They are apparently lobbying Russian President Putin to override the
cabinet vote to dispose of Mir. Russian Space Agency officials claim Mir
needs expensive repairs before it can be safe for continued use, though
this is following extensive pressure from NASA to dump Mir, since NASA
sees commercial competition in the space station market as a threat to
its authority and continued American domination of space.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/11/21/space.series.ap/index.html
Personally I'd like to either dig up that MOL prototype and launch it,
or get the engineering drawings and build a new one. With a $20 million
injection from NBC for such a project (and possibly more, what would
they pay for having a permanent TV studio in orbit? Science, news, and
weather from orbit.... Beat THAT CBS/ABC/CNN) it should not be hard to
get such a project off the ground. Get a free Titan launch from the Air
Force in exchange for hosting observation modules on the station with
the occasional manned USAF mission. The thing with off the shelf
technology is its cheap and proven.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:30 MDT