"Jorge R. Frank" wrote:

"TVDad Jim" wrote in news:1123169893.286543.316830
:

How does this repair job eclipse Pete Conrad's saving the entire Skylab
program with his TWO repair jobs during the Skylab 2 mission?
Assembling a ship-wide parasol AND freeing a solar panel was a heckuva
lot more work than pulling two pieces of vinyl out of a heatshield.

This repair job eclipses the Skylab repair in consequences, not complexity.
The Discovery EVA may have been simpler than the Skylab EVA, but the
survival of the Skylab crew wasn't riding on the success of the EVA, as was
potentially the case here. The Skylab crew was repairing the *station*, not
their *return vehicle*. If they failed, there was no question they could
still have returned home safely.

Right. So long as the failure didn't involve screwing up some pretty
hairy prox ops. So long as the failure didn't involve getting caught
in an extending solar wing. Not to mention the fact that Discovery
has an airlock - the whole crew wasn't exposed to E/IVA risks. Not to
mention the Discovery crew has a nice safe ISS right next door...

Sorry, the Skylab 2 crew had much more at stake.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL