"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:


ISSS has been in the planning and construction phases since 1992.
Before
that we were planning Freedom for many years, but never got much done.

No, it was Space Station Freedom all the way through CDR in the spring
of 1993. It was briefly "Alpha" during the summer/fall timeframe during
the time the Russians were climbing aboard and turned into "ISS" shortly
thereafter.

Thanks. I thought Clinton had announced the change in 92, not 93.


And it is not a test bed to test tech for Mars. In fact, Congress in
the
past few years made it clear that NASA could NOT test Mars bound tech on
the
station (witness the fate of transhab.)

SSF was supposed to be - that's what the closed-loop ECLSS was for, the
on-orbit assembly/maintenance experience was to lead up to, and the
planning and logistics for multinational/multiyear missions was supposed
to culminate in.


No argument, but the discussion was about what ISS is now, not what
Freedom was supposed to be.


However, once ISS scaled back the original lifetime to 15 years (rather
than 30) - half of which or more is being used up in a drawn-out
assembly sequence - and once the systems requirements deleted, delayed
or pushed waaaay down the line all the real interesting and useful stuff
(closed loop ECLSS, 8 person crew, deleting Lab "B" and both Habs,
delaying the centrifuge module, delaying Columbus and Kibo labs,
deletion of Nodes 3 and 4, etc), real tangible benefits for any kind of
additional mission (whether to the Moon, Mars or anywhere) are hard to
find.

Ayup.



--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Columbia Loss FAQ:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html