I agree that there is extra attention paid to these, but the fact is that the ultra-absolute and ultra-safe atmosphere people would like to believe about KSC simply doesn't exist. My father was part of the crew that re-tiled the exterior of the shuttle for 25 years and he said the corners cut out there were absolutely disgusting. The phrase "good enough for government work" is a joke to a lot of the blue-collar types working on the orbiters. There seems to be a minority of people who really appreciate the fact that there are human lives depending on the work they're doing.

I spent the first 20 years of my life on the space coast. I'd just like to say that I don't believe these delays are accidental at all. From the stories I've heard about people who work for NASA, United Space Alliance, EG&G, etc., I don't doubt for a second that the people working at KSC are extending these launches as much as possible. I was raised in Titusville, a town that HEAVILY depends on the space program and the tourism it brings. When a launch happens, the population instantly goes up from 40,000 to probably 400,000+. When a scrub happens, half of those people don't just say "oh well" and go home. They hang out for a long time. I was working at the KSC Visitor's Center when one of the launches got scrubbed in 2009. This British guy asked me how long it would be delayed and I sadly told him almost two weeks. He wasn't even phased, just immediately asked me if I knew a good extended stay hotel in the area. Now, for places like Titusville, those launch-campers pump millions of dollars into the economy every launch day, and having them hang out for two weeks is just icing.

The guy sounds pretty casual about the whole thing. I hope he knows that Apple is not going to be happy about this. He should probably start getting rid of his hard drives.

Aaaannnnnd you lost me.

I don't know about you, but when I was in third grade I didn't have any heroes that knowingly used Jewish slave labor.

In other news, the Exhibitionists Society of America has filed a counter-claim...

The "Immaculate Conception" referred to the "fact" that Mary was without original sin, not that she asexually reproduced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception

The "Immaculate Conception" referred to the fact that Mary was without original sin, not that she was a virgin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception

You mean someone like...HITLER?!

China is cutting corners? This is capitalist propoganda. Try harder, you bourgeois swine.

I'm a history major and I've kept all of my books for my junior- and senior-level courses. Granted, they're not traditional "textbooks", but mostly histories, novels,and memoirs, but I plan to keep them in my classroom when I start teaching.