----- Original Message -----
From: "David M Harland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2001 2:02 PM
Subject: Re: More jolly Space Station news
>
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "David M Harland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >Sent: Monday, October 08, 2001 12:25 PM
> >Subject: Re: More jolly Space Station news
> >
> >
> >>
> >> >It's an expensive albatross, if there ever was one.
> >>
> >> I disagree, the problem is its functionality has been pared back to
> >> much, it needs to be expanded!
> >
> >Hogwash. Its real cost was always ridiculously disproportionate to the
size
> >of the scientific benefits it would supposedly produce -- that, after
all,
> >is why NASA had to deliberately understate its cost by a factor of 5 to
10
> >to get Congress and Reagan to approve it in the first place.
>
> Come on now, Bruce. Don't speak so elliptically, tell us what you really
think!
If I told you what I REALLY think of the Station, this site would probably
get yanked off the Web.
Actually, though, it's quite possible to conceive of a Station that would
have been far more defensible -- namely, one made of a series of similar
self-contained modules that could be attached to each other to enlarge the
Station as, and only as, it seemed justifiable. This design was worked out
in quite some detail by at least one high-ranking aerospace engineer (for
Lockheed, I believe) -- whose reward was to get fired by his company for
upsetting the gravy train. And another company proposed an "Industrial
Space Facility" -- a small microgravity lab which could have been completely
assembled by two Shuttle flights, and then spend most of the time running
its experiments automatically with occasional manned visits to retrieve and
replace the experiments -- which NASA deliberately strangled lest it give
the Station too much competition.
==
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