From Warren Ellis's Bad Signal mailing list:
(go to his site with the link above to sign up if you like, and yes Gunny I do worship this guy)


I imagine most of you spent yesterday
much the same way I did. Watching
the news whenever you could. I
doubt I have to explain to many
of you my fascination with spaceflight.

Poring over the footage. The bright
light is wrong -- Shuttle's descent
is unpowered. Watching the flaring
streams head in the same direction
with matched velocity, which
indicates a break-up, not an
explosive catalyst event.

A pulse of thickened smoke in the
trail -- fuel lighting off.

The cascade of sensor failures
from the edge of the left wing. The
initial response from America was
burn-through, from damage taken
to the heat shield tiles at launch,
when External Tank insulation broke
off and struck the wing at launch.
NASA explaining that even if tile
damage had been confirmed, there
is no procedure for repairing them
in orbit -- that, in fact, EVAs are
restricted to the payload bay.
Silence in the press room as
reporters digest that Shuttle is as
low-impact as crewed spaceflight
comes.

The Russian analysis of the footage
pointed to structural compromise,
early in the day, while NASA was
still fielding questions about terrorism.

By the end of the day, secondary
speculation was centering on burn-
through leading to structural
break-up, reinforced by the discovery
of human remains. This isn't
Challenger. The crew weren't
vaporised. Their boat fell apart
around them.

ISS has a Soyuz boat attached. The
three crew aboard may well end up
using that to get home. After
Challenger, the Shuttle fleet was
grounded for two and a half years.
If the US economic downturn
continues, it can't afford ISS in any
case. It may become an empty
house, perhaps occasionally pumped
back into its orbit by a Russian
engine.

Today, the Observer is reporting
the thing no-one will want to hear
-- that a veteran NASA engineer
has been trying to warn NASA
and the White House for the last
couple of years about the likelihood
of catastrophic failure due to
mismanagement. The Shuttles are
old boats, built by low-bidders on
the old boy network. Boeing, who
last week posted a year-on-year
loss of half a billion dollars.

I didn't think about ORBITER until
about an hour after loss of signal,
when I got an email from DC PR
Patty Jeres, asking if Colleen and I
were okay. All day, whenever the
book occurred to me, I found myself
cursing myself for a prick.
--Orbiter is a book that Warren is working on for DC comics and Colleen Doran is the artist. The story involves spaceflight--E.H.
Right now, I have no doubt that the
book will come good. It's about
aspiration, reclaiming spaceflight,
getting things back and becoming
great through adversity.

Despite Bush's snivelling Bible class
dressed as a press statement, I
don't have the same confidence
about American crewed spaceflight
today. There are no Shuttle replacements --
they were all allowed to die off. And
the fleet now comprises three
ageing boats that have been
seriously patched back together over
the last few years.

America held all of the world's hopes
for spaceflight. if America turns
away from crewed spaceflight,
all that's left is the occasional
Soyuz and the Chinese taikonaut
program, both of which are spam-in-
a-can, 1960's spaceflight.

From my perspective today, that
may be all that's left.

-- W

I think I agree with Warren here, if the Shuttle fleet is grounded, and it probably should be at this point if they are really falling apart, as they apparantly are. With us in a downward facing economy I don't really see any alternatives being produced anytime soon, and commercial spaceflight is still not really feasible yet.

This isn't terrorism, it's just shoddy old workmanship like the Watts Barr Nuclear Power Plant that never really fully opened around my hometown that my parents still live within the evacuation perimiter of. The shuttles are old, this was the oldest. These things are much more complicated than the average automobile, and in this day and age, I wouldn't trust most cars on a trip from Chattanooga to Atlanta, much less to outer space and back. I think NASA is going to be doing unmanned probes for awhile now, and there isn't really going to be a US presence on the ISS anymore for awhile.

Mothball the shuttles and bring those flying saucers that they talk about on Art Bell that the government has out of the shadows. I'd trust a flying saucer to get me to at least the moon and back.

Today's code word is Swipt, 1/30's code word was Blort (sorry I forgot then)