[honorable schoolboy]

Thanks. With all the repetitive and unimportant questions being asked at both press conferences, nobody addressed rescue contingencies. This seemed a natural followup to the claim that no repair was possible. I had no idea that a failure that prevents re-entry but otherwise harms nothing is a sentence to lingering death a few hundred miles from home. These guys have more guts than I thought. You project a lot based on my question: I don't expect or demand spaceflight to be without risk. BTW, why did they take pictures on the Glenn flight when the door came off? Could something have been done in THAT case? Why did the team even consider for a moment taking pictures this time? Would the idea be just to get data before the thing burned up, or give the crew a chance to say their goodbyes?

[_Jim]

rescue contingencies

Practically speaking, an activity to rival the main string of missions themselves ...

Why not just launch *two* shuttles for each mission - one as a rescue vessel?