agr@vaxine.UUCP (Arnold Reinhold) (09/20/83)
from Aviation Week & Space Technology Sept. 19, 1983: "NASA head James M. Beggs has reversed an agency shuttle program office decision that would have placed the orbiter Columbia in storage for two years and made the spacecraft available for spare parts cannaibaization for half that period. . . . Beggs said. 'There are two reasons I felt it was a bad thing to do. One is that it is bad engineering policy to make a hanger queen out of a flying airplane. It would be a very bad thing to lay up Columbia and cannibalize it because I don't think we would ever get it back to the condition it is in now. The second reason is that it wopuld definitely leave the wrong impression not only politically, but also with our customer base. . . . While we do have shortages now we have put plenty of money in to by and lay-in the necessary spares over the next two to three years.' . . . Now that the decision has been reversed, the agency will have to revise its manifest and find one or two missions for Columbia between Spacelab 1 [which was to be its last for two years] and Columbia's modification period. The most likely candidates are Mission 17 in August 1984 carrying the Earth radiation budget spacecraft and the Spacelab 3 life sciences mission scheduled for shuttle Mission 20 in November 1984."