WELL, DUH
... by sonya hammond
WELL, DUH
...
by sonya
hammond
Lately it would not seem too unreasonable to demand that an international IQ test be taken by anyone anywhere on the planet who acquires a position that requires making decisions, spending and/or wasting public funds, or even making speeches. [I would recommend this to the UN, but they're too busy trying to figure out how to get their peace-keeping forces to keep even the most tenuous sort of peace.]
In the meantime I offer a few cases in point that someone, somewhere, might ponder:
Although the Mir space station 'Spektr' was punctured and de-pressurized when an unmanned cargo craft crashed into it during a manual docking practice directed by the craft's commander Vasily Tsibliyev, Russian Mission Control saw no reason to abandon ship.
Shortly afterward, the crew, which included American astronaut Michael Foale, felt the pressure on board begin to drop ... an indication that air was escaping. When Foale dashed for the airtight hatch that would seal it off, he found it blocked by cables [has anyone in Moscow considered the concept of maintenance?] Foale connected the cables, thereby losing about 40% of Mir's power.
Things went from bad to far worse when the outer space version of Murphy's Law brought fire, drought, power outages, and oxygen-generator failure, topped off by another collision with another spacecraft. Not too surprisingly, Mir's Russian commander began to complain of heart palpitations.
After a good deal of grumbling about crew inadequacies, Russian ground experts offered a lot of unhelpful advice, and at one point suggested that the American [who had minimal space-walking experience several years ago] could trot out and look things over on the outside. Houston actually considered this for a while. Eventually, someone with less brain damage did have the foresight to cancel the scheduled arrival of a French astronaut.
Working under conditions that everyone agreed could be life-threatening, the crew failed to solve any of the major problems, while encountering several new ones. Complaining about this and everything else, Moscow Mission Control eventually had the brilliant idea of sending up a new repair crew.
In the meantime, the cosmonauts departed, leaving the American to watch the store from the relative safety of the 'Soyuz' escape pod, but his fellow crew members were not greeted warmly on their return to Russia to face several weeks of debriefing. If President Yeltsin had his way, it would probably be done by the KGB. The cost of repairing the damage [some of which can never be fixed] will run to $2-2.5 million ... to keep an 11-year old wreck in orbit.
Someone might suggest to the Russians that if pride does indeed 'goeth before a fall', they could save face by dumping the Mir, since in this case the length of the fall could make the Guinness book of Records.
###
Meanwhile,
back at the Pentagon, no one seemed particularly disturbed when the Air Force discovered
that the world's most expensive airplane has a 'flaw'.
I'm terrible at math, but at $2 billion a crack, 14 B-2 stealth bombers already delivered [of which only 8 are actually flying], and 21 more being built, come to around $72 billion, providing the planes aren't equipped with those expensive toilet seats the Pentagon likes so much.
This would seem to represent enough money to at least make a start on curing our diseased 'health system', making some headway in aiding the homeless, and taking a shot at the national debt, with maybe a bit left over to send a few Republican congressmen to sensitivity training instead of the Bahamas.
Actually, the ante could grow, considering the news that in order to avoid 'costly' repairs [the Pentagon experiences no other kinds], the B-2 cannot be exposed to anything but the most 'benign' environments, possibly those limited to its hangar or the middle of the Sahara in summer.
It seems that our technological marvel, designed to defeat radar and allow sneaking around without detection, becomes [gasp] visible, to say nothing of damaged, when exposed to any sort of moisture. This rather limits the areas in which the B-2 can slink, since it must avoid rain and even humidity, although its original mission was to fly 'anywhere' in the world to do whatever it would do if it were dry enough.
To test the moisture theory, some bright Air Force official [an oxymoron if I ever wrote one] sent a bomber out to fly around the Pacific Northwest to 'look for rainstorms in which to fly', as though that were a 'mission impossible'. Of course rain is only available somewhere in the Pacific Northwest 366 days in the year, but go figure.
In spite of its dampness flaw, the Air Force maintains that the B-2 is still of 'enormous value', although 'it might be unrealistic to deploy the planes without "shelters"' to protect their stealthy coatings.
The solution, with typical Pentagon logic, is to build more climate-controlled shelters that run around $105 million each.
But, hey, even though testing shows that the B-2's can perform their missions only 26% of the time, nobody's even considering giving up on them. At least not as long as Congress keeps dishing out funds to dry them out.
It's enough to make you wish that someone would take the advice of the wag who suggested that since the B-2's are 'invisible' [at least when flying on absolutely dry days, and providing the crew doesn't drink], the Air Force should announce that they are building thousands of them ... and then not do it.
###
Then there's the tobacco executive who publicly admits that 'smoking may be linked to cancer'. In fact, says the chief of RJ Reynolds, he 'has always believed that smoking plays a part in causing lung cancer'.
And the chairman of Philip Morris Cos. admits that smoking 'might have' killed 100,000 Americans.
Duh ...
© sonya hammond 1997