On Feb 16, 11:36�am, wrote:
On Feb 16, 10:50 am, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:





On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 09:39:48 -0600, in a place far, far away, "Joseph
S. Powell, III" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

With all the excitement experienced during the past few days with the
attachment of the Columbus module to the ISS, I was reminded of the types of
Space Station modules proposed back in the 1980's....
These tended to have a longer design, filling up the entire payload bay of
the Shuttle.
Does anyone know why these longer modules were rejected in favor of the
shorter ones now used on the ISS?
The older designs certainly had much more room.

Probably at least partly because longer ones would have been too heavy
for the Shuttle to get to the high-inclination ISS orbit. �In the
eighties, the station was planned to be put at 28 degrees. �But that's
just a guess.

Rand is right. � Also $ was factor- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

just imagine if the saturn family of launcers hadnt been abandoned.

hook a few skylabs together, big roomy and cheaper because everything
wouldnt of been minituarized for in orbit installation........

the shuttle was a great idea poorly executed and remainded way too long