Solution to pay for a new orbiter vehicle

[computerology]

I think that the shuttles are way to old to be flying anymore. With current advancements in technology since the 1970s it seems ludicrous that they would continue flying them.<br /><br />They are amazing peices of hardware that do amazing things. However I was reading the space shuttle flight manual (NASA has it posted) and the technology that they are using for shuttle control systems alone blows your mind when you hear how it is operated.<br /><br /><i>"Turn the control knob to the Standby position and the indicator will switch to a barber pole display. When the red light at the top of the control knob turns on, then switch the knob to the On position and the barber pole will be replaced with a solid red bar. When shutting of an onboard computer, the knob must be first switched into Standby until the red light appears, or the programs may need to be reloaded onto the computer from the Mass Memory Unit, which is a tape drive and will take up to 25 minutes"</i> - Ok that's not a word for word copy, I took it from memory but it's pretty close. Look it up.<br /><br />I know I'm not the only one who thinks that this is insane, I wont bore you with much more because I'm not the first to bring it up. If you calculate the RAM in all of the three computers combined it amounts to like 6 megabytes.<br /><br />Now obviously the "how to pay, who will pay" objection comes up. However I find it pretty simple. <i>(I hope someone from NASA ends up reading this</i><br /><br />Auction off the Shuttles on Ebay. In whole or in parts, whatever works. Theres like what, over 2.4 million parts on those things? Some of the parts could be used for other purposes. The majority of the parts would fetch huge dollars as collectors items.<br /><br />When you've got the likes of the guy who owns Virgin records and others paying $250 million to go into space (on a safer Soyuz vehicle, I might add) for surely there's enough multimillionare's with a fraction of Bill Gate's wealth that would be willi

 

[le3119]

Tape memory? Knobs and red lights? Well, this proves that archaic tech can still take us into space! There are only 3 shuttles remaining, they are headed for the Air & Space Museum after 2010. The STS is a work of wonder though, but it seems that the project was a compromise between a two-stage flying wing system and an advanced Gemini system. Still, the main rocket engine is a real engineering marvel, the most efficient of its kind for its thrust and Isp.