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From: michaelm@3comvax.UUCP (Michael McNeil)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Shuttle External Tanks and Space Stations
Message-ID: <321@3comvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Jan-86 19:31:43 EST
Article-I.D.: 3comvax.321
Posted: Thu Jan  2 19:31:43 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jan-86 05:36:34 EST
References: <6205@utzoo.UUCP> <22000012@hpfcla.UUCP>
Reply-To: michaelm@3comvax.UUCP (Michael McNeil)
Organization: 3Com Corp; Mountain View, CA
Lines: 37
Summary: Does a worthwhile noncontroversial goal for NASA exist?

In article <22000012@hpfcla.UUCP> ajs@hpfcla.UUCP writes:
>I've heard rational arguments both for and against additional orbiter
>vehicles, even against having a space station (e.g.  see this month's
>Scientific American).  Given that we're already in the shuttle launching
>business, and the low incremental cost to save those ETs for future use,
>maybe the activists among us should focus on that as a safe, NON-
>CONTROVERSIAL short-term goal for NASA.
>
>Used to be a space station fanatic but now I'm not so sure...
>Alan Silverstein

I doubt very much that this goal is actually noncontroversial, and I
also suspect that if a noncontroversial goal for NASA could be found,
that it, whatever it is, would not be worth doing.  

-- 

Michael McNeil
3Com Corporation     "All disclaimers including this one apply"
(415) 960-9367
..!ucbvax!hplabs!oliveb!3comvax!michaelm

	But as in all businesses the acting part is most difficult,
	especially where the work of many agents must concur, so was
	it found in this.  For some of those that should have gone
	in England fell off and would not go; other merchants and
	friends that had offered to adventure their moneys withdrew
	and pretended many excuses; some disliking they went not to
	Guiana; others again would adventure nothing except they went
	to Virginia.  Some again (and those that were most relied on)
	fell in utter dislike with Virginia and would do nothing if
	they went thither.  In the midst of these distractions, they
	of Leyden who had put off their estates and laid out their
	moneys were brought into a great strait, fearing what issue
	these things would come to.  
		William Bradford, 1630, *Of Plimouth Plantation*,
		regarding events of Spring, 1620