"Vandar" wrote in message
...
Jim Oberg wrote:


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13755857/

In the process, they're using a particular element of the space
station
that usually gets overlooked amid all the attention to more sexy
features
such as solar panels, air locks and oxygen generators. It's called the
"hatch," and it just doesn't get any respect - despite the fact that its
4-foot-plus width gives the international space station capabilities
that
are unprecedented in 30 years of orbital operations, going back to
NASA's
Skylab and Russia's earliest outposts.

What was the width of the hatch then? Did running into a problem with it
cause them to enlarge it?

29 inches on Skylab (the size of the Apollo docking tunnel).

Didn't really give problems back then since Skylab was launched with
everything aboard.

But they knew for ISS they'd need to move bigger things in and out. Note
the above is only an excerpt.

Read the entire URL for details.



Btw, nice little article Jim.