More embarrassing scandal for NASA?

[BlueIris]

Which scandal has been more embarrassing for NASA in recent years?

[tigereye]

1. um, not retooling the ancient shuttle design?

leading to deaths?

[Orrex]

17. If it was good enough for Erich von Däniken, it's good enough for NASA

[rcrush]

2. WAIT! There is a bag of coke in the shuttle?!

I wanna go to space!

[whistler162]

7. cans and bottles don't really travel well....

personally I would prefer Pepsi over Coke!

[MiddleFingerMom]

3. And I think my spaceship knows which way to go...

.
And I'm floating in a most pe-cu-li-ar way
And the stars look very diff-er-ent today
.

.

[kentauros]

5. Got a message from the action man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unuo-fdhbXs

[Kaleva]

4. Gotta vote for the diaper astronaut.

[whistler162]

6. You forgot never really reaching the moon.....

[edbermac]

8. Stamp scandal in the 70's was bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_15_postage_stamp_incident

[pokerfan]

9. screwing up the metric system

The software was working in pounds force, while the spacecraft expected figures in newtons; 1 pound force equals approximately 4.45 newtons. The software had been adapted from use on the earlier Mars Climate Orbiter, and was not adequately tested before launch. The navigation data provided by this software was also not cross-checked while in flight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#The_metric.2Fimperial_mix-up

[kentauros]

12. Yeah, I'd have to vote for that one.

I was so pissed off when I heard the reason. I had always thought they had been all metric for quite a while. And they still are on Imperial measurements! Why won't they switch?

[BlueIris]

10. Kick.

Just to see if anyone else has any thoughts.

[Swede]

11. Hiring a bunch of Nazis?

:shrug:

[rcrush]

13. The Nazi's been to Mars

They are all living on Mars now. Coming back in 2016.

[kentauros]

15. Look to the skies!

[kentauros]

14. I'm guessing you're referring to the origins of space medicine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_medicine#History

Hubertus Strughold (1898-1987), a former Nazi physician and physiologist, was brought to the United States after World War II as part of Operation Paperclip. He first coined the term "space medicine" in 1948 and was the first and only Professor of Space Medicine at the School of Aviation Medicine (SAM) at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. In 1949 Strughold was made director of the Department of Space Medicine at the SAM (which is now the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base, Texas). He played an important role in developing the pressure suit worn by early American astronauts. He was a co-founder of the Space Medicine Branch of the Aerospace Medical Association in 1950. The aeromedical library at Brooks AFB was named after him in 1977, but later renamed because documents from the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal linked Strughold to medical experiments in which inmates of the Dachau concentration camp were tortured and killed.

[Ptah]

16. Apollo 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1#Fire


The crew members were reclining in their horizontal couches, running through a
checklist when a voltage transient was recorded at 6:30:54 (23:30:54 GMT). Ten
seconds later (at 6:31:04) Chaffee said, "Hey..." Scuffling sounds followed for
three seconds before Grissom shouted "Fire!" Chaffee then reported, "We've got a
fire in the cockpit," and White said "Fire in the cockpit!"

After nearly ten seconds of frenetic movement noises Chaffee yelled, "We've got a
bad fire! Let's get out! We're burning up! We're on fire! Get us out of here!"<7><8>
Some witnesses said they saw Ed White on the television monitors, reaching
for the hatch release handle as flames in the cabin spread from left to right
and licked the window. Only 17 seconds after the first indication by crew of any fire,
the transmission ended abruptly at 6:31:21 with a scream of pain as the cabin
ruptured after rapidly expanding gases from the fire overpressurized the CM to 29 psi.<9>


Intense heat, dense toxic smoke, malfunctioning gas masks and shock waves and
explosions from the cabin hampered the ground crew's rescue efforts. There were
fears the fire might ignite the solid fuel rockets in the launch escape tower
above the command module, likely killing nearby ground personnel. It took five
minutes to open the inner and outer hatches, a set of three with many ratchets.
By this time the fire in the command module had gone out. Although the cabin
lights remained lit the ground crew was at first unable to find the astronauts.
As the smoke cleared they found the bodies but were not able to remove them.
The fire had partly melted the astronauts' nylon space suits and the hoses
connecting them to the life support system. Grissom's body was found lying
mostly on the deck. His and White's suits were fused together. The body of
Ed White (whom mission protocol had tasked with opening the hatch) was lying
back in his center couch. White would not have been able to open the inward-opening
hatch against the internal pressure. Chaffee's job was to shut down the spacecraft
systems and maintain communications with ground control. His body was still
strapped into the right-hand seat.

[rd_kent]

18. Faking the moon landings....

:)