I was at college, walking up the stairs to my dormroom when I heard about it. I spent the rest of the day glued to my little TV in our room.
As I watched the video that was being replayed over and over, one moment struck me: The twin trails of smoke from the booster rockets looked like the wide-spread arms of a giant in the sky.
It was immediately obvious that there would be no survivors. I cried, and prayed that they never had a chance to know what happened, and feeling awful for all the school kids watching the teacher take off, on TVs at schools around the world.
The cause was later determined to be a simple, small, faulty O-ring. It would be months later before any human remains were recovered, found at the bottom of the ocean.
#SpacePolitics
“It got funded as a #rocket to #nowhere, and we at #NASA had to figure out something to do with it,” #Garver says. Legacy contractors like #Boeing continued to receive large bonus payments 💰 for working on the #SLS, despite delays and mushrooming #costs.
Critics of the #SLS argue that the rocket is #unsustainable by #design, relying on an old and potentially quite #expensive way to get to #space. Much of SLS is a holdover from the #spaceshuttle. But while the shuttle #orbiter, #engines, and external #tanks were designed to be #reusable, SLS and its engines were not.
“They’ve designed a rocket that is basically #unsustainable, because it’s completely #throwaway. The only bit that comes back is #Orion”
Ms. Stirone is a space writer. Dr. Chiao is a former NASA #astronaut. Ms. Garver is a former deputy administrator of NASA. Dr. Grinspoon is an #astrobiologist
📆 October 1, 2023 There are now 190 #Indian 🇮🇳 #space start-ups, twice as many 📈 as a year earlier, with private investments jumping by 77 percent 📈 between 2021 and 2022. The #ISRO budget remains relatively modest at $1.9 billion 💰 in 2022, six times smaller than the #Chinese 🇨🇳 #SpaceProgram. India says it accounts for two percent of the $386 billion 💰 global #SpaceEconomy, a share it hopes to increase to nine percent by 📆 2030 https://phys.org/news/2023-10-india-private-space-sector-skyrockets.html
Wild West Space Program (clips.twitch.tv)