In a message dated 99-07-18 01:06:55 EDT, Alintelbot@aol.com wrote:
> increasingly inefficient. What's fascinating is that there's no real
reason
> we couldn't be going beyond Earth orbit with it after some retrofitting.
To
> my mind, a retrofitted Shuttle would make an ideal vehicle for shipping
> hardware to the Moon for, say, a permament base.
I know we've got real rocket scientists here (I only play one on my computer), but I don't think this is right. Why carry WINGS (and reentry tiles) to the moon? (Even though that was an image I saw often enough in the science fiction art of my earliest youth -- on the covers of paperbacks that were already yellowing then.) Which is not to say that the shuttle cargo bay isn't plenty large enough to carry a reusable translunar tug and an associated lander . . .
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"Civilization is protest against nature;
progress requires us to take control of evolution."
-- Thomas Huxley