The small incident, which is just one out of many delaying launches for month, shows that such a system like STS is not much sophisticated to be a reliable and economical workhorse. Don't understand me wrong. The Space Shuttle is a unique vehicle. But its sensitivity, the risk factor and its costs actually is unacceptable in the long term, just as the STS-107 investigation already pointed out.I think that NASA should use a reliable workhorse, just as the Russians do for decades with their way less anomaly and delay-annoyed Soyuz. Changing back to capsule design is the best thing NASA could have ever done for decades. The Shuttle remains a master peace of space flight engineering, and still a huge success in space flight history by a safety still above 98%. But the required efforts on ground and the budget nearly exhausts NASA. I can not wait to see it replaced by frequent capsule launches in the future.
I believe most of you may already know this, but NASA TV online has excellent launch coverage. I watched the Kepler launch over the weekend and it was just like watching it on regular TV.
Today's launch attempt has been scrubbed due to a hydrogen leak
