🚀 go-pugleaf

There has been a lot of discussion lately on the wonderful Soviet space
program verses our nonexistant space program. When we have a failure, we put
our whole program on hold for 2 years. When they have a failure, they sweep
up the mess and get back to business. Sometimes, in a matter of days. Why
is this?

Americans don't seem willing to accept the risks of spaceflight.  We want
space travel to be as safe as a bus ride downtown.  The Soviets have accepted
the risk and are willing to live with it.  When the Shuttle blew up, it was
only a matter of hours until the specific cause was known.  NASA could have
changed the launch criteria to require warmer weather and continued launching
in a few weeks.  This, they did not do and I don't think they should have 
either.  We can't tell what the Soviet would have done in a similar situation.
We have three shuttles now.  We could use them if we had to.

I don't think the Soviet hardware is any better than ours. It is not much
worse either.  The Soviets have a space station and we don't. Many people
in our space science community think we don't need one.  I have a question.
How does the Mir compare with Skylab, besides the obvious fact that we no
longer have Skylab.

-- 

	Mike Mahar
	UUCP: {turtlevax, cae780}!weitek!mahar

	Disclaimer: The above opinions are, in fact, not opinions.
	They are facts.