NASA: King of the Daredevils

Today the History Channel ran a special on the career of motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel. By coincidence, CSPAN2 happened to be replaying a NASA press conference at the same time.

If you flipped back and forth between the two channels, the resemblance was startling.

There was Evel Knievel in the 1970s, battling technical problems as he prepared to jump Snake River Canyon in Idaho in a flashy rocket, surrounded by cameras and cheering crowds.

That particular jump didn't go very well.

So there was Evel Knievel, talking to the press, explaining what went wrong.

And there was Evel Knievel, jumping his Harley-Davidson over thirteen Greyhound buses, over fourteen Greyhound buses, over fifty-two cars, as the crowds screamed and cheered and held their breath and jumped to their feet.

Of course, there's no point at all to jumping a motorcycle over an impossible distance just to see if you can do it without being killed.

Just like there's no point at all to launching the space shuttle.

NASA says the shuttle Discovery is on "a rather pedestrian mission" to bring supplies to the half-completed space station, where a crew of two is about to increase to a crew of three.

USA Today says the shuttle is on a mission to pick up the trash. The space station is so crammed, the paper reported, that the astronauts can't even find their big-screen television.

If the shuttle is a motorcycle stunt on a rocket, the space station is a flagpole-sitting contest.

What is the point? Just to see if we can keep people on a flying Winnebago for months at a time without killing them?

Don't take my word for it. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told USA Today last fall that it is now commonly accepted that the space shuttle and the space station were mistakes. They never leave the Earth's orbit, he explained, so they don't accomplish anything in the way of space exploration.

The NASA officials at Tuesday's press conference said the crew of the shuttle Discovery is presently examining the orbiter's exterior for signs of damage from the six pieces of insulating foam that flew off the external fuel tank during launch. If there's damage to the heat shield, the astronauts will live at the space station until NASA can get the shuttle Atlantis off the ground to go and rescue them. Discovery will be flown home by remote control so that if it burns up on re-entry, it won't kill anybody.

So Discovery's mission is this: get off the ground safely, carry enough supplies so the crew members don't starve to death during an emergency stay on the space station, and fly home without exploding in a fireball.

If NASA is going to do Evel Knievel's act, the least they could do is get the astronauts some better looking jumpsuits.


Copyright 2006

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