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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!think!husc6!husc2!chiaraviglio
From: chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP (lucius)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: space news from 22 Sept AW&ST
Message-ID: <1010@husc2.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Nov-86 23:29:25 EST
Article-I.D.: husc2.1010
Posted: Mon Nov  3 23:29:25 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Nov-86 07:51:59 EST
References: <7254@utzoo.UUCP>, <346@xios.UUCP> <7275@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Ctr., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 30
Summary: How can you be sure. . . ?
Xref: mnetor sci.space:104 sci.space.shuttle:9

In article <7275@utzoo.UUCP>, henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
> Given some care -- warm weather, careful booster stacking, avoiding high
> pressures in leak tests -- there is no real doubt that unmodified Shuttles
> could be launched with little chance of disastrous failure.  

	How can you be sure that the chance of disastrous failure is little?
Our track record only suggests that the chance of a disaster isn't greatly
over 1 in 25, which seems to me to be unacceptable without taking precautions
to reduce it.  Considering NASA's internal track record, I think those things
should stay grounded until they are checked over by people who are not being
pushed to gloss things over, and a full technical report of the checkout comes
out.  Otherwise, we might have as many as 25 more flights, and then another
disaster, which would even further cripple our space capability.

	Also, you propose getting launches going for military missions.  Why
so much interest in running military missions in such haste? Further
militarization of space is one of the things we _l_e_a_s_t need.  Why should the
military get priority in recovery efforts after something goes wrong?  It is
_c_r_i_m_i_n_a_l that, after the shuttle has been presented to the taxpayers as a
commercially viable venture, the commercial ventures and all but a handful of
scientific missions have been kicked off it in favor of the military.

-- 
	-- Lucius Chiaraviglio
	   lucius@tardis.harvard.edu
	   {insert your favorite brave system here}!seismo!tardis!lucius

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