John Berlau reports in Insight magazine that the Columbia and Challenger space shuttle disasters are both directly attributable to the substitution of unsuitable materials based on typical Ecoweenie whining.
But many experts looking at the tragedy that killed seven astronauts say there is a deeper cause. They say that the metaphorical smoking gun should be painted green.Meanwhile over at the Guardian, they've discovered the Weather Gods are angry at the USA. Their screed is fetchingly titled The climate must change: And reform must start with America.
Because of demands that the agency help to front for environmentalism, and under pressure from the Clinton-Gore administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) led by Carol Browner, NASA had stopped using Freon, a fluorocarbon that greens claim damages the ozone layer, in its thermal-insulating foam. NASA found in 1997 after the first launch with the politically correct substitute that the Freon-free foam had destroyed nearly 11 times as many of the shuttle's ceramic tiles as had the foam containing Freon. The politicized foam was less sticky and more brittle under extreme temperatures. But apparently little or nothing was done to resist the environmentalist politicians.
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The sad thing, critics say, is that NASA and policymakers seemed to have learned very little from the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986, where the switch to another eco-friendly material - due to another hyped scare having become politically correct - also played a large role in the tragedy. "The bottom line is that in both of these cases NASA made or was forced to make design changes based on claims that are not scientifically established," Hacker observes.
Maybe the gods would be placated if we threw a few Ecoweenies in a volcano? It's certainly more pleasing than dead astronauts.
