Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Vandenburg (was Re: Two Shuttles at Once???)
Message-ID: <1989Sep19.224620.13229@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <3330022@hpindda.HP.COM> <12154@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <355@crash.cts.com> <9981@xanth.cs.odu.edu> <1989Sep14.161150.25944@utzoo.uucp> <251@bmers58.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 89 22:46:20 GMT

In article <251@bmers58.UUCP> bnr-public!bmerh490!hwt writes:
>>thoroughly mothballed and would be quite expensive to revive...
>
>Are we using mothballed as a polite term for abandoned ?  It seems to
>me that the picture of I have of mothballed is 'put away with some
>thought for reactivation' - not canibilized!

Nothing has actually been torn down, although portable equipment has been
moved elsewhere so it can be useful.  In principle reviving the Vandenberg
pad would be straightforward:  a large influx of people and minor bits of
equipment, and a fair bit of work to sweep the cobwebs :-) off the fixed
stuff.  In practice, "mothballed" in this connection *means* "abandoned".
The site could be revived but won't be.  It would probably have been
scrapped, rather than just mothballed, were it not for the political
uproar that would have resulted.
-- 
"Where is D.D. Harriman now,   |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
when we really *need* him?"    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu