Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Skeptical Shuttle Enquirer
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.153945.9807@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1991 15:39:45 GMT
References: <910@idacrd.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <910@idacrd.UUCP> mac@idacrd.UUCP (Robert McGwier) writes:
>... and you knew you could rig the release clamp
>so that it released but the spring mechanism could be fouled and that it
>would be trivial for a spacewalker to fix it and OH BY THE WAY we just planned
>many hours of space walks . . . .   I hate to be such a cynic and a skeptic
>but it is just too much like a choreographed melodrama for me.

I don't think the Conspiracy Theory is needed to explain GRO's problems.
"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
If Hubble can have its antenna fouled by a cable, GRO can have a similar
problem that can be resolved by an (unplanned) spacewalk.  (There is no
relation between whether a mission *plans* spacewalks -- as this one did,
for the first time in a while -- and whether it is *capable* of doing one
in the event of trouble, which all shuttle missions are.)  The fact is that
mechanical failures are not all that rare in space hardware, especially
new-design spacecraft, and if there happen to be spacewalk-capable
humans nearby, having them go out and fix the thing is sometimes useful.

If NASA had wanted a publicity stunt, they'd have done it for Hubble.
(In fact they *almost* did a spacewalk when Hubble's solar arrays stuck;
the astronauts were in the airlock getting ready when the problem was
cleared up.)  GRO is small potatoes by comparison.
-- 
"The stories one hears about putting up | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 are all true."  -D. Harrison|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry