Fly Now, Change Culture Later.

I'd be a lot more comfortable about the space shuttle's return to flight as early as next month if there was a huge, sweeping consensus that the agency's cuture had dramatically changed. But as the NY Times notes today, that's too much to hope for. In fact, the consensus actually seems to be that culture change will take so long that there's essentially no choice but to fly the shuttle before the organizational overhaul takes full effect--if ever. So we'll all be crossing our fingers for some time to come.