why are we not surprised...

ok, so after 20 odd years of flying, they use a camera to look at the bottom of the space shuttle for the first time..._gasp_ they find something 'wrong' and hearts go-a-flutter... of course they saw something unusual... anything would look unusual if you have never looked before... catapult something at a gajillion km/h into space and dont expect it to make it there unscathed...

I hate to say it as I am as ardent a space-fan as anyone, but the shuttle programme looks a dead duck; a glorified (perhaps rightly so) bus servicing an uninspiring pit-stop-come manufacturing plant called a space station.

Where is the visionary work and the enthusiam that took mankind to the moon? The Hubble scope is the most exciting thing up there right now, and it is being scrapped...