Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!sumax!polari!crad
From: crad@polari.UUCP (Charles Radley)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: LLNL Astronaut Delivery (was Re: You Can't Expect a Space Station)
Message-ID: <2698@polari.UUCP>
Date: 10 Nov 90 18:51:40 GMT
References: <2669@polari.UUCP> <1990Nov7.175448.17819@zoo.toronto.edu> <1224@iceman.jcu.oz>
Organization: Seattle Online Public Unix (206) 328-4944
Lines: 33


Why not tell the aboriginies and the greens about this:-
 
Most launch sites are wildlife sanctuaries.
 
For example, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station,
and Vandenburg Air Force Base, all of which I know well first hand.
 
KSC is crawling with alligators, manatess, and birds of infinite
variety.  When working at KSC for Galileo preps there was a Shuttle
launch, and I watched the tourists line up in their thousands on the
causeway.  Little did they know, a couple of hundred metres behind
them was a waterway where I used to see a pair of alligators have
their morning swim on my daily commute.
 
(They have crocodiles in Queensland don't they ?)
 
   In all those locations the wildlife is protected from the
development going on outside.   Those launch sites all border on
prime real estate, which property develpers are overbuilding as fast
as they can.
 
Queensland is rather more remote, but with a booming tourist
industry, is slowly becoming more developed, and a launch site there
would protect the local ecology. Launch sites, for safety reasons,
tend to prefer large open space where rockets can explode and stages
can drop, and propellant can leak, without hurting people or property.
 
At Vandenburg a week ago I saw a heard of wild deer next to the
flight line, and a single Roe deer in the middle of the industrial
area.  There is also a small pride of mountain lions in a canyon
behind the Atlas pads on the south base.