Scrap NASA

Back in the days before I knew what a blog was, I had written, for my own consumption, a passionate piece on why we needed manned space travel to Mars. One of my reasons was that I didn't think we were challenging NASA enough anymore. I've changed my mind. Manned exploration of Mars needs to be pulled off the table. In fact, now that the head of NASA has admitted that they may never be able to solve the problem of foam insulation falling off of the shuttle's external tank during launch, it may be time to rethink NASA all together.

NASA head Michael Griffin was on the Today Show this morning, and here are the words that concern me:

"We are trying to get it down to the level that cannot damage the orbiter," NASA administrator Michael Griffin told NBC's "Today."

"We will never be able to get the amount of debris shed by the tank down to zero," he said.

Never? The agency that figured out how to put a man on the moon in the pre-computer age can't figure out a way to stop foam from falling off of a fuel tank? I want to challenge this agency to put men on Mars and bring them back home to earth, and they can't solve the vexing problem of foam falling off of a fuel tank. Well shame on me for thinking the agency was still compotent. I'm not a rocket scientist, but I've already brainstormed a half dozen ways the keep the foam in place. I'm sure all of them would have some sort of problem with them, but I figure a good engineer could figure out a way to make at least one of them work. But here we have the head of the agency saying they can never get to zero.

I've been a big NASA a supporter over the years, but this disgusts me. With all the money it receives and all the supposed brain power it employs, one would think NASA could figure something out. Hell, wrap the damn tank in a highly durable chicken wire, spray a coating on it, and you're done! Maybe the NASA budget cutters were right. The challenge NASA needs is to figure out how to operate with less money.