(By accident I saw the second flight of a 747. I was working near Seattle, following someone up I-5, near Renton. In front of me, taking off to the north from Boeing Field was the biggest damned airplane I'd ever seen. In fact, not knowing anything at all about a 747, I thought it was a smaller plane closer to me and flying very, very slowly. I was waiting for it to stall out, and fall. I was absolutely sure it would. The thing flew to the east, and kept going, flying slowly, climbing slowly, and didn't fall.

Saw in the paper that night it was the second flight of a 747. The first flight was from Everett, where it was built to Boeing Field.)

Some manned/unmanned vehicle, such as Soyuz, would seem to make sense. The one you worked on makes the most sense.

I don't think the Shuttle can be justified without the ISS, but the ISS makes more sense without the Shuttle. Not that there aren't uses for the Shuttle, but at what cost? And the same for ISS - there MAY be something for it to do, but at what cost?

As I recall, about $260 million was lost on the two most recent failed Mars Landers. That's about 67% of the cost of ONE shuttle mission.

Spendy.

And, NASA has to reflect the political atmosphere in which it operates - there's so much pork the opponents couldn't kill it.

Anyone who wanted to would be accused of not caring about jobs for their constiuents, someone without a job would be interviewed talking about how Senator Gusher didn't care about him or his co-workers, and he didn't know what his kid, who was a cheerleader in high school, would do now that she wouldn't be eating very often.

Thanks to that Senator Gusher, who didn't care about working people, or the space program, or progress, or research which could well find a cure for cancer, heart disease and the common cold.

The world is full of ideas such as the one on which you worked which were a bit ahead of their time.

Arf