On Sunday, February 2, 2003, at 04:11 PM, Sunder wrote:

Far more than likely, the truth is closer that the Space Shuttles have been performing ultra sensitive spy work - launching new spy satelites, or repairing them, and may have pieces of spy satelites on them.

Let's see, we're going into war with Iraq, and we're sending up the shuttle to do experiments on how furry weavols behave under zero gravity... uh huh.

But, but, but the Israeli Payload Specialist, the Colonel in the IDF who was on the bombing mission to take out the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981, certainly was not involved with any kind of surveillance satellite work! His sole duty was to investigate the effects of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds. That's NASA's story...and they're sticking to it. "Pay no attention to the Israeli Defense Forces spy behind the DOD curtain!" (Several times in the past we have only been told long after the fact that what had been billed as a "scientific mission" by NSA, er, NASA, was actually a military mission. Given that missions are very, very expensive and usually have somewhat-justifiable mission goals, the fact that this mission had no publically-disclosed goals except "science fair projects" suggests strongly why the Israeli pilot was on this particular mission. And Pakistan may be wondering what the Indian woman was doing.) --Tim May