International 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@...