[FPSPACE] The Saga of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and the ISS

[James Oberg]

The last scheduled shuttle mission in 2010 will have a 'rescue shuttle' 
ready to pick up the crew if needed, with a four person crew 
(clearly a very veteran set of astronauts) fully trained and ready
to make the 'LAST PLUS ONE' shuttle mission.

NASA is considering using that flight as the bonus transport
mission, perhaps for AMS and other spares. 

But it needs a crew rescue option in the event the mission
suffers lethal heat shield damage and is stranded on the
space station.

There is one tantalizing option: fly the mission with a
three-person crew and have a Soyuz vehicle on
standby for pickup. Or instead of all three landing
in a Soyuz that came up empty, split them up in a
normal crew down-rotation AND a later rescue-devoted
additional Soyuz.

Because of the larger station crew, and the much smaller
shuttle crew in need of rescue, the supplies needed for
the previous shuttle crew's 90-day stayover could last
six months or more, significantly relaxing the time-criticality
of retrieval of the stranded shuttle crew.

It -- might -- work.