NASA: "The Shuttle Was a Mistake"

In article ,
Ron Garret wrote:

I guess that depends on your vision. Do you really think we should stay
on this earth? Do you really lack the vision to see humans in space?

Absolutely not. Whatever gave you that idea?

hmmm, I think I lost track of who was saying that there is absolutely
no point for a space station.

--
Bob Noel
no one likes an educated mule

Bob Noel wrote:

I guess that depends on your vision. Do you really think we should stay
on this earth? Do you really lack the vision to see humans in space?

Bob, I think humans ought to spread out. But I also think that unmanned missions
might get us to the emigration point sooner. Seems to me that if we can send,
say, ten unmanned missions to Mars for the cost of one manned mission, and it
takes, say, twenty missions (manned or unmanned) to get us enough info to set up
a colony, then unmanned exploration will get us the colony sooner.

Plug in Arcturus for Mars, and I think it still works.

I also have a fear of the sort of stagnation that set in after we got to the
moon. Politically, we seem to be able to convince Congress to keep funding
unmanned missions. After we reached the moon, Congress pretty much shut down
funding for manned missions. I expect that if we sent a team to Mars (the next
logical step), we might get a second mission there, but we wouldn't see a third
one for 100 years.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

In article bvZ1f.471$C62.222@trndny05,
George Patterson wrote:

I guess that depends on your vision. Do you really think we should stay
on this earth? Do you really lack the vision to see humans in space?

Bob, I think humans ought to spread out. But I also think that unmanned
missions
might get us to the emigration point sooner.

Agreed.

Please don't think that I think that manned missions should always take
priority of unmanned. Both manned and unmanned missions can have important
contributions to exploration of space and the eventual move off this earth.

--
Bob Noel
no one likes an educated mule

Bob Noel wrote:

There are a few other uses for a space station, not just a launch point
(I assume you mean space stations in general, not just the ISS).

We've a huge investment in satellites. Real on-site repair could be a time
and money saver if done well.

I'm not sure that there's much advantage to on-site fabrication until/unless
one gets *very* fancy (ie. importing materials from some place like the
moon, with the correspondingly lower transport costs).

- Andrew

In article ne.com,
Andrew Gideon wrote:

We've a huge investment in satellites. Real on-site repair could be a time
and money saver if done well.

In most, probably all, "repair in space" situations, you can build and
launch a replacement satellite (and throw in some improvements
on the side) for less than -- probably much less than -- the costs of
launching and recovering the manned space vehicle that does the
repairs.

Andrew Gideon wrote:
Bob Noel wrote:


There are a few other uses for a space station, not just a launch point
(I assume you mean space stations in general, not just the ISS).


We've a huge investment in satellites. Real on-site repair could be a time
and money saver if done well.

Do you have a clue where those satellites are in orbit compared to where
the space station is or where the shuttle can get to? It's not like
you can go up and grab a geosynch satellite and take it to the ISS for
repair and then plop it back in the right orbit easier.

Bob Noel wrote:

There are a few other uses for a space station, not just a launch point

Manufacturing in hard vacuum is another. I've read that there are also medicines
that can be made in that environment much more easily than here.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.