[ExI] environmental friendliness blamed for both shuttle losses

[Damien Sullivan]

On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 08:46:07AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> >From http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33782
> 
> Oh, and don't overlook the part where the writer says
> The original report is still there on NASA's website for any other 
> enterprising journalist to go see for himself or herself.

> (i.e. 
> http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/people/journals/space/katnik/sts87-12-23.html)

I did look at that.  The change to a foam that doesn't require freon for
its production is mentioned as one *possible* cause.  Another one is

'The aerodynamics of the roll to "heads up." The STS-87 mission was the
first time this maneuver had ever been completed.'

And the investigation is described as ongoing.

> "Six months before the Challenger disaster, a July 23, 1985,
> memo by budget analyst Richard Cook warned about new
> burn-through problems with O-rings.
> 
> " 'Engineers have not yet determined the cause of the problem,'
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^6
> he wrote. 'Candidates include the use of a new type of putty (the
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> putty formerly used was removed from the market by NASA
> because it contained asbestos).'

> As long as I am the only one reporting that NASA has for 20 years
> put petty "environmental correctness" ahead of the lives of
> astronauts, I do not expect future missions to be any safer.

Ah yes, petty concerns like the integrity of the ozone layer.

> visible. Insidious processes everywhere, multiplying
> the costs of everything. Who knows how much more
> progress there'd have been since 1983 (twenty-five
> years!)  without this collectivist/idealist fucking with
> the economy?

What's so collectivist or idealist about preventing pollution?  Do you
endorse imposing the effects of production on non-consenting parties?

> P.S.  Oh---and for the distracting and irrelevant
> attacks on who published this. Are we automatically
> to reject out of hand everything that Pravda ever
> said just because Stalin was wicked? Civilized and

Treating anything Pravda published under Communist rule with extreme
doubt is pretty warranted, yes.

> rational discourse *demands* paying attention to the
> arguments themselves, not to who puts them forward
> or where they're published.

"bounded rationality".  We can't afford to think indefinitely about
everything someone presents to us.  At some point we have to use
heuristics to weed out probable garbage, and when a source is frequently
inaccurate or massively biased, it behooves us to ignore it.

Here, we have cherrypicking (highlighting environmental candidates but
not other ones) and use of intermediate reports, not final ones.

-xx- Damien X-)