Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!apple!winter
From: winter@Apple.COM (Patricia Winter)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Skeptical Shuttle Enquirer
Summary: C'mon, Bob--you of all people should know better!
Message-ID: <51379@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 10 Apr 91 17:25:39 GMT
References: <910@idacrd.UUCP>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 34

In article <910@idacrd.UUCP> mac@idacrd.UUCP (Robert McGwier) writes:
>If you were a truly cynical person, and you were extremely worried about the
>manned space budgets during these times, and if you needed a GOLDEN opportunity
>to demonstrate why man needs to be launching satellites (HEY!  James Pike
>says so, it must be true now), 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.


Oh sure, I can see it now. One NASA person to another:

	"Hey, I've got a great publicity idea! We could risk ruining
	a 600 million dollar observatory and the success of an entire
	mission by rigging a problem with GRO. *Then*, we could risk
	the lives of two astronauts by making them do an additional
	EVA. Whaddya think--is that a brilliant idea or what?!"

Coming from anyone else, the suggestion that NASA may have deliberately
bumbled GRO would seem grossly uninformed. Coming from someone with 
extensive direct experience with the problems spacecraft can get
themselves into (and how *is* DOVE today, Bob?), it's absolutely incredible.

Maybe you need to take a stress pill, let someone else troubleshoot the
Microsats for a while, and relax, Bob. :-)


Patty
-- 
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Patty Winter N6BIS                        INTERNET: winter@apple.com
AMPR.ORG: [44.4.0.44]                     UUCP: {decwrl,nsc,sun}!apple!winter
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