Actually the ISS is accessible to most of the world’s launch sites. The shuttle had an issues because it lugs a lot of dead mass up with it on every flight and so took a hit to get to the ISS(other rockets leaving KSC simply drop their fairings to reduce the amount of dead mass being lugged up and the commercial crew craft/cargo craft are much lighter than the shuttle). Even then Russia is not capable of heading to a 28.5 orbit and so the shuttle had to accommodate.

28.5 degrees just allows for the maximum amount of mass to be launched from the cape and is a good orbit for going to the moon but 51.6 isn’t impossible(Russia planned to go to the moon from that orbit and if your desitnation is l1/L2 it will cost about the same amount of delta V to leave LEO regardless of inclination). One nice benefit from ending the shuttle is that the ISS is now is an higher orbit and needs less reboosting/refueling whereas before the ISS had to be kept in a lower orbit to allow the Shuttle to get to it. The higher the orbit the less drag the ISS encounters.

you might agree with me on the L2 platform but I did not say what you are attributing to me about the ISS orbit…It is not in the worst orbit imaginable. dont be goofy RGO

“It is inaccessible while being scientifically worthless.”

Golly, you mean we haven’t been able to access the ISS since it’s been put up?

As to “scientifically worthless” because of the orbit, you’re being a little nebulous. The ISS is in LEO, and though the inclination requires a little more energy to reach than the inclination of Cape Canaveral (51.6 vs 28.5 degrees), it’s still in LEO moving freely through space. What’s the diff?

As usual you don’t know what you’re talking about and a new year won’t change it I am afraid.

Oh well.

but of course the L2 station is by definition an aimless, disparate goal…

no one can name a single thing it does that a communications relay satellite (for under 1/2 billion) or the ISS cannot do.

Bhueller Armstrong, anyone RGO

Apollo 11 was a team effort and has been honored by the United States in every fashion beyond parades and dinners; from medallions produced by the US Mint in precious medals to $1 coinage to numerious philatelic commerations by the USPS. The surviving flight hardware is on display in the NASM in Washington, where curious citizens can even touch a fragment of Luna. Indeed, by the 25th anniversary, the flight crew themselves, although always appreciative, made noise of tiring of being called upon to celebrate past accomplishmens while the country sat upon its Apollo laurels. As Michael Collins said in July, 1989, “It’s time to get going again!”

Naming a flight test facility is a modest postscript for an aviator engineer; a test pilot who, through circumstances and timing, was afforded the opportunity to command the first lunar landing. It is more for the acknowledgement within the aviation community than for national recognition. And when asked, Neil routinely placed his Apollo flight with in the context of the overall evolution of aviation.

Given Neil Armstrong’s persona, he’d be equally sppreciative if a glider port or a new municipal airport in his native Ohio bore his name. But mostly, the best way to honor Neil Armstrong would be to energize America’s manned spaceflight program; a national investment that took him to the edge of space in the X-15, LEO aboard Gemini VIII and to the moon as CDR of Apollo 11.

FDR routinely said he didn’t want any big memorial when he died. Instead, the nation deferred and in the decades since his passing created am enduring albeit less ostentatious ‘memorial’ Americans carry in their pockets: the Roosevelt Dime.

The Senate will get to it. Addressing the challenges of the future are more pressing than acknowledging, yet again, the achievements of the past.