On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 14:55:19 -0600, "John Carrier"
wrote:

"If everything goes perfectly on a mission, I would say it's comparable
risk," says Grunsfeld. "But we've seen from Columbia that things don't
always go perfectly. And it's that fundamental difference that on a Hubble
flight if something goes wrong you run out of options very quickly. And on
these space station flights we have lots of options."

What I don't understand is - even if the Columbia mission had been to
the ISS it may have all still ended in tragedy. It only takes a small
leading edge crack to expand in the way we saw, so unless they're
planning doing *very* thorough orbital "walk arounds" of the orbiter
to inspect fro cracks, you're still likely to come back in pieces.
After all the Columbia didn't know their wing was damaged when they
attempted reentry.

Oh, and my vote would be to keep Hubble going, but it isn't my bum on
the line, so I won't second guess NASA.

---
Peter Kemp

Life is short - drink faster