Shuttle Corruption

[ascan1984]

To update my knowleague i have been reading a 1987 book about the challenger disaster called challenger a major malfunction. In this book i have learnt some things not in the other books about the subject i have read. I learnt that the contracts to build the orbiter and srbs were corrupt. That the decisions on who would build them were decided by bribes and insiders such as the head of the selection comitee was a member of rockwell. Who joined just before the proposals and left just after. Suspicious. I also learnt that the biggest donation to nixions relection campaign also got the contract. As i do not have the book with me i cannoit quote more but all of this i did not know. But i am sure you guys did. I am just shocked thats all.

 

[drwayne]

You have to watch reading books that seek to broad brush things as corrupt. I have no idea which book you are referring to, I have read a number of them. I am just warning you that one can, through clever presentation and interpretation of the facts, make any transaction look corrupt or evil.<br /><br />Warning: Joke Follows<br /><br />I hear by the way that there was corruption in the bids for the construction of the garden of eden. The devil was the forman don't you know?<br /><br />Wayne <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>"1) Give no quarter; 2) Take no prisoners; 3) Sink everything."  Admiral Jackie Fisher</p> </div>

 

[tomnackid]

"Learnt" ?????????

 

[CalliArcale]

"Learnt" is a past participle of "to learn", of course. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> It is more common in some dialects than in others. North Americans usually favor "learned".<br /><br />Whether or not there was corruption in the original Shuttle contracts probably depends on how restrictively you define the word "corrupt". Being part of political back-scratching, for instance, may or may not count, but it's worth bearing in mind that a great many politicians favor granting contracts to companies that employ their constituents. The word "pork" is popularly used for this sort of thing, but again it is to some extent a question of how restrictively you define the word. And sometimes the question of who gets the contract comes down to a bit of a popularity contest. It's not fair, and it doesn't make good engineering sense, but the people making the decisions are politicians and people beholden to politicians, so it does go with the territory of government contracting. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">I learnt that the contracts to build the orbiter and srbs were corrupt. That the decisions on who would build them were decided by bribes and insiders such as the head of the selection comitee was a member of rockwell.</font>/i><br /><br />Welcome to the world of politics and big business.<br /><br />As long as we are on such topics, one of the stranger stories I read was the Morton Thiokol (sp?) got the SRB contract despite little/no experience in rockets because of the "Mormon connection" -- Thiokol was based in Utah, and a Utah political leader supposedly called the NASA decision maker , who was also Mormon, and encouraged him to be a good Mormon and send the contract Thiokol's way.<br /><br />If there is any interest, I can look back into my books to find the original source for this story.</i>

 

[tomnackid]

"Learnt" is a past participle of "to learn", of course. It is more common in some dialects than in others. North Americans usually favor "learned". <br />-----------------------------------------------<br />I was thinking it had gone out with Chaucer! <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> I didn't realize how much it is still used in places!

 

[ascan1984]

Thankyou everyone for all your imput. It has helped me put hings into prospective. Sure the moon landings were only because of politics also. Thanks again.

 

[askold]

"Learnt" is also the simple past tense of learn - that's how the original poster used it.<br /><br />English has lots of "t" ending past tenses - we say "slept" not "sleeped".