Space Forum / Shuttle / August 2007

Yes. I thought the line at "wheelstop" was just a tad corny though: "you
gave new meaning to higher education". Come on!

I didnt care for that period of ratty comms either

John

It must've gotten caught in one of those vortices.

LOL.

Isn't it amazing what space flight will do?
Jim in Houston.

Contrary to popular opinion RN does not mean Real Nerd!

Teddy Roosevelt's mother said: "Fill what is empty, empty what is full, and scratch where it itches"

On Aug 22, 6:44 am, "Jeff Findley" <jeff.find...@ugs.nojunk.com>
[...]
[nmp:]

NASA's hidef image is up at <http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/
187279main_07pd2305.jpg>

Looks like 1 more piece of the black coating flaked off during
rentry.  The extent of damage to the aluminum underpinnings is in the
"not visible to the untrained eye" range.

I'd like to find the individual shots in hidef; gotta schedule some
browse time on the NASA image servers.

/dps

It means (assuming the CFD analysis was correct - and events seem to
indicate that) that the damaged tiles absorbed most of the heat before
it got to the base of the cavity.

Nomex. It's used in both the filler bar (which fills the gaps between
the tiles) and the strain isolation pads (which bind the tiles to the
structure).

It means don't trust the news.

Day after wearying day we are treated to your gleeful posts explaining
how NASA is really wrong _this time_, astronauts are going to _die_,
and NASA will finally be held to account.  Again and again we treated
to your scenarios of death and destruction.

_Something_ is wrong with someone who repeatedly, and in utter
defiance of facts, keeps insisting that death and breakup is imminent.

A question you might ask the face in the mirror.

D.

From what I've read, changes have been made.  From what I've read, JSC
Engineering believed that a fix should have been attempted in order to
prevent damage to the shuttle which could delay processing for the next
flight by several weeks.  Also, I read that someone else (a contractor
employee?) was concerned that the hit to the tiles could have loosened them
enough that an entire tile (or tiles) might come off.

The sort of open dialog that was going on within NASA and its contractors
about this issue is something that I don't think happened with the foam/RCC
hit on Columbia.

Why do you say that?  Look at the in orbit and post flight picture of the
tiles:

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2007/tile.damage.lrg.jpg

It certainly appears that the arcjet test that was done was conservative
since it showed a lot more damage to the tiles and the arcjet test showed
that the shuttle's structure would not be damaged.

This is a hypothetical.  Who can say what would have happened in that case?

They decided to leave it alone because the analysis and testing showed that
it was safe to do so and attempting a repair would introduce its own risks.

I'm reminded of the Hippocratic Oath.

Jeff

On the point you make when you said :

"But there is also another aspect to this. This was an opportunity for

I completely agree with you. Just because something works doesn't mean it
works right. For all anyone knows until a full investigation is done NASA
may have just got lucky again.

I wonder how many times on how many flights (manned and unmanned) there have
been near misses where the crew or vehicle came close to destruction. I also
wonder is it possible that there have been hundreds if not thousands of
times where no one, not even the astronauts themselves were aware that such
destruction almost occured.

My point here in asking this question is this....just because we do not see
a danger does not mean it is not there.  At the same time though it does not
mean that we should not be looking for the danger. It does not even mean
that we can not see the danger. More often than not NASA can spot problems
it's true. The problem with NASA comes in when NASA becomes complacent. Yes
it is true that if it isn't broke then there is no need to fix it, but NASA
always needs to stay sharp and alert. To me that sounds like a lot to ask a
government agency to do.

It does seem on the surface of this issue though that you are so right. NASA
should have turned this situation into one where they could have gained
crucial real time data ....data and information on how to do these repairs
in real life. Now they have lost an opportunity to learn something that may
save future lives down the road. I bet NASA will be wishing they'd done the
spacewalk repair to the tiles if on a future flight they have even worse
damage that threatens the safety of ship and crew.

One thing NASA needs to get good at is taking a little risk for the sake of
knowledge if that knowledge is going to be the kind of knowledge they will
need to go to the moon or other planets and live there. If they can not
start to have the pioneer spirit of long ago when our forefathers came to
America then how the hell are we going to go to Mars. We can not just wing
it and if a little bump in the road appears we head back home to Earth from
Mars. If we did we'd surely never go there ever again. Our Mars and moon
programs of the future  need to look a lot less like how we did things in
the past and we need to start running our space program like it's about the
future.

I know I went on a rant there, but I will stop for now. It's just that what
you said got me started thinking and when I do that well......just watch
out. And if you think that's bad you should try talking to me. My ideas fly
out my mouth faster than the speed of sound. Come to think of it maybe
that's why nobody ever listens.

Take care!
Kurt

On Aug 22, 9:46 am, Jim in Houston
<nospamjamesgoo...@sbcglobal.netnospam> wrote:

[...]

[...]

As far as I can tell, Jeff correctly attributed it to John Doe.  Any
confusion is solely from some slightly awry white space.

As you can see from my inclusions above, the attribution tree was
intact when it reached me.

/dps