Re: Question from ASTRO

John Pike (johnpike@fas.org)
Thu, 12 Dec 1996 07:28:46 -0500

At 12:20 AM 12/12/96 -0500,  kc4yer@amsat.org (Philip Chien) wrote:
>Willie Koorts <wpk@saao.ac.za> asked for Andres Valencia <avalencia@true.net>:
>
>>According to Eric J. Chaisson in "The Hubble Wars";  HST was down to a
>>356 miles orbit when serviced .."it had fallen some 25 miles in 43 month
>>deployed at 380 miles
>
>take anything which Eric Chaisson says in his book with a grain of salt.

One might also take all this with a conversion table handy:

        conversion       deployed        serviced        fallen      
        [meters]

nm      1852                331                 311            20     
sm      1609                380                 356            25    
km      1000                608                 498            40         


>Eric was the head of education at the Space Telescope institute, and
>not somebody who was within the NASA system, or understood how the NASA
>system works.

I am at a loss to comprehend just how one would meaningfully define "within
the NASA system" -- particularly as a precondition for understanding "how
the NASA system works."


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John Pike
Director, Space Policy Project
Federation of American Scientists
307 Massachusetts Ave. NE
Washington, DC 20002
V 202-675-1023,   F 202-675-1024,  http://www.fas.org/