I really feel for these guys. Working in microgravity is supposed to be a bitch, as there’s no leverage you don’t physically create yourself. The first astronauts to work in space during Gemini almost passed out from exhaustion.
Already the shuttle crew, which reached the half-built orbital complex last Monday, has rewired the station’s power grid, clearing the way for modules built by Europe and Japan to be attached to the station.
Astronaut Robert Curbeam ventured out for a fourth time — more than any other astronaut during a single shuttle mission. He was accompanied by Sweden’s Christer Fuglesang, who also joined him on two of the mission’s previous spacewalks.
These guys get all my respect and hopes for success.
They’re the best of the crop!
I have friends that dont think this is necessary..
But, Im on the other side of this… Its a stepping point to the moon and then to mars…
more funding for nasa
Cheaper prices for NASA…
I aint paying $6000 for a toilet
The DoD wastes the equivalent of NASA’s budget in about 2 weeks! I’d argue that what NASA is doing with PEANUTS is of far greater importance.
AND if NASA was PROPERLY funded it wouldn’t turn it’s back on the knowledge gained from the Shuttle and run back to Apollo like crafts – as if they know how to build them again… Did you know that the original plans for the Saturn V rocket are nowhere to be seen? NASA couldn’t build another. And what about big-scale project management? Going to the Moon is orders of magnitude more complicated than going to a space station. They did it once, but that doesn’t mean they can do it over and over again, especially 40 years later. The guys who did it already retired or died. NASA will have to figure everything out all over again, with little benefit from experience.
ECA,
I agree that the space station in and of itself has turned out to be a boondoggle, but the near-superhuman efforts of our astronauts through the years have been an inspiration.
IF,
BIG IF…
We can get corps NOT to over charge, and force the prices up…
AS has been proven, it can be cheaper.
north america will beat europe to the punch
no matter how long it takes