🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <330@electro.UUCP> ignac@electro.UUCP (Ignac Kolenko) writes:
>what exactly are the dimensions of both Mir and Skylab???
>somehow, the term "fraction the size" makes Mir sound like its no bigger
>than a washroom, compared to a department store sized Skylab!

I don't have numbers handy, I'm afraid, but Paul is right:  Mir is much
smaller than Skylab.  (Well, Mir in its current configuration.)  Hardly
a surprise, since they used a much smaller launch vehicle for it.  But
unlike Skylab, they've already expanded Mir once (with Kvant) and more
expansion is coming.

If you look at photos of the inside of Mir, "no bigger than a washroom"
is not that much of an exaggeration.  Amazing that they've actually had
men living in that little thing for over a year.  Their resources may
be limited, but they're not short of determination.

>oh, btw, whatever happened to the ESA Spacelab. i remember reading
>so much about this about 7 or 8 years ago from NASA publications that i
>sent away for. if i recall correctly, only one shuttle flight went up with
>the Spacelab. was it a successful mission?? was it too costly??

Spacelab worked, and there are more Spacelab flights planned.  Not as many
as were originally anticipated, but that's true of most everything in the
US space program these days...  You'll start seeing Spacelab missions as
soon as the "core" of screaming-high-priority missions is dealt with, in
a year or so.

>also, why can't the u.s. send up a duplicate of Skylab?? like, if they
>did it once, why can't they do it again?? imagine, there would be no need
>to re-engineer a new space station, since they already had one design that
>appeared to work correctly...

In fact, we've got a (formerly) flight-ready Skylab:  Skylab II, in the
Smithsonian.  (Please, not "the backup Skylab", it was built to fly.)
What we don't have is a booster that can launch it.  It's much too big
for the shuttle.

Skylab also had one big defect, which would take at least some redesign
to fix:  it was not designed to be resupplied in space.  Most of its
supplies went up with it.  The Soviets have got this licked for Mir,
but the US has no equivalent of the Progress freighter.
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