Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!enea!kth!draken!liuida!uda
From: uda@majestix.liu.se (Ulf Dahlen)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Bad self-confidence
Message-ID: <955@majestix.liu.se>
Date: 3 Oct 88 22:38:06 GMT
Organization: CIS Dept, Univ of Linkoping, Sweden
Lines: 33

It is really quite astonishing reading all these articles saying how awfully
stupid and ill-planned the US Space Program is, how much better everybody
else is, how absolutely sure everyone was that the SRBs was just on the verge
of falling apart and so on. Don't you Americans have any self-confidence
left? I still consider the US the leader in Space and I'm sure I'm not alone.

An accident was bound to come. But NASA has shown itself capable of handling
this. Of course there will be more accidents in the future, and of course
there will be people screwing things up. The real difference betweed US and
Russia is that your explosions are shown live on TV, Russia's are covered up
and never mentioned publically [we may see some change here though, with
Gorbatjov, glasnost and perestrojka].

Haven't you guys seen "Kelly's Heroes"? Then you should have learned not
to spread these negative vibrations around. Think positive!

I don't mean to say there isn't any problems, and that you shouldn't try
to improve the US Space Program, but I really think you are giving yourself
to hard a punishment.

The benefits of having humans, not just robots, in space are really
significant. The Space Shuttle *is* basically a good idea.  In say 200
years time it will be remembered as the start of the Space Era.

[Sorry if I've misspelled anything or done some other injustice to your
language...]
__________
Ulf Dahlen
Dept of Computer & Info Science, University of Linkoping, Sweden
Troskaregatan 51:23       |     uda@ida.liu.se
S-583 30  LINKOPING       |     uda@majestix.liu.se, uda@majestix.UUCP
SWEDEN                    |     {mcvax,munnari,seismo}!enea!liuida!uda
"The beginning is a very delicate time."