Tom Overton has worked for NASA all his life. The 63-year-old integration manager, the man responsible for fitting the spaceship to its fuel tank and boosters, joined the agency when he was 15. He insists the shuttle is a magnificent craft, but admits to two serious deficiences.
“The first is that it is so expensive. It costs hundreds of millions of fly it,” he said. “The second is that it is so big. It is a space truck. It could carry a tour bus with 50 people in it. We just don’t need that any more. However, I will be very said when it is gone.”
Over the years, Overton has witnessed significant changes to the shuttle program.
“When we started integrating the shuttle orbiter, payload, fuel tanks and booster, we used to be able to do that in 35 days. In fact, the record is 29 days. But as soon as we had fatalities that changed. Now we take about 120 days to put it all together. That, of course, drives up the cost,” he said.
“When we have a tragedy like Challenger or Columbia, we have to look at its cause and put it right. That also gives us time to look at other things that might go wrong. We redesigned the foam that fell off and damaged Columbia, for example. But we also thought about other issues and came up with a plan that allows the astronauts to check the shuttle’s insulation tiles once they are in orbit,” he said.
“The thing about this job is that you know the people that fly on these machines. You know their families. The last thing you want to do is to lose them. Challenger was very hard. I was standing with the mother and father of the teacher Christa McAuliffe, who was flying on Challenger when we watched it blow up. And then, after Columbia, I had to ask: Are we doing the right thing?” Overton said.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
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