Xah Lee's Unixism

[David Schwartz]

"Alan Balmer" <albalmer at att.net> wrote in message 
news:3vahj09m887i64osgm65bhhh6l9tl6j38a at 4ax.com...

> On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 16:12:52 GMT, "John W. Kennedy"
> <jwkenne at attglobal.net> wrote:

>>Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>>> i have some recollection of competing bids building single unit
>>> assemblies at sea coast sites allowing them to be barged to
>>> florida. supposedly the shuttle boosters were sectioned specifically
>>> because they were being fabricated in utah and there were
>>> transportation constraints.

>>Yes.  A vastly inferior design was used, which ended up killing seven
>>astronauts, because Orrin Hatch had to be appeased with boodle for Utah.

> The first disaster was due to (possibly inferior) gaskets and inferior
> judgment on launch day. The second was falling foam, and inferior
> realization of the gravity of the problem. I'm not clear on what
> either had to do with Utah.

    These are the proximate causes. However, had almost anything been done 
differently, these precise accidents would not have occured the way they 
did. This provides the rhetorical oppurtunity to blame the disasters on any 
particular decision one does not like, regardless of how remote its 
connection to the actual failures.

    DS