Re: Worth The Mission?

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:05:24 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Jorge
R. Frank" <jrfrank@xxxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:


And regarding the piece...

Agreed, it all hinges on the value of the mission. If you think
assembling ISS and servicing HST is worth it, then fly - and fly now; no
amount of tinkering with the foam will make the overall mission risk much
lower than it is already. Otherwise, don't fly, period.

Exactly my point (though the editor diluted it slightly in the
splashes).

(And no whining from the Hubble-huggers about cancelling the ISS flights
and just doing the one HST flight. That mission is currently 22 months
away. It could possibly be accelerated to 12-18 months if it were the
only one left. The shuttle program costs $4 billion a year whether it
flies or not. It simply isn't worth $4-6 billion to add a few more years
of operational life to HST - you could replace HST for far less.)

Yes, except, given the politics, it would be a lot easier to keep the
Shuttle alive for a Hubble repair than to get the equivalent amount of
money (or even less) for Hubble replacement. Federal budget dollars
are (unfortunately) not fungible...

It's also interesting to note that in addition to a call from the
Space Frontier Society to end the Shuttle program now, the LA Times
did so as well.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-ed-shuttle29jun29,0,1564017.story?coll=la-home-commentary
.

Relevant Pages

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