle’s giant external tank could fall off and pose a hazard to the craft.

Unless those titles are conferred honorarily or a Holiday Inn Express was somehow involved, I would argue that if any two people had a right to ixnay the aunchlay, it’d be the chief engineer and head safety official. Not so much at NASA, where they appear to be more of a democratic institution:

But at the end of the two-day Flight Readiness Review, they were outvoted by the rest of the management team. The team thought that even if foam comes off, it would not endanger the seven-person crew.

After going on record recommending a delay, the dissenting officials said they did not oppose launching July 1.

Uh, if they were “outvoted” by the rest of the management team, doesn’t that mean they opposed launching July 1? When they counted the go/no-go votes and their two “no-go”s popped up, that’s as clear a message of opposition as they could send — short of breaking a bottle on the command console and asking if anybody wants some.

This is all very confusing. Fortunately, we have a bureaucrat on hand to explain:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials agreed that recommending against a launch but not opposing it sounded contradictory. Shuttle-program manager Wayne Hale said this was proof that NASA has changed in the wake of the Columbia accident.

After the loss of Columbia, it came out that some officials had been worried about the 1.7-pound piece of foam that could be seen hitting the left wing during launch. Their concerns were brushed aside.

Now, said Hale, every voice is heard, even if it sends a somewhat confusing message to the public.

Then:
1) Some officials were worried about foam.
2) “Their concerns were brushed aside.”
3) Boom.

Now:
1) Some officials are worried about foam.
2) Their concerns have been brushed aside.
3) TBD

For NASA to take any credit for improvement, points 1) and 2) should differ in more than tense. Despite the old folk saying, the more things stay the same, the more they do not in fact change.

Via Sadly, no we find a less friendly version of the story in which we learn that the democratic NASA ballot box was stuffed by Bush appointee Dr. Michael Griffin:

The head of the US space agency, Dr Michael Griffin, overruled warnings that there was a “relatively high” chance the shuttle’s external fuel tank could shed some of its solid foam coating when it launches on 1 July, carrying seven crew including Briton Piers Sellers, an Edinburgh University graduate.
[…]
During a weekend meeting at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Dr Griffin gave the final nod for next month’s mission, despite what he called an “intensive and spirited exchange” with senior colleagues who recommended a “no-go”. “We have elected to take the risk,” he said.

To recap, NASA sees the following as tautologies:
-”we” and “I”
-having foam problems and not having foam problems
-why you have a chief safety official and simply having a chief safety official
-voting against something and not opposing it
-being outvoted and being overruled by a dweeby Bushco tool
-changing and not changing

I’m thrilled these men are in charge of such a complicated, delicate process. Perhaps we should simply turn everything over to these guys.