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New York Post, Sunday, September 25, 2005, page 29. HEADLINE: Mrs. President: Five who could be the Very First Lady. Picture of Geena Davis who is playing the first woman president in a TV series, and then pictures and bios...

The moonbats who wanted to build an International "Freedom" Center at Ground Zero didn't care much for their options after Governor Pataki told them to take a hike yesterday. So, doggone it, they're just not going to build anywhere at...

At 50-years old, John Roberts is going to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court for a long, long time. In a vote that found half of the Senate Democrats voting to confirm him, a new era of America's...

The last few songs I've downloaded on iTunes: Heard It In a Love Song -- The Marshall Tucker Band. Black Water -- The Doobie Brothers. Sloop John B -- The Beach Boys. A Pirate Looks at Forty -- Jack Johnson,...

Michelle Malkin: Don't Get Stuck on StupidRadio Blogger has the transcript. Hat tip to California Conservative....

From today's The Hotline:NORTH DAKOTA: Karl's Roeven, Lookin' For A Candidate? ND GOP leaders say WH Dep. CoS Karl Rove's visit to ND provided a boost, no matter what happens after his scheduled meeting with Gov. John Hoeven (R). Rove...

The Utah State Fair website has some flipping sweet ads staring Napoleon Dynamote and his friend Pedro. Do you see any sasquatches? Hat Tip to Lone Prairie....

NASA administrator says space shuttle was a mistake

Any good "hard" science fiction fan was capable of making this analysis. Among others, rocketeer Homer Hickham, author and main character of October Sky retired from NASA and wrote a novel titled Back to the Moon in which NASA is given a pretty good black eye for having become moribund with bureaucracy and political correctness.

Latest in this feeling that NASA had lost its direction comes from no less than the NASA chief administrator himself:

The space shuttle and International Space Station ? nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades ? were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday.

Griffin said NASA lost its way in the 1970s, when the agency ended the Apollo moon missions in favor of developing the shuttle and space station, which can only orbit Earth. ?It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path,? Griffin said. ?We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can.?

Reading between the lines, it appears to the Chief that NASA needed more von Braun and less Rube Goldberg in its design philosophy:

Asked Tuesday whether the shuttle had been a mistake, Griffin said, ?My opinion is that it was. ? It was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible.? Asked whether the space station had been a mistake, he said, ?Had the decision been mine, we would not have built the space station we're building in the orbit we're building it in.?

Sounds like we finally have a NASA chief worthy of the name after too many bureaucrats, program managers and barely-disguised political hatchetmen, and not nearly enough engineers in the lead. Hopefully now the Congresscritters will give Griffen the support needed to get us back on the road towards the stars. It's absolutely essential if our civilization is to continue to exist and improve itself.

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