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From WorldNetDaily: Stabbed by a burglar in his own garage, a Texas homeowner fought back, shooting the suspect three times. Danny Dunn of Corpus Christi told local KRIS-TV that when an intruder entered his home just before 6 a.m. yesterday,...

Today was a milestone day and I almost didn't realize it. This post you're reading is the 3,000th post since I moved to Typepad full-time in December of 2003; sometime today or last night long-time, valued commenter mike left the...

How does the old saying go about wherever the beautiful women are, so too is the revolution? If that's the case, we're winning. The exact wording of the phrase escapes me, and after visiting the link I think you'll see...

Victory Fund:Tuesday, October 25, 2005 5th Annual Gay and Lesbian Leadership Awards Annual Oate-Shrum Event Thursday, October 25, 2005 VIP Reception 5:30 Awards Ceremony 6-7pm 101 Constitution, NW Washington, DC HONOREES United States Senator Tom Daschle Mayor Richard M. Daley...

According to Matt Taibbi ("Hunter Thompson, but without the talent!"), Douglas Brinkley left his cats and his maid behind when he evacuated New Orleans. But that's all right, he did this probably knowing that Sean Penn was going to be...

I had some original thoughts on President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers, but now that I have time to blog on them I see all my thoughts have been taken by other bloggers. Since I can't come...

Foreign Policy is providing this interesting table of countries that have donated money and supplies to the United States for relief efforts for Katrina.America?s friends abroad, and even some of its foes, have responded to the horrific destruction to the...

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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