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From: steve@nuchat.sccsi.com (Steve Nuchia)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Recovering HST from orbit
Message-ID: <1991Feb11.234307.25042@nuchat.sccsi.com>
Date: 11 Feb 91 23:43:07 GMT
References: <6814@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> <1614@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de>
Organization: South Coast Computing Services, Inc.  Houston
Lines: 20

In <1614@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de> p515dfi@mpirbn.UUCP (Daniel Fischer) writes:
>(+) One might ask: hey, why is the STS payload bay supposed to be dirty? But
>then again, the last Shuttle mission had almost to be terminated because of
>excessive dirt in several systems... One would have to put a sack around the

What I hear from my sources is that the orbiter contamination control
people wanted to but were not allowed to clean the Astro-1 filters.
Apparently there was some kind of turf fight over orbiter versus payload
equipment.  In any case they've been working very hard to clean up the
payload bays and keep them clean, and to develop procedures to control
the cabin contamination introduced by its occupants.  There were problems
initially -- apparently nobody realized that a reusable spacecraft would
need to be *cleaned* -- but by the time the HST was put on board, the payload
bays (all of them) were up to snuff.

-- 
Steve Nuchia	      South Coast Computing Services      (713) 964-2462
	"Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune
	 not to keep very well and to be easily misled."
	    --- Immanuel Kant,  Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals