Good Call

I was sitting here sweating the idea of NASA trying to land the Space Shuttle in Florida--AT NIGHT--at least in the dark. Talk about trying to pass a camel through the eye of a needle...

They called off the first orbit try about 4:30 AM this morning because of weather, so I ran out to the pool for a little dip and returned just in time to find out that they were cancelling this try, again because of weather.

I have to admit that I don't blame them. We're less than 150 miles north of the Kennedy Space Center and we had little bands of clouds floating past obscuring my view of Mars and a few of the Persied Meteors that were blasting past this morning.

Speaking from experience, and I'm no test pilot or shuttle pilot, but it's hard enough to land a little Cessna going 80 knots in broad daylight--adding night, clouds, hundreds of thousands of pounds of weight, and a couple of hundred knots per hour of speed makes things way too exciting for most peoples blood.

Arrogance in the form of bad decision making has killed many, many more pilots than has bad weather and mechanical malfunctions combined.

I think that it was a good call.