The Curse Has Come Upon Us

Has environmentalism doomed the Shuttle Program?

In 1997, during the 87th space shuttle mission, similar tile damage occurred during launch. NASA's Greg Katnik stated in his December 1997 review of the problems of STS-87: "During the STS-87 mission, there was a change made on the external tank. Because of NASA's goal to use environmentally friendly products, a new method of 'foaming' the external tank had been used for this mission and the STS-86 mission."

NASA was just responding to pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency to stop using Freon, a fluorocarbon that greenies claim damages the ozone layer, in the manufacture of its thermal-insulating foam. But the politically correct foam was known to be less sticky and more brittle under extreme temperatures.

Hannes Hacker, an aerospace engineer and former flight controller at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, states: "The risk of a piece of debris falling off and causing significant damage to the shuttle's thermal protection system was 10 times greater with the new material than the old material."

You see, this is the just the sort of thing I was talking about in my previous post on Unintelligent Design.

The PC curse has come upon us, and, like the Lady of Shallot, we can lay down and die while the boat is helplessly carried downriver--or maybe, just maybe, we can once again follow the dictates of science and banish superstition and the worship of political correctness.

It is a rather unforgiving universe out there, you know.

BTW, ShrinkWrapped is writing a multi-part series on political correctness and how it distorts reality testing (surprise!). It is definitely worth checking out. Here is the link to the first of the series.