Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys

[IronMike 0]

http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030201221302.dwiwy6hf.html

Only a friggin Frenchman! How many times have we (US) saved their ungrateful asses??? Their Ariane Rocket program explodes about half the time. Im swearing off French Toast and French Fries...Screw em'!

Mike

[CrazyIvan 0]

I second that.

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[AirMail 0]

Shuttle should be taken out of service like the Concorde, right?

Patrick

--
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
Postal Rodriguez, Muff 3342

[billvon 3,063]

>Only a friggin Frenchman! How many times have we (US) saved their ungrateful
> asses???

What does that have to do with whether a French astronaut thinks that the Columbia was past its service life? As I recall, we had a few opinions over whether the Concorde was past its prime after its fatal accident, where far more people were killed.

Edit - we seem to be saying the same thing ourselves. From the LA times:

"Leaks in fuel lines. Cracked door hinges. Pitted and stained exteriors. Even holes drilled by woodpeckers. As America's space shuttle fleet has aged, its obvious scars and glitches have accumulated. So have deep fears about its safety."

[MrHixxx 0]

Only an American government would under fund a space program that might be our only recourse as we quickly exhaust the resources and inhabitability of our own planet. Carl Sagan had some really interesting comments on our governments support or lack of support for our space program in "Pale Blue Dot".

-Hixxx

death,as men call him, ends what they call men
-but beauty is more now than dying’s when

[IronMike 0]

The Concorde accident had nothing to do with age or # of cycles. If it turns out that a piece of insulation that fell off a brand new fuel tank damaged the orbiter, neither will age be a factor in the Columbia accident either.

This Frenchman, who liked the Shuttle enough to ride on it should have at least waited a bit before bashing OUR shuttle, Space Station and pissing on the graves of the crew by saying what they were doing had no purpose. His timing was extremely poor.

The French are historically arrogant and ungrateful.

Mike

[riddler 0]

I am an American and I think that the shuttle should have been retired years ago.

I also used to work in the space program and with missions that launched off the space shuttle - I had to work with flight software that interfaced with it.

I did work on one program that was supposed to be a replacement for the space shuttle. We got funding and even built a half-scale prototype. It got axed - the prototype didn't perform as well as expected. But that wasn't the reason that the program was canceled - the government just felt that the space shuttle was the most reliable and cost-effective way into space. I personally feel their decision came down to money more than anything.

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[billvon 3,063]

>This Frenchman, who liked the Shuttle enough to ride on it should
> have at least waited a bit before bashing OUR shuttle, Space Station
> and pissing on the graves of the crew by saying what they were
> doing had no purpose. His timing was extremely poor.

I agree his timing was poor, but it's hard to criticize him any more than the american sources doing exactly the same thing. He is more of an expert than any of us.

>The French are historically arrogant and ungrateful.

I've found them to be pretty nice, myself. Just because the US has been attacking a lot of countries lately doesn't make it more likely that an american tourist will open up with an AK-47 in a disco. Similarly, just because the french government has done some arrogant things doesn't mean that french citizens are any more arrogant or ungrateful.