Truth Sieve

Space shuttle Endeavour’s scheduled launch for today was scrubbed due to “lightning strikes near the launch pad.”  Endeavor wasn’t scrubbed because of lightning strikes.  It was scrubbed because a launch would have placed it in a position where astronauts or, worse, civilians could have seen an alien space ship moving through Earth orbit.  The “weather-related” delays have generally proven to be a better cover system than methods used with, for example, Apollo 1 and Apollo 13.  Stopping a mission because of the weather doesn’t risk crew lives like earlier efforts to hide the truth.