Re: Soyuz TMA-11 Comes Home, More or Less...



Monte Davis wrote:
Well...I didn't get up on the web till 1998, so don't judge me by my late start in hating the Freedom/ISS concept.
I instinctively hated it years before that...

I didn't "hate" it in 1984. But I'd already been struck since 1981 by
how hard everyone was pretending the Shuttle was a solution instead of
a first step. So the Freedom announcement just seemed like a
double-dip of delusion. I claim no prescience in thinking at the time
that if it happened at all it would be much smaller, more costly, and
slower to build than projected.

As someone way back then pointed out, once the commercial and DOD flights for the Shuttle were dropped, a space station of some sort became almost inevitable so the Shuttle would have something to do.
Q: What's the Shuttle used for?
A: To build the Space Station.
Q: Whats the Space Station used for?
A: It gives the Shuttle somewhere to go.
Of course, the Soviet Mir gave the Reagan administration to perfect opportunity to shovel yet more money at the aerospace industry...so that Socialism's Shining Star wouldn't scare our children as they looked up at the night sky and realized Commies were up their giving them the finger and just waiting to bury them. :-)

Pat
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