BETTER PACK A COUPLE EXTRA PAIRS OF UNDERWEAR, BOYS: Today NASA grounded the space shuttle program until its engineers determine the effect, if any, of the debris that fell off of the Discovery during Tuesday's launch.
Maybe I'm just stupid, but won't they know the effect of the debris when the Discovery returns to Earth on August 7? Like, um, when they see if the shuttle blows up or not?
Ah, but reading further, one sees that NASA has a contingency plan: should Discovery turn out to be irreparably damaged, the astronauts will take refuge in the space station until a rescue mission can be launched. Which presumably would involve launching another space shuttle to pick up the Discovery astronauts. But wait -- the program is grounded. So I guess someone at NASA will have to call someone fom the Russian Space Agency: "Guys? Can you send someone to go pick up our astronauts at the space station? Our shuttle has a flat tire."
Just to add to the Keystone Kops feel of the entire thing, the "grounding of the program" has a certain irony to it given that at the moment, there are no future launches scheduled.
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