Herb Schaltegger wrote:
On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:48:51 -0500, John Doe wrote
(in article 1113414527.fc87c2f4603d6724f069707f71eff22b@teran ews):


Shouldn't it close its astronaut
school now and stop training shuttle astronauts ?

That's a lower-level policy decision than what's going on in D.C.
now,
which are confirmation hearings for the new candidate Administrator.

Be that as it may, however, the answer is obviously no. NASA didn't
stop training during the pause between Gemini and Apollo, or Apollo
through Skylab, or Skylab through ASTP, or ASTP through STS. So why
stop training now?

Isn't that wasted
money ?

Isn't it wasting money to hide your identity even though we know who
you are? Then why do you do it?

For the few flights that remain, they don't need to grow the
number of astronauts.

No, they don't need to "grow" the corps; they do need to maintain it

against attrition.

Come to think of it, I can't think of a time when there would have been
no astronauts in training. Certainly not in the gaps between Mercury
and Gemini, and Gemini and Apollo. Even during the transition between
Apollo and the Shuttle there probably wasn't a break as the astronaut
office would have quite a say in certain design aspects of the vehicle
(cockpit layout).

I remember reading in "Deke!" that the first shuttle simulator at JSC
was being assembled while the ASTP crew was in training. Crews would
have had to be in there to make sure everything worked. ALT only
followed two years after ASTP, and as operational shuttle flights were
hoped for by 1979, the Shuttle OFT crews probably went into the
training cycle as soon as ALT ended.

If history is a lesson and if NASA is really serious about this, we
should at least start seeing mockups or initial simulators in the next
couple years. Note, I stress if they are serious because 2010 is not
far away.

-A.L.