I took some time to watch the NASA channel today on TV. I find it interesting that the press conference that NASA was holding in regards to the upcoming shuttle flights was informative and stunning in its inability to convey what is going on. THe most interesting part for me was a follow-up question that was asked about the state of the debris from the recent satellite collision. When they mentioned that there were concerns over the Hubble repair mission due to the impact I could understand that. I don’t see how there can be any discussions about scrubbing a mission when, as the NASA people admitted, they don’t even know the total amount of debris in orbit.
Huh?
The news is filled with how much danger there is in flying this mission now. CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC - all of them have carried the story. Now either the story is sensationalist or NASA is pulling numbers out of its hat. One or the other (probably both) is wrong. Neither does anyone any good. The public will think that NASA is either too risk averse and should go away or they will think that NASA is incompenent because they can’t pin down with any certainty what they are doing.
I wish I had the answer for fixing this mess.