Accident Waiting to Happen?

You know, I'm a big fan of the space program, particularly the glory days of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. I even think that a lot of the stuff they've done with the space shuttle program has been worth the effort. However, I don't think that relaxing the safety regulations on the first launch after a major catastrophe is the right way to return to space.

I also think that denying the astronauts the funding to do an EVA inspection of the spacecraft is unwise. Every night that I drive home from College City late, I do a walk-around of my car, I make sure that none of my lights are out, and that's just to keep the College City police from harassing me. This is a much more delicate situation than that.

I think it's high time for the space program to be opened up, and completely opened up, to private enterprise, entrepeneurs, and such. If I were running things, I'd probably scale manned spaceflight down quite a bit, and concentrate scientific research in two areas: orbital telescopes along the lines of the Hubble Space Telescope, and remote robotic probes such as Cassini-Huygens and the Mars Rovers.

For live web coverage of the shuttle launch, you can steer your web browser to Space.com, or I'm sure there's a link at NASA's website; you might want to stick with NASA's site, since you're paying for it already with your tax dollars.

What do you think? What direction should we as a country be steering our space program? And Poosh, "finding the Vorlons" is not a legitimate answer.