Re: New shuttle

> Mark: I mentioned the Titanic to say that with that, people realised an
> unsinkable ship is untenable and got back to practical shipping.  Ships
> now
> are better than the Titanic.  I am simply questioning the zeal for
> man-missions at present and have been taken out of context.  All that is
> neccesary would be to say 3/111 man missions have failed, then my argument
> is foiled.

If I remember correctly, the STS assignations (Bill's 114) only cover the
space shuttle project - that's the winged reusable ones.  Remember the
Columbia that broke up a couple of years ago?  That was the first space
shuttle launched, back in 82 or something.  STS 1-3 were all test runs,
with only two people on board in case it should go horribly wrong.

Apart from a couple of years' break after Challenger, the Columbia had
been used successfully once, twice, three times a year for over 20 years
(some of these missions didn't have STS assignations because they were
specific to other projects) before it broke up.  This was not some
untested craft.

We're talking way more than a 3:111 ratio here.  Even that one shuttle has
about a 1:25 ratio.

P