I was going to note something about the story (available from several sources) that Rep. Joe Barton wants to shut down the Shuttle program because it might kill astronauts. Either that, or fly it unmanned, which is an utterly senseless idea.

The significance of this is that the congressman is from Texas, tribal homeland of the Shuttle, and he’s on the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee. I’m not necessarily opposed to ending the current manned spaceflight program in its present form–there are several arguably good reasons to do so even if one supports humans in space, but to do it because it’s unsafe is, well, stupid. It would be yet another case of doing (possibly) the right thing for completely the wrong reason, and when we do right things for wrong reasons, it dramatically diminishes the possibility of doing follow-up right things.

Anyway, fortunately, I don’t have to say much, because Thomas James already has.