On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 05:52:47AM -0800, Randall Clague wrote: > Take everything Easterbrook with a large grain of salt. More > properly, a large halite crystal. No, larger than that. Can you lift > it? Too small, get a bigger one. His 1980 piece is no more accurate > than his post-Columbia piece, of which I said on aRocket,
I will focus on his points rather than on his credibility, since his facts can be checked. > >Even the Hubble is only there to justify the Shuttle's existence, as is > >the ISS. > > While I agree that Shuttle and Station are used to justify each other > in a marvelously circular fashion (we need Shuttle to build Station; > we need Station to give Shuttle something to do), the same cannot be > said of Hubble. Hubble would have gone up on a Titan IV if it > couldn't go Shuttle. And then we would have been *truly* screwed. Except that the HST and the Station were both planned in concert with the Shuttle and were cited as evidence of what great things the Shuttle could do. Of course, at this point we're building ground-based telescopes that will outperform HST, and at a fraction of the cost. > Easterbrook also flatly states in his 1980 article that the Shuttle > cannot retrieve or repair satellites. This will come as a surprise to > the managers of Solar Max, which was repaired on STS 41-C; to the > owners of Westar-VI and Palapa-B2, which were retrieved on STS 51-A; > and to the owners of Leasat-3, which was retrieved, repaired, *and > redeployed* on STS 51-I. Actually, he gives several examples of possible retrievals, but mentions that they would likely be dangerous. He also mentions that the cost would in general be far more than the cost of building a new satellite. Unfortunately he was talking about the cost of building a new satellite *privately*, and assuming that the cost of retrieval and repair wouldn't be subsidized. Clearly when the government builds the satellite and would be faced with building its replacement, and the government is subsidizing the cost of repair and needs to justify its big expensive Shuttle program, they're going to find a way to go repair that damned satellite. I read the entire article from beginning to end, Randall. I don't think you did before posting your response. > >There are plenty of people now campaigning to get a replacement for > >Columbia built as quickly as possible. Perhaps ERPS (or a related group) > >should commit itself to campaigning *against* replacing Columbia, and > >perhaps to scuttling the Shuttle program altogether. > > ERPS is forbidden by the Internal Revenue Code, and our charter, from > lobbying. Besides that, making a stink in the name of space > development is best left to Rick Tumlinson and the Space Frontier > Foundation, who have been politically astute enough to say nothing > controversial in these first few days after the tragedy; besides that, > the case against replacing Columbia is already strong (Endeavor, > Atlantis, and Discovery are pretty much dedicated to ISS construction > for the next few years, so the loss of Columbia, which could barely > support ISS, will not have a large impact). Did I mention lobbying? Does the Infernal Revenue Code prohibit ERPS members from public expressing opinions? Does it prevent us from posting in big letters on our web site that we don't think the Shuttle program is a good idea? > Besides that, campaigning to scuttle the Shuttle program is a complete > waste of time, except that people with long memories and deep pockets > wouldn't like it. Since we're trying to stay beneath the notice of > such people, campaigning against Shuttle would be unwise. > > Remember: we're not trying to defeat NASA. We're trying to obsolesce > them. So you think that the government's competing with commercial launchers and giving NASA a monopoly on military launches doesn't hurt the commercial space industry? You think we can "obsolesce" NASA without doing anything about the hurdles thrown in the face of the industry by the very agency that's supposed to be supporting/encouraging it? Remember, these people are using *our* money to compete against us. It seems to me that any comprehensive program intended to produce cheap private access to space must take this into account. -- Sean Lynch http://sean.lynch.tv/
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