Hi all subscribers.. I'm member of SeeSat since 1999, in fact I didn't want to send emails because I was very "rookie" on sat observing these days. I was watching all these ideas and observation results after Columbia tragedy. Thanks to moderator, he allowed OT discussions for this subject, I want to express my thoughts. The re-entry video was shocking when I was waiting the landing message from HSF mailing list. STS's got extremely routine after ISS construction started. Yesterday I've read an article in Time Magazine about Shuttles. (date Feb 10,2003 page 36,37) Maybe you know these thoughts before (mostly who live in US) that I learned it yesterday. Author says that "Did Israeli astranout Ilan Ramon really have to be there to push a couple of buttons on the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment, the payload package he died to accompany to space?" For Planetary exploration, the best solution is Robotic wehicles like Sojourner, and MER 1,2... for remote sensing there are dozens of satellites in orbit but for health experiements and for servicing missions like Hubble, orbit raising maneuvers of ISS, it is not efficient (maybe possible) to use robotic devices. Another line in article says " A rational person might have laughed out loud at the thought that although school busses are replaced every decade, a spaceship was expected to remain in service for 40 years" Space Shuttle has an extreme design , as you know, you attach plane-like mass on a rocket out of mass centre . When a small particle comes from nose of external tank (foam or ice..) directly hits to shuttle. Tiles are fragile materials, if you hit strongly there may be micro-crack over surface of tile and you cannot recognise untill re-entry.. I think NASA will make a new design for tiles maybe they can put protection for lift-off but there are no other rocket system which carries 7 astranouts and tons of cargo to space in one flight with 2 fail in 117 flight. Best wishes.. Firat BARLAS Izmir - Turkey 38d 26' N 27d 06' E 5 m ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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