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A comment on SpaceX Is Raising $500M at a $30.5B Valuation. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX Is Raising $500M at a $30.5B Valuation by orbital-decay on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @09:17PM (#18712487)
There's nothing indispensable in the Shuttle design. All of the ISS construction operations could have been done with a (possibly specialized) traditional spacecraft. Non-autonomous USOS-style module delivery and berthing, truss mounting, EVAs etc. Shuttle has been used in ISS construction just because it was available.

The only thing that could have been somewhat complicated without Shuttle capabilities was returning the Mir solar panels, for detailed analysis of their faster-than-expected degradation.

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Re:SpaceX Is Raising $500M at a $30.5B Valuation by avar on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @08:14AM (#18715342)
This article discusses the return of the Mir solar panels:

https://www.americaspace.com/2012/12/20/what-do-mirs-solar-a...

That payload is small enough that it could have been put on a reentry capsule if it wasn't for the Space Shuttle.

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