Animal: Its diddlying dangerous but WE MUST KEEP DOING IT.
The .gov denied all requests for funding...miko: Oh, yeah, lets use this tragedy for more socialist "bigger government" propaganda...Animal: 
Here is the way I learned about the today's disaster:
I was playing with my 16 month-old son around 1PM totaly oblivious to outside world, when I got a call from Republican National Committee. They ask me for contributions more frequently than I'd like but this time it started as
"Do you wish to contribute some money to Republican Party in view of this morning's tragedy?" I had no idea what she was talking about - I thought it was a terror act or major loss of US troops or worse, so I politely told her to f@$k off and turned on the radio and the computer to check this board. I was relieved to learn it was just a bad accident, not a foul play of major proportions.
I expected to see a lot of sorrow and condolences and technical discussion related to the explosions but hoped that people would have decency to wait with political statements untill later.
I have a strong opnion on the shuttle program that may be quite opposite to the view in your post. I did not want to elaborate in my reply to your post and I will not do it now. I will be happy to discuss it in a separate thread if anyone cares.
If your "WE MUST KEEP DOING IT" ment humanity should explore, exploit and settle space in a free and competituve manner open to all that would produce the best method - then sorry, I overreacted.
But it sounded like you wanted US government to spend more of our money on unsafe and wastefull projects pushed by NASA bureaucrats under false pretexts. If so, you are entitled to your opinion but a memorial thread is not the best place for it.
miko
