Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!nuchat!lobster!mwk!pittman
From: pittman@mwk.uucp
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: After Endeavour, what then?
Message-ID: <346.281f448d@mwk.uucp>
Date: 2 May 91 04:43:25 GMT
Organization: M. W. Kellogg, Houston TX
Lines: 16

Is Endeavour (OV-105) the absolutely last shuttle to be built?  Everything
I hear seems to indicate that, yet common sense tells me that with Freedom
going up over the next decade, the current shuttle fleet may be too old to
service it.  The older spacecraft are already about ten years old; that means
that at the point that Freedom becomes operational, Columbia would be
approaching twenty years of age.  The youngest orbiter, Endeavour, would then
be pushing ten.

Pardon my naivete, but what is the design lifetime of a shuttle orbiter?


-------------------------------------------------------------
--- Darrell Pittman        pittman@mwk.uucp               ---
--- M. W. Kellogg Co.      pittman%mwk@lobster.hou.tx.us  ---
--- Houston, TX            (713) 753-4410                 ---
-------------------------------------------------------------