Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!husc6!rice!titan!phil
From: phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Spencer's signature
Message-ID: <2081@kalliope.rice.edu>
Date: 31 Oct 88 18:44:49 GMT
References: <1988Oct28.180827.25578@utzoo.uucp> <2074@kalliope.rice.edu> <2934@sugar.uu.net>
Sender: usenet@rice.edu
Reply-To: phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre)
Organization: Rice University, Houston
Lines: 65

In article <2934@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <2074@kalliope.rice.edu>, phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
>> In article <1988Oct28.180827.25578@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>> >The dream *IS* alive... but not at NASA.
>
>>...I still take offense at Henry's signature.
>
>I take offense at your taking offense.

And I take offense at your taking offense at my taking offense!
(Good Lord! :-)

>You've complained before.

And I'll do it again if I want to, so there!  :-)

>We know you have a much more positive view of NASA than Henry.

Yes, because I know people there.  And I know that they are committed to a
flourishing space program.

>But the proper response is not to complain...

And Henry's blanket statement ridiculing the entirety of NASA is "proper"?

>it's to give those of us who are getting more than a little tired of
>NASA's tendency to throw away working systems something
>to be hopeful about.

Perhaps if the dolts up in Washington would stop playing roulette with
NASAs future, NASA could get something done.

Look people:  I'm not saying that NASA is flawless.  Far from it.  I hear
about so many internal problems at JSC that they make my head spin (and no
I'm not going to repeat any of them....it wouldn't be "proper").  I am
simply offended at the "hasty generalization" that Mr. Spencer made.  Any
organization of non-trivial size will have problems.  Any government
organization will have more than it's share of problems (this seems to be
a general rule of thumb).  But saying, in effect, that no one at NASA
cares is grossly unfair.

>It's sad, not funny. And if it's not true, how about some good dope?

Many people at JSC worked very hard to get Discovery up in orbit in again.
And it happened.  To me, that's "good dope".  And they are on track to get
the next one up pretty much on schedule (end of November).  They have also
come up with a way to make sure that the "unexpected upper air currents"
problem (the one that threatened to keep Discovery on the ground) won't
hold them back in the future.  And it only took them about a month!  The
revamped SRB's did their job.  Inspection showed no problems.

And just to show how difficult this shuttle business really is, the first
launch of Buran had to be delayed because of technical problems.  This is
not "good dope" but it is instructive.

I said I didn't want to start an argument.......sigh.

Henry stated his opinion.  I stated mine.  I would like to leave it at
that, but I guess that some people out there will make me defend my
opinion.  So be it.

			William LeFebvre
			Department of Computer Science
			Rice University
			<phil@Rice.edu>