http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11825869/

"NASA managers on Tuesday delayed the space shuttle Discovery's launch from May until at least July 1 while engineers replace four fuel-level sensors in the shuttle's external tank.

These fuel sensors are responsible for making sure the shuttle's main engines shut down safely at the right time to get the spacecraft into its desired orbit. One of the four sensors was giving bad readings during testing at a Louisiana assembly facility. The tank is now at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the replacement work will be done.

After debating the issue, the shuttle management team decided on Tuesday "to be conservative and take the safe route, and replace the sensors that are in the tank," shuttle program manager Wayne Hale told reporters during an afternoon news briefing at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston."


Thoughts?

I wouldn't fly on that deathtrap.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Sure you would, its got a 98.3% success ratio. Thats better than any experimental program I am aware of, especially considering its only flown 114 times. Live a little...

I wish they'd delay it indefinetly and put our money to better use.

True, if we invest more in a welfare state problems we currently face will vanish and a utopian society will spontaneously emerge without the benefit of advanced technology developed by a spacefaring race.... Why didn't I think of that? Things are really going splendid for us here on earth.

Probably would get absorbed into the Iraqi occupation budget.

True, and its hard to vertically integrate the shuttle orbiter in baghdad. Though you could make one hell of an improvised explosive device out of the main tank or the solid rocket boosters. We should just donate our excess launch capacity to the insurgency, might motivate us to vacate the country when the roadside bombs have the explosive potential of a small nuclear warhead. Hinny, you are a goddamned genius.

Heh, I'm saying that if the money wasn't spent on the launch, chances are that it'll get thrown into the Iraq budget. But hey. These things are nuclear powered, right? Done the right way, we could get conclusive proof of an Iraqi nuclear program!

I heard you guys have no national public health insurance system. How is that not a vote winner over and above these space programs?

Short answer "Because we aren't socialists... yet.".

Our space program also employs millions of americans researching and developing bleeding edge technology. Of the 17 trillion or so dollars in the US budget 16 billion goes to NASA, per capita Americans spends less than 18 dollars a year on the space program. In return for this minimal investment they have cell phones, microprocessors, advanced weather forecasting, and nifty carbon fiber shift knobs for their Honda Civics.

I wanna launch a rocket from Australias Woomera Test Range, would you object?

My idea of "better use" would to be to give the taxpayers a break. I'm not sure what IEB! would do with it, though.

Ok, you're excused. Proceed with the tax cuts at your leisure.

I defer to the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land there.

I thought the Aborigines had no concept of land ownership.

This somehow makes think of the episode of the Simpsons where Homer joins a shuttle crew.