Confusional

What a wonderful photograph. The other photos I'd seen were great, historical and exciting in a geeky sort of way. Two shuttles on the launch pad simultaneously. That had only happened once before in 1990 with STS-35 and STS-41 poised on pads A and B at the same time. There had been a lot of build up with in NASA for the Saturday morning arrival of Endeavour at pad B, joining Atlantis in launch position. Pictures have made the rounds and the nerdy rocket scientists all have them as wall paper, in sig files, printed out and pinned to the wall...etc. And then I saw this one on someone's lap top in a meeting. Oh...even more sublime than the full day light photos. Wonderfully beautiful. I can't read the name on the copy of the file that I have, else I'd be most happy to credit the photog and sing praises. Whoever you are, excellent job, and you brought even more joy to geek hearts throughout NASA.

However, the joy faded a little too quickly for us with the news that Hubble is in further trouble. It stopped transmitting data. Long story short...processor problem...which isn't necessarily fatal. There is side B for redundancy. However, this has major effect on NASA's launch schedule, and beyond. After this potential dual launch, pad B was going to be shut down so that modification could begin for the Ares I-X test flight, which was to launch in April, 2009. Since the Hubble repair mission is now an unknown, at least for launch date, that puts all the plans for pad work and test flight launch into a quandary. We mushrooms haven't heard anything yet on what's to happen. Of course that's probably just as much about decision making as not passing information around. But it is having an effect on morale, which is a bit fragile these days what with all the NASA bashing and uncertainty over what will become of NASA after the election. The mushroom employees, in the midst of all this, are in an imbroglio. Perhaps that's the reason for the elation over the 50th anniversary a couple of days ago.

In the meantime, until decisions are made and passed on, enjoy the wonderful photo.