MSNBC (JimO) - Hubble debate -- a lot of sound and fury

"John" wrote in
news:0kTbc.167$ox4.68@newsfe1-win:

Is Congress really to blame for NASA's illogical obsession with space
planes? SSTOs and TSTOs are much better odds for reusable launch
vehicles. Yet NASA seems to ignore these completely. It shut down the
delta-clipper project. Was this under pressure from Congress?

Indirectly, yes. NASA took over DC-XA when SDIO cancelled it. When it came
time for the next phase, which would have been DC-Y. NASA re-competed the
contract under the name X-33 rather than sole-sourcing it to MDAC.
Procurement law sets out specific circumstances under which sole-sourcing
is allowed (small contracts or lack of other suppliers in the market), and
the circumstances of DC-X did not fit: the contract was too large and there
were other suppliers in the market. Had NASA sole-sourced it anyway, it
would have invited legal challenges from other potential suppliers and a
lot of scrutiny from Congress. MDAC bid on the re-competed contract but
lost to LockMart. We can debate the relative merits of the X-33 competitors
(personally I preferred MDAC and Rockwell's designs over LockMart's), but
not the necessity of re-competing the contract.

As I understand it Hubble was always intended to be serviced
periodically, yet there seems no easy way to physically grab it.

You misunderstood. HST is quite easy for a trained human to grab with the
RMS. That is because HST's capture aids are all visual, and the human eye-
brain combination is highly evolved to make sense out of visual patterns.
All existing automated rendezvous/capture solutions require that the target
have aids for machine sensors (RF, laser, etc). HST was not designed to be
easy for a machine to grab because all HST servicing missions were to be
done with the space shuttle. It is not impossible to design a machine-
vision system to cope with this, but it is seriously pushing the envelope
of the current state-of-the art.

--
JRF

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