Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!caen!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!uunet!hela!aws From: aws@iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Subject: Re: After Endeavour, what then? Message-ID: <1991May7.173026.5258@iti.org> Date: 7 May 91 17:30:26 GMT References: <346.281f448d@mwk.uucp> <1991May6.170018.5455@iti.org> <1991May07.054232.19990@disk.uucp> Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow Lines: 32 In article <1991May07.054232.19990@disk.uucp> joefish@disk.uucp (joefish) writes: >>Freedom can be serviced for a tenth the cost using expendables. With >>no more new shuttles, NASA will need to use them. The taxpayers will >>save billions if they do. >There are other things than fred to think about. I think it would be >useful to build another shuttle, but without wings, without heat tiles, >without rudder, and without landing gear, and use it to go to geo orbit >and remove nonworking satellites, and bring them down to LEO and put >them in a shuttle that can land them. This sounds sort of like Shuttle-C although I doubt very much it could to to GEO. But you still have the same problem. The Shuttle is amazingly horendously mind-boggelingly expensive to operate. We would be far better off if we took this huge amount of money and spent it on infrastructure. We should build a reasonable OTV for going to GEO to get satellites. We should have a drydock in orbit for repair. The problem is that none of this will happen with the market so small and the market will remain small as long as we insist on spending three to five times what we need to to put payloads into orbit. Allen -- +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Allen W. Sherzer | Allen's tactics are too tricky to deal with | | aws@iti.org | -- Harel Barzilai | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+