OK, I'm going to take a stab at this, and procrastinate what I really should be doing. First, I don't work at NASA, I am not a NASA administrator so I don't feel that I have enough information about all the factors involved and that have to be taken into consideration to be telling them what I think they should be doing specifically. But I do have an opinion about the process they should take in coming to their decision. As I said before, I think they should weigh all the factors involved carefully and then choose what they think is best for the space program in the long run. If that means scrapping the Hubble and ISS, well then so be it. This may be not the best analogy, but it's kind of like a bad relationship. You can stay in it and keep putting your time and effort toward something that is doomed and is not going to get any better and ultimately not going to help you get where you really want to go, or you can decide to just cut your losses and move on. Analyze what you experienced and try to learn something from it so you can hopefully make better choices in the future. If NASA decides that moving forward toward the future and forgetting the old stuff that is already on it's way out anyhow is their best choice, well hopefully Thiokol can be a part of that. But in my opinion that is kind of up to Thiokol in a way, whether they want to innovate along with NASA or just try to stick with what they already know. Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> wrote: The question is, What will NASA do? It doesn't matter how brave would-be shuttle astronauts are if the agency decides to keep the fleet grounded. They could say to go ahead with the next generation space vehicle instead of fixing the shuttle. What would that mean to Thiokol, the ISS and Hubble? Thanks, jb _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com