Editorial: A bolt revolt

Sunday, Sept. 17, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

As the international space station's gleaming new solar panels unfurled in space Thursday, it probably was hard to imagine that the mission could have been foiled because of a couple of dropped bolts.

The mission eventually accomplished its goals, which will allow the space station to operate under solar power. But that news seemed almost anticlimactic compared to reports earlier in the week that astronauts dropped two bolts during construction, and that it took two of them to unscrew a third bolt, which for some reason wouldn't budge.

While the image of bolts drifting off into space is one that few Americans ever will see, the potentially dire consequences of dropping a crucial piece of seemingly trivial hardware at precisely the wrong moment is lost on very few of us. Most of us have not been in outer space, but we have dropped the bolt or cursed the one that wouldn't turn.

Michael T. Suffredini, space station program manager, tried to put the hardware dilemma in perspective for reporters at a briefing last Thursday when he said, "A lot of people have spent a lot of time talking about a couple of bolts. If you told me before the flight these are the only issues we'd have to deal with ... I would have taken that and run."

Indeed, for the likes of Suffredini, the public's attention to "a couple of bolts" must have been frustrating. However, most of us aren't rocket scientists. We are, rather, a society of weekend do-it-yourselfers who know all too well the frustrations of browsing the aisles of Home Depot in search of that magical, elusive bolt.