Re: Congratulations NASA

On Mon, 17 Jul 2006 22:36:28 -0500, "Dennis \(Icarus\)"
<ala_dir_diver@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:qakob2hutfoai6k6lcss0tk750mggdjbjk@xxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:48:45 +0100, Paul Harper <paul@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Mon, 17 Jul 2006 15:01:53 +0100, Andrew Swallow
<am.swallow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Congratulations to NASA on a successful mission.

Welcome back to being a fully functioning space organisation.

I have to admit that it was with a fair degree of trepidation that I
watched NASA TV this afternoon (UK time) and with no small sense of
relief that they got down safely. I had a *real* bad feeling about
this one.

That whole set of technologies is so past-it these days, and flakey
and full of kludges and compromises, that I really *really* wish
they'd hurry up and get the next generation of these things developed.

I am also utterly unconvinced of the benefit of a shuttle over
standard heavy-lift boosters, these days. Shoving all those people
into harm's way for missions that can so easily be automated and/or
managed from the ground borders at times on testosterone-charged
recklessness.

Yeah, the Shuttle is limited by the design decisions of 30 years ago,
though beneath the skin it's almost an entirely new ship. It really
should be retired, and will be, once the current missions are done and
NASA moves on to its new boosters. Unfortunately, there are treaty
commitments to finish the International Space Station -- and good
reason to service Hubble -- and it seems that there's nothing that
could replace the Shuttle in that capacity, since the payloads were
designed for it.

Would've been interesting seeing a robot or automated system handling the
Hubble repairs.

When I went to grown up Space Camp, our mission was to replace the
fuel cells in the Hubble. (I was one of the EVA team). It would have
been a fun gig to do for real...

-Wendy

.

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