Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!FNAL.BITNET!HIGGINS From: HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Space salvage, and the Paradox of Firsts Message-ID: Date: 29 Mar 89 23:44:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 56 Peter Yee (trident.arc.nasa.gov!yee@ames.arc.nasa.gov) posted a NASA press release by Sarah Keegan and Jeffrey Carr about Capt. Frederick Hauck, USN. "In November 1984, Hauck was STS-51A mission commander, the first space salvage mission in history. Hauck and crew retrieved and returned to Earth the Palapa B-2 and Westar VI communications satellites after deploying Anik D-2 and LEASAT-1 satellites." Apollo 12 landed on the Moon near the old Surveyor 3 spacecraft, and Bean and Shepard removed a few parts for study on Earth. Doesn't this count as "the first space salvage mission?" I think if you try to deny it, you'll find yourself getting real fussy about the definition of "salvage." I'm a little disturbed that the people writing NASA's press releases still emphasize "firsts" so often, despite all the criticism lobbed at such practices over the years. The 14 March release (by Charles Redmond and James Hartsfield) Peter posted in Space Digest v9 n301 was even worse: "DISCOVERY'S RETURN-TO-FLIGHT PHOTOGRAPHS RECORD MANY FIRSTS...For the first time in Shuttle history, Africa's Niger river was photographed in full flood and out of its banks...for the first time, an aircraft was photographed generating a contrail..." There's a basic dichotomy that Space Cadets suffer. Space flights should be Special Events, and we should drop everything else and watch them, and soak up every detail we can find, because we want to share in the great adventure. (Remember getting a TV in your classroom to watch Mercury and Gemini launches?) But space flights should be Routine Events, a part of everyday life, a casually accepted reminder that our race can get people and hardware into orbit any time it really wants to. We love to hear about every detail of this stuff, but we also want our world to become a "spacefaring civilization," and in a spacefaring civlization one more launch or one more landing would be no big deal. Our press seems to have come down mostly on the side of No Big Deal, leaving us space freaks to scramble for information wherever we can get it. Reporters don't cover every moment of a transatlantic marine voyage. And if you hung out at the airport, interviewing pilots, crew, and mechanics about this afternoon's upcoming flight to Podunk, and asking them their opinion about the future of aviation (sometimes known as "the U.S. manned air program")-- well, you'd be considered dotty at best. See the paradox? I suppose we should be grateful for NASA Select, and sci.space, and the few magazines that do cater to the likes of us. And to those NASA publicists tirelessly searching for new "firsts." ______meson Bill Higgins _-~ ____________-~______neutrino Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory - - ~-_ / \ ~----- proton Bitnet: HIGGINS@FNALB.BITNET | | \ / NEW! IMPROVED! SPAN/Hepnet/Physnet: 43011::HIGGINS - - Now comes with Free ~ Nobel Prizewinner Inside! Internet: HIGGINS%FNAL.BITNET@UICVM.uic.edu