Bangor Daily News, Aug. 29
The final report from the board investigating the Columbia accident makes it clear that although a piece of foam striking the space shuttle was the technical reason for its disintegration in the skies over Texas on Feb. 1, the spacecraft was really doomed by overconfident management and inattention to safety at NASA. …

Given NASA’s history of not learning from its mistakes, it will be up to members of Congress to ensure that the agency’s culture does change this time around so that there will not be a third accident report. It is also up to Congress to start a national debate on the merits and goals of America’s space program as called for by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. As important as insuring that spacecraft are safe, the country must decide what it hopes to achieve through space travel. If manned space flights remain a priority, it is clear that more funding for NASA is needed.

The Senate Commerce Committee, which has oversight of NASA, will hold its first hearing on implementing the changes suggested by the board in early September. Its first task should be to better define the agency’s mission. …

If space missions remain important then committee members, including Sen. Olympia Snowe, must maintain close oversight to make sure that NASA takes the safety message to heart and implements the improvements suggested by the review panel. Like other scientific endeavors, NASA officials must engage in rigorous questioning of assumptions and scenarios. Such questioning may not have saved Columbia and its seven astronauts but at least if a thorough assessment of the damage done by the foam had been undertaken (seven opportunities to do so were missed), a discussion of safe re-entry procedures could have taken place. …

Finally, if space exploration remains a national priority and NASA puts safety first, the agency clearly should receive more money. …

Two tragedies show what happens to an underfunded, overly confident, unquestioning agency. It is now time to see what a reinvigorated, safety-conscious NASA can achieve.


More work to be done
The State, Columbia, S.C., Aug. 27
Forty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told us about his dream for America. That speech … led to dramatic changes for the better in our society. Much wonderful progress has been made toward realizing that dream. Much progress, but not enough. Not nearly enough. …

Part of the problem is that the evils were so stark and monumental then that today’s inequities are harder to notice, at least for those not inclined to look. …

The issues were morally clearer then, but the obstacles to progress were greater. Taking a stand back then often meant putting your life on the line. Today, the issues may seem murkier, but the risks of seeking solutions are markedly less daunting.


Huge step back
The News-Press, Fort Myers, Fla., Sept. 2
The Bush administration has made things much easier on America’s industrial air polluters. New, relaxed Environmental Protection Agency rules allow companies to massively update power plants, refineries and other facilities without installing the costly but readily available modern pollution-control equipment, as formerly required.

The rules, if allowed to stand, will make it possible for polluting equipment to stay in use for decades. This change would mark a huge, if short-sighted, victory for industry, and a sad defeat for public health and the environment.

It also would be a retreat from an important principle upheld more than 30 years by Republican and Democratic administrations alike: It may be economically impossible to require existing industrial units, even ones that pollute hideously, to retrofit to new clean-air standards. But when those units are to be substantially replaced, as opposed to merely maintained, they should be brought up to par. …


Burma remains a disgrace
The Guardian, London, Sept. 2
There should be little doubt that the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi grows more desperate by the day. The only national leader in Burma worthy of the name has been held under some form of detention for more than half the 13 years since her National League for Democracy’s landslide election victory was annulled. … There is no doubt about Ms Suu Kyi’s courage. But the strain on her must be close to insupportable. The U.S. government reported … that she has begun a hunger strike. Its expression of “deep concern for her safety and well-being” is well-founded.

Many hundreds, perhaps thousands of pro-democracy activists also languish in Burma’s gulag. They must not be forgotten, either, no more than must the ordinary Burmese whose lives are blighted by avoidable poverty and repression. But it is Ms. Suu Kyi who has become a unique symbol of her benighted country’s struggle for justice. The junta’s denial of the hunger strike report, like its disingenuous plan for a “road map to democracy,” should be dismissed with contempt. The new prime minister who peddles this deception, Khin Nyunt, is just another jumped-up general who has never fought a battle in his life but is a veritable Napoleon when it comes to oppressing defenseless civilians. Tougher U.S. sanctions came into effect last week; U.K. campaigners’ efforts to cut western business, investment and tourism links are gaining ground. But how long before Burma’s neighbors show similar determination to end this regional disgrace and, perhaps, save Ms. Suu Kyi?