Webster, 47, learned about the risks of betting on overcomplex space technology more than a decade ago, when he and two Harvard Business School classmates dreamed up the idea of launching commercial satellites with a rocket carried in the cargo bay of the space shuttle.

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The view from the new airlock is far different than exiting from the shuttle's cargo bay airlock, and it struck both astronauts immediately.

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The heavy lifting was then left to space station resident astronaut Susan Helms who used the station's new robot arm to pluck the Quest from the shuttle's cargo bay.

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There is no simple way to know for sure if Atlantis has some bad wires like those that flunked the inventory inspection, because they cannot be reached until the shuttle stack is enshrouded in scaffolding inside a "High-Bay" three slow miles down the crawler road from the pad.

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