gandalf@pro-canaveral.cts.com (Ken Hollis) (10/06/90)
Greetings and Salutations: (Once again...) Uh, no, sorry again. Galileo and Ulysses were going up in fast succession, since under the old plan they both went into the same Jupiter launch window. In fact, there were some concerns about whether two launches could be mounted so close together, especially with the extra work needed for the Centaurs. There definitely weren't any launches between them. However, there were launches scheduled after the ill-fated Challenger mission but before G+U. "The very next flight would have been carrying plutonium" is pure hysterical propaganda. -- Imagine life with OS/360 the standard | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology -------> End Quote I have checked in the meantime on the actual launches of Galileo & Ulysses. The launches were scheduled in June, approximately 3 weeks apart. One was to be launched aboard OV-99, the other aboard OV-104. They both were scheduled to be modded to allow for loading of LH2 & LO2 for the centaur stage. I hadn't heard from the Luddite group about the time frame of the launches, and was going on memory (sometimes the B-side give I/O errors...), But...If the trajectory of the probes required a January, or July launch, NASA would have had no choice to launch it when the window was required. That type of stuff can be argued forever with those that have a closed mind. Today there are "Nuclear protesters" protesting Ulysses launch outside KSC gates, with 2 arrested. They still are giving "Statistics" to the press (lies, damn lies & statistics...) about how good a chance there is of an explosion, release of radioactivity, ad nauseam. I obviously don't agree with them. By the way, there have been 35 Launches of the STS, 1 unsucessful. Ken Hollis