1.  I didn't notice anything in the NASA announcements about whether
they would try to recover/reuse the SRB's that are used on these 'next
generation' spacecraft.  Anyone know?  Of course IIRC, the last thing I
read on this subject was that it wasn't turning out to be cost effective
to reuse them anyway.

2.  The reason the orbiter was on the side of the shuttle/tank combo was
that they wanted the SSME's to be recoverable, so they had to be on the
orbiter, so the orbiter had to be on the 'side' of the stack to make the
3 engines useable.  With the 'next generation' it looks like they are
tossing 5 SSME's with each cargo launch.  Other ELV's are using
cheap(er) engines.  Of course IIRC, the last thing I read on this
subject was that it wasn't turning out to be cost effective to reuse the
SSME's anyway.  Is the 'next generation' cargo ship really going to do
anything that can't be done with current and under development ELV's,
cheaper?

3.  Losing the shuttle concept takes away one capability that was nice
to have - the ability to return a cargo to earth.  Made re-usable
experiment pallets possible, etc.  Other than the crew, the 'next
generation' return from space is limited.

Gary Crowell

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