stealth@engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) (12/20/90)
In the December 17 issue of AW&ST, a quote from the Augustine Report from the White House/NASA Advisory Committee on the Future of the US Space Program, read: "... the committee believes in hindsight that it was, for example, inappropriate in the case of Challenger to risk the lives of seven astronauts and one fourth of NASA's launch assets to place in orbit a communications satellite. "NASA should proceed immediately to phase some of the burden being carried by the shuttle to a new unmanned (but potentially man-ratable) launch vehicle that offers increased payload capacity and is derived wherever practicable from existing components to save time and money." On my tenth birthday in 1980, my parents gave me a book that contained drawings of unmanned conventional & shuttle derived heavy lift boosters. O, the wheels of bureacracy, they turneth slowly. -- Mike Pelletier - Usenet News Admin & Programmer "Wind, waves, etc. are breakdowns in the face of the commitment to getting from here to there. But they are the conditions for sailing -- not something to be gotten rid of, but something to be danced with."