🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jun5.203448.11619@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu
(Henry Spencer) writes:
> In article <6353@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jlhaferman@l_ecn12.icaen.uiowa.edu (Jeff
Haferman) writes:
>>On a very recent Soviet (I think) space flight, wasn't there a female
>>aboard from a country other than the Soviet Union? ...
>
> Yes:  Helen Sharman, the British cosmonaut who made a short visit to Mir.
> --

Hey you guys in the USA who still think of communism as the biggest threat
since button flys ;) !!

don't you find it slightly embarrasing that your #1 ally at the UN for the
last forty years, ally in WWII and the first country to offer substantial help
in Operation Desert Storm, as well as one of the main supporters of NATO (which
if you will remember is not a "keep europe safe" campaign, but a first line
defence for you people) would have to sedntheir first person into space, not
with our allies that we have fought beside, but with the very country that we
have been preparing to fight against for the last X years ???????

 Don't you think that the penny pinching and shi* quality planning of congress
 and NASA (respectively) is just ever so slightly nauseating, when we ( as part
of ESA ) have had (for example) our part of the freedom space station ready to
roll for quite a time now. I remember a science program "tommorow's world"
talking about it as far back as 1982 !!!

This is really just distilled flame, which I have been collecting up for the
last while.... I understand that, as I am not a US taxpayer, I can't really
comment on how congress spends it's budget, but there has been a lot of talk
over here of "the peace dividend".... some of that would help get some of the
great projects back on their feet..... (freedom, mars, moon base etc)

Theora.

ps> the comment about shi* quality management... It's true! in >NO OTHER<
competitive industry (including extremely dangerous environments like the oil
platforms in the North Sea) is so much time, money and effort wasted on
studying This-useless-little-side-effect-which-will-tell-us-bog-all,rather it
is spent on the tools and equipment needed to get the job done.

pps> Before you flame, consider this. do you know what the russians have been
doing on Mir? they have been growing silicon crystals. Not just little
crystals, that scientists can cut up and say "yes, it's definetly silicon", but
crystals that can be used by the semiconductor industry. >VERY VERY VERY< high
quality crystals. ata arate of one per flight. when you add this to the fact
that the russians are offering a flight opportunity to >ANYONE< who can come up
with the hard cash, you will see that the russian space program (or at least
the manned section of it) has almost payed for itself, and will soon start to
make a profit.

Reply please. I look forward to hearing from you.
                                                 T.
--
sig (made it through the ethernet alive!)
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Theora Jones  Strathclyde University, SCOTLAND   || " I can fly higher than an
CABP10@uk.ac.strath.vaxa (somewhere on JANET)    ||   Eagle, with you as the
CABP10%vaxa.strath.ac.uk (elsewhere, hopefully)  ||   wind beneath my wings "
CABP10%vaxa.strath.ac.uk@ukacrl (just might work)||                 8:-) 1990
A solution to the worlds problems: Kei and Yuri! ||      "Lets be MAWS!"-DP3.2
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