🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <STEINLY.92Aug6153937@topaz.ucsc.edu> steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes:
>In article <1992Aug5.181137.9250@sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes:
>
>   In article <JMC.92Jul25123947@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>
>   >          ...               It may not be the best design, but
>   >it's the only design we have
>
>   But it's not the only design we have!  

[... ideas from 1931-1992 omitted ...]

>             ...               note the difference
>between "design" on the order "let's make it a big
>wheel at 330mi spinning at 1 rpm" and the "design"
>that says "we need 1.5 miles of cabling, this gauge, ... 

All of which seems to ignore the one design that we actually launched! 

Skylab was designed, two of them built, one launched and used for 
quite some time.  It is presumably man-rated and that design could be 
built again.  Of course one might wish to update it, but Mir has shown 
that a simple and conservative design is the best way to get up there 
early and stay there for an extended period of time.  

Except for unfortunate delays in the shuttle program, the one that we 
launched could have been kept up there and still be used as the base 
platform for a larger system. 

The one thing I really do not understand in all of the discussion of the 
need for long-term study of human biology in orbit and the recent story 
about problems in zero-g adaptation is why none of this was studied back 
in the days of Skylab.  

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)