On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 02:31:19 -0500, John Doe wrote:

The last flight of Columbia had a large spacehab that was outfitted as a
lab with lost of research equipment inside.

The Spacehab Double Module. Two Spacehabs connected back to back.

But for station-bound flights, Spacehab brings no special functionality
compared to existing lockers inside the shuttle because everything must fit
through the narrow hatch between shuttle and station.

Well, it is powered, so Spacehab is probably a little better than an
MPLM if you have supplies that must be refrigerated or otherwise
powered during transport.

Personally, with the number of shuttle flights finite, wouldn't it be
better to see NASA dump spacehab flights and replace spacehab with some of
the smaller modules such as cupolla , perhaps bring back EAS ?

There's only one free CBM on Node 1 at present, and it will be needed
to temporarily park Node 2 next summer, so there's nowhere to put the
Cupola (destined for Node 3 anyway) yet.

I realise that in the original assembly plan, Spacehabs were planned as
fillers because those smaller modules would not have been delivered to KSC
yet, but in the current schedule, everything is sitting in a wharehouse
waiting to be launched. So why not put a few smaller modules in the cargo
bay instead of a spacehab ?

What smaller modules? The only thing as small as Spacehab is probably
Japan's logistics module, but again, there's nowhere to park it yet
that won't interfere with Node 2 install next summer.

Brian