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From: nagy%warner.dnet@fngate (Frank J. Nagy:VAX Guru,Wizard&Loose Cannon)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Astro-1: Limited success and nearly complete failure?
Message-ID: <9012131304.AA10293@fngate.fnal.gov>
Date: 13 Dec 90 13:04:47 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
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Although the recent Astro-1 mission is, of and by itself, a
reasonable success, I would consider Astro to be pretty much
a complete failure.  The sense of this statement begins with Astro
being made up of a number of highly sophisticated instruments, with
Astro-1 being their first use.  As expected, there were a number
of "teething" pains getting the systems up and running.  However,
the original plans for Astro called for many re-flights so that the
learning pains for this first mission would not be so critical plus
allowing the instruments to be improved with each flight.

Insteed, we seem to have yet another NASA one-shot program.  My sense
from this is that NASA is totally incapable of long-range planning
for space science.

= Dr. Frank J. Nagy   "VAX Guru & Wizard"
= Fermilab Computing Division/Distributed Computing Dept/Special Projects Grp
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