SpaceBanter.com - View Single Post - MSNBC (JimO) on value of 'big door' on ISS

**Rand Simberg[_1_]**

On Sat, 8 Jul 2006 06:10:29 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article , John Doe wrote:
That hatch (CBM) is about to get very useless when the shuttle is
retired and the whole concept of MPLM becomes moot, unless the Japanese
actually develop and produce their HTV.

Or unless either the CEV or one of the COTS commercial vehicles berths to
a CBM instead of docking. Which several of the COTS designs do; I'm not
sure about the Continued Employment Vehicle. (For a while it was going to
use a new lightweight docking interface, if I recall correctly, but that
has since been canceled.)

They're still trading LIDS and APAS, and dual capability.