NASA is backing away from its overaggressive launch schedule for the space shuttle Discovery by moving the launch date from May to July. This is not a set-back; it is a very good move.
NASA needs more time to complete the modifications to the Discovery and work to implement all the recommendations of the Columbia Disaster commission that NASA put together to investigate the causes of the break-up of shuttle Columbia over Texas two years ago.
The space agency had been making noise recently, saying that they were going to have to water down the recommendations in order to be able to launch the shuttle in May. Unacceptable!
NASA shouldn’t even consider igniting a rocket booster that blasts seven human beings, a 4.3 million pound machine with three engines and tens of thousands of moving parts, a large fuel tank filled with 1.6 million pounds of propellant, two solid rocket boosters and the hopes and dreams of an entire nation into space by weakening their own safety rules.
Hopefully they’ll delay it again (if they have to) in order to fix the problems.
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