Ah yes. Nothing like a little gross oversimplification to generate headlines.
If the shuttle didn’t exist, there are still a thousand things that would have had to go in a different direction to get a viable Mars program in the 80s and 90s. Not the least of which being that without the shuttle, and before the ISS, we would have no CLUE how to actually live in space for long periods of time.
So if we take it that we can’t go to Mars without learning how to live in space for extended durations. And we take it that in order to learn how to live in space we need to have a long duration presence there, like the ISS.
What exactly do people think was necessary to build the ISS…
You’re right boys and girls…it was the SPACE SHUTTLE.
Mir was the first continuously inhabited long-term research station in orbit and held the record for the longest continuous human presence in space at 3,644 days, until it was surpassed by the ISS on 23 October 2010
What are you talking about? The only part of Mir not launched on a Proton-K was a docking module brought up by, yes, shuttle so that a shuttle could dock to the station and American astronauts could learn about long duration spaceflight from the Russians.
Shuttles weren’t required for the construction of Mir, just as China is now constructing its space station without the use of a shuttle.
The idea that shuttles are or were required to learn about long duration space flight is simply wrong
Ah yes. Nothing like a little gross oversimplification to generate headlines.
If the shuttle didn’t exist, there are still a thousand things that would have had to go in a different direction to get a viable Mars program in the 80s and 90s. Not the least of which being that without the shuttle, and before the ISS, we would have no CLUE how to actually live in space for long periods of time.
So if we take it that we can’t go to Mars without learning how to live in space for extended durations. And we take it that in order to learn how to live in space we need to have a long duration presence there, like the ISS.
What exactly do people think was necessary to build the ISS…
You’re right boys and girls…it was the SPACE SHUTTLE.
From Wikipedia:
We could have managed without the shuttle.
Still required a shuttle, just not necessarily NASA’s shuttle(s).
What are you talking about? The only part of Mir not launched on a Proton-K was a docking module brought up by, yes, shuttle so that a shuttle could dock to the station and American astronauts could learn about long duration spaceflight from the Russians.
Shuttles weren’t required for the construction of Mir, just as China is now constructing its space station without the use of a shuttle.
The idea that shuttles are or were required to learn about long duration space flight is simply wrong
To answer your question, I don’t know what I’m taking about, clearly!