al@ames.UUCP (Al Globus) (07/19/84)
This is in response to Henry Spencer's flame. I don't include the flame since it was rather long. I trust the paraphrases are accurate. Henry Spencer asked: 'where are the shuttle test articles?' Answer: the Enterprise. The Enterprise was the first orbiter built. It was never planned to go to space. It was strictly a test article. Henry doesn't appear to know much about how NASA actually works, although he has lots of opinions. NASA, contrary to Mr. Spencer's contention, does not assume that everything will work properly. Failures happen regularly at both the subsystem (bad) and system (mission failure) level. This is taken into account and planned for. Henry claims the astronauts should have had clippers to cut the pin off of Solar Max. For several reasons this would not have worked. 1. Cutting the pin might have loosened the insulation it held down leading to an over heated (failed) satellite. 2. A brief look at the the set up the astronaut was in makes it clear that there is no way he could have reached the pin. 3. Nobody knew that a pin was the problem for some time after the attempt. Henry seems to think there are no backup de-spin mechanism for Solar-Max. This is untrue. There are two systems that can de-spin the satellite. One failed and was replaced by the shuttle crew. The other was, in the end, used to de-spin the satellite. This operation was, however, full of risk and was not attempted until all other approaches had failed. People have a lot of fun thinking that NASA is a pack of overly cautious turkeys. These people, as far as I can tell, have never put anything in space and frequently don't know much about real space operations. Before you critisize the pros, I strongly suggest that you know A LOT about what you're talking about. At the least, read Aviation Week regularly. That's not to say that things can't be improved. I am saying that those who make the improvements will know where-of they speak, usually via direct hands-on experiance. Finnaly, aircraft are not spacecraft. If a aircraft has a problem you land it and look at it at your leasure on the ground with all the facilities of a major industrial power at hand. This is not the case for an orbiting spacecraft. Not only is access difficult in orbit, pre-launch testing is difficult since the operational environment is radically different from that found in ground facilities.