May 16 Now Earliest Date For Endeavour Launch 40
Bad news for anyone camped out in Florida waiting to get a glimpse of the long-expected, oft-delayed launch of the shuttle Endeavour: NASA has pushed the date of the launch back, to no earlier than May 16.
Re:Not an accident. (Score:4, Insightful)
I love the irony in your title--NASA of course really would prefer this launch be "not an accident" :-)
There may be a little bit of grandstanding involved, but NASA has been severely raked over the coals twice for not following safety procedures. One was for a relatively high-profile mission (Challenger, teacher in space), where there was a lot of pressure to launch and managers overrode or ignored engineers' warnings. Columbia, managers ignored warnings of possible damage, even overriding a request to have pictures of the wing taken by military assets in space. With the whole world watching these last missions (and this one in particular, thanks to the commander's wife being the congresswoman recovering from a point-blank shot to the head), they don't need another incident and accusations that they rushed things due to outside pressure.