To me a 'space station', as opposed to a Manned Orbiting Laboratory, should have most or all of the following: 1. crew turnover/rotation/replacement: skylab- yes 2. Crew overlap (either overlap between primary crews, or occasional visitor crew): no, though there was provision for it 3. resupply (other than what each primary crew brings with them): no 4. expandable/reconfigureable in orbit: no 5. interaction with other orbiting craft (other than COLAs!): no 6. At least one crewmember whose duties are >~25% non technical, ie administrative, rather than everything being micro- or nanomanaged from the ground: no Are these out of 50s sf? Of course. But there is also a lot of Antarctic analogy in there. But then if 'space station' wasn't already such an emotionally loaded term it wouldn't be such a political mess. MIR and ISS? space stations. Skylab has a 'yes', a 'well, it could have', and 4 'no'. not a space station, at least not for me. Salyut 7? maybe. So I get either beta or gamma for ISS. OB sat viewing: During the recent period when both MIR and ISS were making visible evening passes at mid northern latitudes I ran off some predictions for my folks in Tulsa. I had hyped the occasion for the 'final view' of MIR. I was quite put out on noticing that MIR was passing through NN=~16. The ground track and pass times were repeating on a daily basis-- and Tulsa was between two orbital tracks. Not a decent pass for MIR the whole time! At least ISS performed ok. Richard Clark rclark@lpl.arizona.edu On Thu, 8 Mar 2001, Jonathan McDowell wrote: > (albeit off topic:) > Tyler, most of the Salyuts were after Skylab. It depends what > you mean by a space station, but for the record > - including ones that were never used - > DOS 1 Apr 1971 (Salyut) > DOS 2 Jul 1972 (failed to orbit) > Almaz 1 Apr 1973 (failed at insertion, Salyut-2) > DOS 3 May 1973 (failed at insertion) > Skylab May 1973 > Almaz 2 Jun 1974 (Salyut-3) > DOS 4 Dec 1974 (Salyut 4) > Almaz 3 Jun 1976 (Salyut-5) > DOS 5 Sep 1977 (Salyut-6) > DOS 6 Apr 1982 (Salyut-7) > DOS 7 Feb 1986 (Mir) > DOS 8 Jul 2000 (Zvezda) > The Almaz flights were military stations, the DOS flights > were civilian stations. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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