Xref: utzoo sci.space:22293 sci.space.shuttle:5876
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!watdragon!watyew!jdnicoll
From: jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (Brian or James)
Subject: Re: space news from June 11 AW&ST
Message-ID: <1990Jul24.133049.16005@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <1990Jul23.045611.8147@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 90 13:30:49 GMT
Lines: 23

In article <1990Jul23.045611.8147@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

	[Many items of interest deleted]

>Astro-1 shuttle mission slips badly as Columbia rolled back to VAB due
>to hydrogen leak.  This will take some juggling, as both active VAB bays
>are already occupied.  The pad with partly-stacked SRBs for STS-40 (Spacelab
>Life Sciences) will be parked either on pad 39B or near the VAB for the
>moment, to clear High Bay 3.  High Bay 1 is occupied by Atlantis.
>is more normally used for photographing Soviet and US satellites,

	It strikes me that this would be a particularly poor time to
have a fire in the VAB [Not that there'd ever be a *good* time for one].
My brother, who is the Chemical dept. Stores Superviser at UW, has 
commented [at length] to me about the interesting tendency for fires
and mishaps to occur at important bottlenecks [ie; the fires *never*
occur in an area where they would only damage an electrical system, if
by occuring 2m away they could trash a water pipeline and communication
cable as well]. I think this is the Manichean theory of disaster prediction.
This, of course, doesn't pretain to the VAB, since I'd bet it has damage
control systems on damage control systems. I wonder what the VAB would cost
to duplicate, these days, though...
								JDN