From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Sat Nov 30 2002 - 08:45:01 MST
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael M. Butler [mailto:mmb@spies.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 8:52 PM
>
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/665506.asp
Thanks for this link -- very interesting and not at all surprising.
[I'm watching the prep for the third and final STS-113 EVA while writing
this, BTW.]
While the big steps have all gone pretty much flawlessly, the little
details are bound to pile up. And NASA's desire to control the spin on
those details is also inevitable. That's really just a small expression
of the larger issues, which is the fact that the ISS mission beyond
construction and engineering is so poorly defined. In fact, it can't be
fun being a NASA policy wonk or public affairs officer: avoiding the
elephant on the table has to be hard work. The bottleneck of access to
LEO squeezes everything, including the ability to be frank about what
the hell our tax dollars are doing in building that huge stack of
hardware up there.
With all that said, I still can't help but emotionally buy in to the "if
you build it, they will come" mentality that has kept Freedom/ISS/Alpha
going for 20+ years. As expensive and "missionless" as ISS/Alpha is
now, it *is there* and will continue to grow through sheer momentum over
the next few years (unless, of course, the Soyuz assembly line comes
completely to a halt, in which case, the facility will go into mothballs
for a while -- also not necessarily a bad thing). The bottom line for
me is that ISS is just at the edge of our current capabilities as a
species and I'm glad we're doing it, if for no other reason than that it
will be there, ready for a more fruitful use when LEO access becomes
cheaper and easier in 10-20 years. Maybe the fact of its existence will
speed real space development up by a few years then -- not a bad thing.
In that respect, ISS could be the only tangible legacy bequeathed to the
next stage (http://gregburch.net/space/2050.html) when it happens.
GB
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