This is no safe haven for the way down, thou damge has not as of yet happened in that senerio.

Even the safe haven of the iss has its limitations and is very dependent on the amount of supplies present when such an event would occur. We can not always plan that the ISS will always have the supplies needed to sustain any crew for more than a few weeks at best. This is no where near the time to mount a rescue shuttle and I am sure that the Russians as well would disapprove of lending one since it still would not meet the require number of seats to return a full shuttle crew.

I would prefer safe return versus safe haven under the planned if event happens on the way up.

As for the on the way down escape pods…

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/257/1”

I haven’t gotten around to reading taht one yet, thanks for the reminder.

Aj:”sounds like you’d be happy just getting rid of the shuttle, period. what constitutes an acceptable risk for human spaceflight?”

I would certainly be happy if we could ground the shuttles now, today, yesterday even. And then build a craft meant to take man beyond LEO, THAT is something worthwhile that makes the risk of spaceflight acceptable.

I recall reading today about how to give the shuttle mission to Hubble its own safe haven:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/257/1

in my opinion the ISS is NOT worth risking anything much less anyones life.

sounds like you’d be happy just getting rid of the shuttle, period. what constitutes an acceptable risk for human spaceflight?

Mikulski is protecting the interests of her constituents. As a Senator, that’s her job. However, I also believe that she happens to believe what she says.

I would support a regular Shuttle mission to “save” Hubble. As the most significant instrument in modern astronomy, it is worth the incremental costs of another Shuttle launch, for historical reasons if nothing else. (In fact, I believe the fuel NASA wants to use to sink it should be used to boost it to a higher orbit, so that it’s mirror can be used later. In fact again, I think we should be boosting all hardware to high storage orbits, rather than dumping it into the ocean. Early exploration of a new frontier is all about emplacement of infrustructure and we will need some of this hardware in the future, but that is a different debate.)

But for a more direct answer to your question, in my opinion the ISS is NOT worth risking anything much less anyones life.

is finishing the space station worth the risk to the lives of the 25-30 shuttle crews required to do the job (vs. just 1 crew for hubble)?

And that is a shame.

Barbara Mikulski has been one of the strongest and most consistent friends the space community has had. I think there is an unfortunate amount of truth in my thought that she doesn’t get the respect she deserves because she is not a Republican.

I think the Bush Administation’s plan to send a robot to Hubble, when astronauts are willing to risk the flight, is absurd. Especially so of the goal is to save money.

However, I do agree with the Bush Administration that if the choice really does come down to Hubble or the Exploration Initiative, the choice is clear: we’ve looked from home long enough, it’s time to go out and explore.

— Donald