Elephant In Exile

Astronaut Begins Historic Spacewalk to Repair Shuttle

This whole shuttle thing reminds me of a story engineers like to tell. Back in the early days of the space race, NASA discovered that pens don't work in the micro-gravity environment of space. They spent many years and tens of millions of dollars developing the now famous astronaut pen. The Russians, face with the same problem, used a pencil.

So, our billion dollar shuttle, that costs 1/2 billion to launch, is being 'repaired' with a make shift 'shiv' made with spare parts and duct tape. I've said it before, I'll say it again...scrap the shuttle, scrap the space station.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/03/AR2005080300414.html