🚀 go-pugleaf

|From: redin@lysator.liu.se

|-In sci.space you write:
|Freedom decided not to use methane thrusters.  so instead they are
|-throwing out waste CO2  and importing hydrazine.  failure oriented
|-management wins again.  someone thought methane thrusters were
|-too risky.
|Methane more risky then hydrazine? but, but, but, oh well :-(
|I simply dont understand the US pork barrels. Couldent they have
|launched 4-5 miniature stations with single shuttle flights to test
|things out? The first 1-2 is junk and cannot be habitable and are
|scuttled after the shuttle flight, next 3-4 can be manned between
|two flights or more and number 5 - n can be bolted to a truss and
|you have your tested, safe freedom with bells and whistles that _work_.
|You will get at least as much pork and much more space station.
|Why in hell are they stuck inside CAD simulations and paperbins?
|Magnus Redin  Lysator Academic Computer Society  redin@lysator.liu.se
|Mail: Magnus redin, Rydsv{gen 240C26, 582 51 LINK|PING, SWEDEN

The problem is not that methane is risky.  We have been using methane
industrially for 150 years.  but that SSF management said, no-one has ever
space qualified a methane oxygen thruster so damn if we will.
Failure oriented management.   

and as for the other idea,  i guess that's what skylab was.  of course
now NASA is such an arthritic bureaucracy, i dont think they really want
to fly packages so much as study them.  actually  who needs to build
mini stations.  for small items test them in the shuttle cargo bay,
for longer duration, test them on MIR.

but that would be too easy, i guess.

pat