On Mon, 8 Oct 2001, Gary McMurtry wrote:
> So, we got it. Now, we have the space
> station to give the shuttles someplace to go when they're not
> launching satellites, fixing telescopes, bore-bore-bore, etc.
I've read someplace, perhaps "The Case for Mars", that the space
station was designed to keep the shuttle busy for 3-4 years and
that is why it costs so much. It could have been built as a single
unit for much less and launched with a cluster of Suttle solid rocket
fuel boosters and/or a newly designed booster based on the SSME.
> The science is marginal at best, contrived at worst. This would be a
> great area for congress and NASA to cut costs. It's an expensive
> albatross, if there ever was one.
Cut costs for *what* purpose? Its partially up there now -- the trick
is to make it really useful. The *useful* thing would be to propose
a gradual, say 10-20 year program for a realistic space-based asteroid/comet
shield. You don't get it by launching the required materials from the ground,
instead you use the space station as a base for "harvesting" increasingly
larger and larger near earth objects that you use for space-based
manufacturing of the necessary rockets, fuel, power arrays, etc.
that could be used to defend the population of the Earth from hazards we
currently are pretty darn susceptible to. Once developed you can also
use the facility to launch probes around the solar system on a much
shorter mission time scale. You use our existing launch capacity to
get the probes up with a minimal fuel load, then refuel them at the
space station. Since the fuel is presumably being harvested for a
much lower cost, the overall mission costs should fall as well.
Faster, better, cheaper just like Dan Goldin says.
Robert
==
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