Using The Shuttles External Fuel Tank In Our Return to The Moon and Our

> From: Alex Michael Bonnici [mailto:albonnici@...]

> I agree with you Ed. I asked this question at the National Space
> Society's International Space Development Conference (ISDC)
> back in 1996 in New York City and the impression I got was NASA
> was more interested in empire building rather than making space
> exploration and settlementsa real possibility for common people.

The problem is there are two parts to NASA. A good, useful part, and it's reverse twin: The Evil NASA. Good NASA does things like land probes on mars, tries to save the tax-payer money and comes up with much better ways of doing things. Evil NASA runs the manned space programme, and fears that without projects like the shuttle and ISS as excuses for it's existence it will wither and die leaving Good NASA in charge of everything.

Now Good NASA suggested to Clinton way back when that the ISS could be launched IN ONE GO by a single shuttle C; that is to say a shuttle where the wings, tail, cockpit and cargo-bay have been replaced by a single cargo-pod. Evil NASA though told the president that while this could be done, that the international partners would be upset, since this 'super ISS' would be so big that the space provided by internationally built modules would be surplus to requirements. As a president who actually cared (moderately) about international politics the president was concerned and swallowed this nonsense. A fact which might make a lot of feminists feel somehow better.

The specific problems with ET options is getting the equipment into the tank once it's up there, and getting external hard-points to survive the Mach 3+ flight up into space. There are also concerns as to how much strength the tank would retain after the thermal GBH it suffers on it's way up, and the fact that if it failed there'd be no secondary module for the crew to escape to. It's also made out of wielded sections. The ISS modules are milled out of solid chunks of metal and for *good* *reason*.

In recent times it's suggested that an inflatable space-station would be able to do everything an ET option could do at a far lower price, and would 'bounce' when hit by debris, rather than getting holed or snapping like the aluminium tank would.

ANTIcarrot.