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From: METH@USC-ISI@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Columbia Lives!!!!!
Message-ID: <11876@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Sep-83 12:29:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.11876
Posted: Tue Sep 20 12:29:50 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Sep-83 04:40:57 EDT
Lines: 25


FROM AVIATION WEEK AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY, September 19, 1983:

BEGGS ENDS PLAN TO STORE SHUTTLE ORBITER

        NASA head James T. Beggs has reversed an agency shuttle
program office decision that would have placed the orbiter
Columbia in storage for two years and made the spacecraft
available for spare parts cannibalization half that period...
        Shuttle managers had treated their earlier decision as a
routine adjustment of program assets and therefore had not
included Beggs in the planning.  He immediately reversed it,
characterizing it as bad political and engineering policy...
        "I think they were wrong in considering it that way,"
Beggs said, "but I can understand why they would." ...
        "There are two reasons I felt it was a bad thing to do.
One is that it is bad engineering policy to make a hangar queen
out of a flying airplane.
        "It would be a very bad thing to lay Columbia up and
cannibalize it because I don't think we would ever get it back to
the condition it's in now.
        "The second reason is that it would leave the wrong
impression not only politically, but also with our customer
base..."
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