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Old September 25th 04, 02:57 AM
John Doe
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Derek Lyons wrote:
Advantage: Unproven. The US has long history of preparing repair
procedures, planning alternate missions, providing backups....


Unfortunatly, the USA doesn't have a long standing mentality of improvising
repair procedures and requires lots of pressure to change this. 2 man EVA were
"impossible" until they became absolutely necessary, at which point NASA
agreed to "bend its rules".

When Don Petit suggested he take apart a pump assembly to get some part needed
to find the other one, he had to push NASA to allow him to thiker with abroken
part because NAS procedures didn't mention any procedure to take that
component apart and thus thought it was impossible.

NASA has evolved to some extent when it comes to allow crew to perform
autonomous tasks that have not been rehearsed 50,000 times and documented into
a 4" thick manual. But it still has some way to go.