Time to kill the space shuttle

Some unsurprising news at least to me was just announced. NASA has grounded the space shuttle fleet because of continuing maintenence problems. The Discovery launch while sucessful had objects falling off the external film tank.

There will be no more shuttle launches until NASA engineers determine the effect of debris that fell from the shuttle Discovery during blastoff Tuesday, said Bill Parsons, space shuttle program manager. "We are treating it very seriously," he told reporters.

"Are we losing sleep over it? Not yet." He added, "We will continue to do the evaluation."

Discovery is due to return to Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 7. The date of the next planned mission had not been set.

A week ago I called for the shuttle program to be scraped. This news only strengthens the case.

James Joyner at OTB says the question begging to be asked is why we continue to spend billions of dollars to keep this program alive. The answer is simple- POLITICS. A few states, Florida for one have a financial stake in this program being kept alive. Will a politician with a spine come forward and call for an end to this waste?