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Pastimes : Shuttle Columbia STS-107 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Yogizuna who wrote (522)	2/13/2003 8:00:27 PM
From: ownstock	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 627

We all know the solution here: 1) Do not send people into space unless absolutely necessary to accomplish well justified missions. The most likely mission success is 95%, meaning there is a 1 in 20 chance the crew will be killed. Ergo, well justified mission does not include "we built it so we have to use it". Or "the Senator needs a joy ride". 3) All other stuff, small to heavy hauling is relegated to un-peopled vehicles, flown by the Air Force or Russians. Mostly the Russians, 'cause they got the cheapest cost to orbit. That means we build a 1:3 scale version of the shuttle with lift capacity for about 8-10 people to LEO, and no payload. Moon or Mars missions get taken care of by auto-assembling on-orbit sections of stuff launched as cheap as possible. If you remember, the reason the shuttle grew so big was fighting between Nasa and the AF over who had the charter to launch big payloads. They should be separate issues: payloads and passengers, that is. One is as cheap as possible, and the other is as safe as possible. -Own