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Posted by Malcolm Bacchus on June 24, 2006, 8:13 pm
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hallerb@aol.com (Bob Haller) wrote:
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> *Date:* 24 Jun 2006 15:52:14 -0700
>
> Look theres (sic) NO reason we couldnt (sic) order and have some soyuz
> (sic) IN STOCK for fast launch.
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> Theres (sic) no reason the crew couldnt (sic) be downsized till the
> new tank is flying.
How do you know that there is "no reason"? The first is probably a
cost/timing consideration. The second (which doesn't have any impact on
whether there is "go fever") must have to do with the needs of the
mission. I presume the mission becomes riskier if there are fewer crew
involved.
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> Risk can largely be mitigated.
Yes. But you haven't yet indicated the level of risk you are prepared
to allow them to take. Risk can be totally mitigated by not doing
anything at all.
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>In this case the combo of possible causes for a disaster are justr
>(sic) too many.
That is again just your opinion.
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> GO FEVER is again the mainstay of nasa (sic) and their management hats.
As is that. If they don't launch in a reasonable timeframe, other
people will be saying that LACK OF NERVE is the mainstay of NASA and its
engineering hats. It is always a compromise between the two.
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> can you imagine a crew stuck at station slowly dying with no way off?
Yes.
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> sorry taxpayers we didnt (sic) properly prepare for this even though
> we were well aware it could happen and even ignored our top engineers
> and flew anyway.
Sorry taxpayers. We took a risk. It was good risk. It didn't pay off.
Everybody involved knew the risks and were happy with them in order to
progress space flight. The alternative was to ask you for a lot more
money to sort out the problems and our understanding from our bosses on
Capitol Hill was that you didn't want to pay more taxes. Everything in
life is a gamble; everything is a toss up between how much you want to
pay to reduce risk and how much you want to do something. You didn't
want to pay, but we didn't want to stand around whining and moaning and
leaving the future of space to other nations. So we went ahead.
And if we needed to do it again. We'd do it again.
Just get the PR right. A failure only becomes a disaster because you
MAKE it one.
There is a story told of Tom Paine. One of his colleagues in OMSF was
worried about the Apollo 8 decision. In order to get the mission
cancelled, he asked the "clincher": "And if it all goes wrong, just how
do we tell Susan Borman that Frank is stranded in orbit around the
moon?" "Well", said Tom Paine when he heard the question, "I guess I
would just have sat her down, held her hand and said 'Susan, Frank is
stranded in orbit around the moon.'"
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> A bad outcome will permanetely (sic) end taxpayer support for man in
> space....
Only if you allow the doom-mongers and the nay-sayers to get the upper
hand. How did your country get itself into this navel-gazing state of
affairs in the first place where no-one is willing to allow people who
want to risk their own lives in exploration to risk them? What happened
to the USA's once renown get-up-and-go?
There is a simple answer to the tax-payer: Death happens in
exploration. Space exploration costs money. Unless you want Russia,
China and India to take the lead over the USA, live with these facts.
If the country had taken the same view of the first aeroplane pioneers,
you'd still be crossing the Atlantic by boats rather than building 747s.
Malcolm B
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>
> Look theres (sic) NO reason we couldnt (sic) order and have some soyuz
> (sic) IN STOCK for fast launch.