Internashunal space station

Read this in the Washington Post last week :
Headline was :NASA fears space station could be lost
If NASA is forced to abandon the space station tempor-
arily because of deteriorating health conditions for
the crew on board,there is a high risk of losing the
$30 billion orbital laboratory,NASA officials and as-
tronauts said Thursday."We've done some analysis and it
shows that we have a fairly high probability that if
we have the wrong components fail and there's not a
crew on board to change it out,we could have(the)sta-
tion in a degrading manner,"said space station program
manager William Gerstenmaier,who is in Russia to moni-
tor Monday's scheduled return to Earth of a Russian
Soyuz capsule carrying two station crew members who
were replaced this week.A space station engineer speak-
ing on condition he not be named,said studies conducted
following the grounding of the space shuttle fleet in
February showed there is a "50-50 chance" of losing the
orbitting space lab if no crew is aboard.He said the
decision to send up a new crew on Saturday despite the
concerns of midlevel scientists and physicians was dif-
ficult,but that senior officials concluded there was no
justification "for flushing a multibillion dollar in-
vestment down the toilet"in the absence of a documented
threat to the crew.A Post report revealed two managers
responsible for health conditions on the space station
had objected to Saturday's launch and warned deterior-
ating medical equipment and air and water monitoring
devices aboard the orbiting laboratory pose increasing
safety risks.
My own feelings about this situation are that we need
this space station and another space station in high
Earth orbit as stepping stones to get to and from the
Moon inexpensively on a regular basis,we don't need
another Skylab(been there,done that),we can get back to
the Moon if we work together,the Moon is the essential
stepping stone to the rest of the Solar System.
Cordially,John Hadden(jfhadden@...