re space manuevering tug was hst servicing mission in article c bbow ih news cso uiuc edu jbh uxa cso uiuc edu josh hopkins writes prb access digex net pat writes given that what i described for the hst seemed to be the smt and given the mass amrgins on the discovery mission is tight enough that spacewalking has to be carefully constrained no edo pallets no spare suits no extra mmu s has someone actually verified that mass is the predominant constraint on this mission you seem to be assuming it without giving supporting evidence someone from nasa posted that there were very significant mass margins on the hst re boost mission a while back i had asked why not carry the edo pallet up and the answer was the mass margins were tight enough they weren t even carrying extra suits why not do this quick test goldins philosophjy of faster cheaper better build a real fast space tug to handle the re boost of the hst using clean cryo fuels and get it ready before the hst mission pat this would be slower more expensive and worse slower the shuttle mission is scheduled to go up in december that s less than eight months away there is no way you could build new hardware retrain and reschedule the eva s in that time where s wingo when you need him come on knock that s t off you forget that during skylab they did overnight mission planning for the repair eva s also during the intelsat mission they did overnight wetf simulations i somehow think they could train up a new eva in months and as for building hardware anything can be built if you want it bad enough you forget the bus is already built all they d ahve to do is soup it up even test it on a delta mission don t get into this mode of negativism besides at the rate missions slip the discovery won t launch on this mission until march that s almost a year more expensive your proposal still requires the shuttle to do everything it was going to do execpt fire the oms in addition you ve added significant extra cost for a new piece of complex hardware ah but how much more expensive is the second hst servicing mission you forget there is a bum fgs the solar array electronics are getting hinky and there is still months until the servicing mission the time for the space walks are growing rapidly this was orignally planned out as spacewalks now they are at eva s with reserve walks if the smt can avoid a second servicing mission that s million saved if the weight savings means they can sit on orbit for days and handle any contingency problems that s quite a savings according to a gao report on the omv i have before me there are only two currently planned missions that could use such a vehicle hst and axaf since axaf has since been scaled back and hst can rely on the shuttle there doesn t seem to be any need for your vehicle of course there wasn t any need for the saturn v after apollo too as for the problems with the aperture door i am sure they can work out some way to handle that maybe a plug made from frozen ice it ll keep out any contamination yet sublime away after teh boost pat
