Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: LDEF
Message-ID: <14861@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Date: 6 Nov 89 22:21:34 GMT
References: <3115@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> <1989Nov1.024354.6148@utzoo.uucp> <8635@microsoft.UUCP>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
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Bob Allison reminds us Solar Max will soon join Skylab and says:
>That's one defect with designing a satellite which must be serviced by the 
>shuttle at regular intervals (much less if we ever had a dozen up at once;
>so far the plans only include HST and the space station as far as I know).

There is a useful distinction between building a satellite that must be
SERVICED by the shuttle (boards replaced, film collected, whatever) and
one that must actually be REBOOSTED by it.  The former is merely
questionable, the latter is downright dangerous.

It ought to be an international agreement that anything large enough to
be dangerous on re-entry must orbit high enough to stay up for decades.
LDEF, Max, Skylab, and all that Soviet iron are Damoclean hazards.  Not
to mention damn expensive to lose at a year's slippage.
-- 
There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a    || Tom Neff
rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure. -- Ross MacDonald || tneff@bfmn0.UU.NET