Aziz Poonawala has a theory about what happened to Columbia. He thinks that the left gear door opened in flight.

I've no opinion on that, and it may be true, but it then begs the question...why? How would such a thing happen, on this of all flights? It still doesn't really solve the mystery.

But I'm really posting this to make this point. To me, it doesn't matter that much what the proximate cause of the accident was. As I've said in various venues, what surprised me was not that it happened, but that it took so long to happen, and that NASA was lucky for so long.

The Shuttle, as a program, is now, and always has been, a failure, in terms of the original goals set out for it. Now, it is a dead program walking. It may fly for a few years now, but I suspect that at the end of the day there will be a consensus that we have to have different means (and I mean this word in the plural sense) of getting people to and from orbit. Different in the sense that it is safe, affordable, often, routine, and varied. No more monocultures.

My focus is not on the technical details of exactly what went wrong (I am a recovering engineer, after all) but on what we're going to do to fix it, in a broad policy sense (not a Space Shuttle program sense).

I see this as a rare opportunity to actually change the tenor of the debate about space, and our future in it, and I'm going to emphasize issues relating to that, which I consider much more important. If you want blow-by-blow descriptions and theories of the forensics of the investigation, there will be many places to do so. This will not be one of them. I'm simply not that interested, which means that I won't want to take the time to discuss it, and my opinion won't count for much, because I'm not going to be paying much attention to it, except at the highest level, where there may be policy implications.

That is all.

Rand,
Could not decide where to put this post so here is as good as any place.

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh said that the NASA is a 90% commercilaized venture and that is what makes it great. I am not even sure what he meant by 90% commercialized. My feeling is that no matter who builds the parts, so long as government retains overall administartive control ITS A GOVERNMENT PROGRAM, not commercial. Now I, like you, think space should be exploited for profit and only profit will drive the future at an acceptable rate.

How do we take space back from NASA, and how do we let Joe Average know its not already a commercial venture?

If Rush said that, he has no idea what he's talking about. Perhaps he meant that most launches are commercial (which is true).

Space is an area in which Rush seems to have enthusiasm, but not a lot of knowledge.

Rand,

Well said. The proximate cause of the disaster is really of minimal concern in the grand scheme. Yes, NASA should do its best to figure it out, because they'll need the shuttle in the short term for missions until a replacement can come on-line, but what really matters is determining what our purpose in space really is. Here's hoping this accident will generate such a discussion.

Yeah, I heard it too. When it comes to scientific matters, Limbaugh has a tendency to let his enthusiams color his opinions. Nobody's perfect.

If anything, a 90% figure shows that replacing socialism with fascism (in the proper, economic sense of both words) isn't a solution.

He may have been refering to the Unitied Space Alliance. It runs most of the day-to-day actvities of Shuttle, including ground processing and cargo operations with NASA providing mission objectives and miminal oversight.

As to our purpose in space...it is the long term survival of the human race. If that is not the purpose, then there is no reason to go. And all the other "reasons" provided are nicities at best and crass justifications at worst.

Same as the reason to move of Africa eleventy-six million years ago.

If he was talking about USA, that's not commercial. Apparently he doesn't understand what "commercial" means.