Re: What was good enough for Challenger...
"I guess it's possible my downvoter isn't familiar with the particulars but if Mr Bridenstein isn't familiar with it, that's a problem in-and-of itself. Because it's Challenger that makes his attitude seem so utterly mind-bendingly out-of-touch, insensitive, and hubristic."
No, my guess is that your downvoter had spotted that you didn't fully comprehend the article - to quote
" We need to consider all options to meet the Exploration Mission-1 target launch date of June 2020, including launching on commercial rockets. pic.twitter.com/fR5b2NzPtg
— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) March 13, 2019"
What he is saying here is that they need to consider whether they should look at buying space on commercial services that are currently flying in order to achieve this particular goal, rather than just blindly continue with their own project which has yet to leave the ground and miss the target.
There's nothing in there where he says they should deliberately risk lives with an unproven launch platform just to meet an arbitrary timeline.
It seems a fairly enlightened and pragmatic approach from what is a (presumably) very clever but still none-the-less civil servant - maybe if you were to consider it in terms of your next holiday - should you book seats on a commercial airline operating an aircraft they've bought from Boeing or Airbus, or would now be a good time to start designing your own plane and learning how to fly it?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
