It's been 25 years since a generation of kids heard the words "Challenger, go at throttle-up".

That also means it's been 25 years since Keith LeBlanc did his own industrial-funk-tribute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EU8Pn7lqcE
  - Keith Leblanc, Major Malfunction, 1986.

Interpret it as you will. 

Me?  As much as I dig the Hunter S. Thompson samples and have to consider their context in the video (and the fact that it wouldn't be "again" for anybody but a few hundred lucky people), I must stand with the unknown astronaut who got sampled as saying "I would go again tomorrow, if NASA would let me go again..."

The most haunting sample of the track: "obviously a major malfunction" was probably public affairs officer Steve Nesbitt.  It's unclear whether he was watching the video of the launch, or reporting what he was hearing from people who were watching screens that displayed vehicle telemetry in numeric form.  In any case, NASA folk kept their cool - at the moment of the disaster, there was nothing anyone on the ground could have done to change the outcome, but by keeping cool, they were able to preserve the data that eventually explained what went wrong.

Unfortunately, they didn't learn the real lesson; what was a sophomoric joke in 1986 ("NASA: Need Another Seven Astronauts!") turned out to be a prophecy in 2003.  Powerpoint killed in 1986, and Powerpoint killed again in 2003. 

One good thing can come of this:  You'll see Powerpoint presentations in your life.  They won't be as important as the ones that failed to make clear that launching in freezing temperatures practically guaranteed O-ring failure in 1986, or the ones that failed to make it clear that anything hitting the leading edge of a wing at a good portion of the speed of sound would likely puncture an RCC panel. 

What you need to do is emulate Richard Feynman.  He started out his career by inveting the atomic bomb.  40+ years later, he was sitting on a panel saying, in effect, "Dudes, don't try to cover this up.  You all knew damn well the o-ring material on the SRBs was brittle at the temperature at which you launched.  It's what your engineers told you.  It's why they told you not to launch.  If they couldn't present it to you in the pretty graphs that seem to be the only thing you're capable of understanding, well, it's sucks to be them, but it sucks even harder to be you, because understanding the engineers is what you're supposed to be doing.  Still don't believe me?  Fine, I'll demostrate it to you with nothing more than the glass of ice water.  You asked me to sit on this panel for a reason, and if you try to edit my text out of the final report, I'll walk away from the panel altogether."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qAi_9quzUY

But nobody listened, we lost another shuttle in 2003, and we will shut down our manned space flight programme as of later this year.  No American will fly on an NASA launch vehicle for the forseeable future.  A few hundred wealthy Americans may fly on an American private spacecraft, but they'll get suborbital tourist hops and never come close to reaching orbit. 

The manned high frontier now belongs to the Russians (and in a few years, the Chinese).  We can't change that.  But if you find yourself in a situation where Powerpoint is important?  You can change something.  As a viewer, ask serious questions about the author's point.  Dig deeper than that printout of a bunch of slides the presenter's reading.  If they're hiding something, call them on it.  If they're just shy, or poor presenters, ask similarly-probing questions to find out about the stuff they were trying to hint at, but just didn't have the guts to come out and say to your face.  You will save dollars, and you even may save lives.

But back to LeBlanc, because there was one other good thing to come out of all this.  Keith is still making music, and there'll be an album out later in 2011.

Good memory Foo bar,
we usually hear that we must remember the errors in the past for avoiding to repeat them, but the truth is no matter how many times you crash into a rock,
it will happen over and over again my friend.

I pick this one from Richard Feynman  "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Do you really believe politics would ever take the lesson from him ?  :-[