eder@ssc-vax.UUCP (Dani Eder) (08/31/88)
In article <1765@eneevax.UUCP>, kerog@eneevax.UUCP (Keith Rogers) writes: > > POINTLESS MISSIONS?!!! How can you say that! You know as well as the > rest of us that the space station could serve as a platform for establishing > a permanent manned lunar base, and that with a lunar base we could ship into >earth orbit almost all the materials necessary to build solar power satellites, > which are far from useless. It could also serve as a base for and help > develop technologies for missions to go get high metal-content asteroids from > the belt to assuage future materials shortages. The other *points* to A space station might serve as a staging point for further missions, but the current international Space Station "Freedom" design does not. It is designed to be a set of three laboratories (US, European, Japanese) plus a support platform for observational (earth and astronomical) science. If you want a service station for orbital transfer vehicles so you can refuel them, repair them, and put new payloads on them, you have to design for that. "Space Station" is as generic a term as "building" is on Earth. Building covers both research laboratories and gas stations, but their functions are not interchangeable. The same goes for a Space Station. -- Dani Eder / Boeing / Space Station Program / uw-beaver!ssc-vax!eder (205)461-2606(w) (205)461-7801(h) 1075 Dockside Drive #905 Huntsville, AL 35824 34 40 N latitude 86 40 W longitude +100m altitude, Earth