On Nov 30, 4:15*am, bob haller wrote:
Wasn't quite that bad. ET-94's structure was fine, it was the foam that was
sliced and diced. It would have needed an extensive respraying.

ET-139 was structurally complete, but needed final assembly and spraying.
Wouldn't have needed the whole assembly line to be brought back up.

ET-140 and 141 were structurally incomplete and would have needed major
portions of the production line to be restarted.

So maybe two more flights. *Still could have helped I think. Keep flight
controllers trained, more up/down cargo for another two years.

Oh well. *It's in the past.

shuttle C should of been built, with infrastructure supporting not
only the existing shuttle, used just for its unique abilities, in a
minimally manned capacity, but C cargo variant.

this would of allowed a smoth transistion and retention of lots of
abilties.....

all lost now

but the current path although disruptive, is likely better for the
long term.

private industry *launchers, cutting costs dramatically.

if private industry can loft people and lower weight cargo theres no
reason they cant provide heavy lift too

Not politically possilbe at the moment: and YOU KNOW IT. In case
you've been living under a rock, Congress, while reluctantly agreeing
with Commercial Crew and Cargo, gave them only about 45% of the
requested funds in FY 12: and fully funded Orion and SLS. Guess what?
Congress is providing more direction to NASA than the current
Administration. You may now return to your cave.....