ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (e.c.leeper) (03/28/86)
I wrote a letter to my Congresspersons (see letter at end of article). The reply I got from Senator Bradley is worth printing here: > "Thank you for contacting me concerning the space shuttle program. > I appreciated the opportunity to review your comments on this issue. > > The explosion of the space shuttle was a horrible tragedy. The > Space Program, like the President, is a symbol of America. I feel a > terrible sense of loss for the families and the country. The only thing > that we can do is to be reminded of our finitude and man's limits in the > universe. > > I have often talked about the Challenger landing on the salt flats > in California--how it made us feel as Americans--like we could do it > all; and that America was back, that we are proud of our team; and more > profoundly that we are optimistic about the capacity of man to harness > nature through science. > > But now, we are not so sure. Our optimism is undaunted but we have > to recognize that there may be a price. In its advance, science always > has its failures--only now those failures have human faces. > > We all hope the investigation of the Challenger catastrophe will > make less likely any future tragedies." A few comments of my own on his reply: 1) I knew there would be a price. I think most of us did. Maybe only Senators were dense enough to not realize it. 2) When a Senator starts talking about "our finitude" and "man's limits", he probably means, "we shouldn't vote any more money for this Godless enterprise." 3) One way to make future tragedies less likely is to stop trying--I have this terrible feeling in my gut this is what he means. In contrast, the response I got from Representative Dwyer was very pro-space: yes, this was a tragedy, but we must continue, etc. (See separate posting.) I know who's getting my vote next time--and who isn't. I would be curious to know what sorts of responses other people have gotten. (This is the letter I sent to Bradley and Dwyer (if it looks familiar, it's because pieces were shamelessly stolen from net.space): I want to urge your support for the continuation of the manned space program (and the manned space station) with a full and adequate level of funding. This includes the building of at least two more orbiters, one to replace Challenger, and the other to serve as the fifth orbiter that should have been built before. The questions may arise: do we need a shuttle-like vehicle, and does it need to be manned? The answer to the first is unequivocally yes; it is the only way we have of getting large arbitrary objects in and out of orbit, and it is the only way we will have for quite some years. I think that the answer to the second is also yes, and I will try to summarize why. First, a vehicle like the shuttle is basically a space station which we do not need to maintain in space for long periods, and which also provides launching and retrieval to earth. In this capacity it is useful to take humans if only because they can do space station activities while the vehicle does whatever else it needs to do--that is the rationale behind Spacelab. Second, we do not have teleoperators that can perform anything other than moving objects from one location to another. There is no machine that can disassemble an automobile engine (or any other engine), and there won't be one for a while. That means that if we want to do repairs and the like in orbit, we have to take people with us for the present. Forgoing this means forgetting things like the Hubble telescope, and why build expendable observatories when they can be repaired and modified to last for many years? We should begin designing the next vehicle. And we should continue to use the one we have now, with people aboard. ) Evelyn C. Leeper ...ihnp4!mtgzz!ecl (or ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl)