Observer: We were warned
: The Observer reports that we were warned that a Shuttle disaster was waiting to happen:
Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former Nasa engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed.
In a letter to the White House, Don Nelson, who served with Nasa for 36 years until he retired in 1999, wrote to President George W. Bush warning that his ‘intervention’ was necessary to ‘prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident’.
French astronaut: Ditto
: News.com.au reports:
A FRENCH astronaut who took part in an earlier US shuttle mission says Columbia should have been out of use long ago.
Patrick Baudry told French television he was “up in arms” over the disaster.
“I think the shuttle should have been taken out of use long ago,” Baudry said.
“It’s a magnificent machine that the Americans developed. But extremely dangerous.”
