Space Forum / Shuttle / July 2005

Did you watch the coverage of the launch of the shuttle Discovery
this morning?
If you were watching CBC Newsworld, you were watching a "live"
broadcast that was delayed by 5 seconds.

Back after the Columbia accident, there was talk here in the group that the
early foam used on the ET was better than the type of foam used on the
Columbia ET and thereafter, because the new foam formula these days is worse
because its manufacture had to be made with more ...

Hello from the Eighth Doctor
Does anyone in this group have any sort of a clew towards what's involved in
getting a Get Away Special space? And that assumes they are actually making that
space available, and that they are resuming launches RSN.

You are grounding the shuttle for what may be forever.
Now lets get this straight, you have a vehicle called a Shuttle that has a
big external tank, are you all still there and listening.
The big external tank is covered by a foam, when the shuttle with the big

Looking at the ET camera footage, it looks like the first bi-pod foam piece
came off about 12 sec after SRB sep. The second came off several seconds
later. Seems to be caused by trapped air.

Unbelievable. These clowns were falling all over themselves at the post
launch press conference to tell the world what a great job they did, and
didn't even know that there had been at least one near miss with debris.
They missed another disaster by a matter of feet but all the ...

The high point of this mission so far, to me, has been the imaging.
From the ET camera ascent video to that amazing hi-res photo
nose-on of the orbiter to the photos of the underside in which you
can almost read the writing on each individual tile-  it's all just

"NASA is expected to make a decision Sunday on whether to clear the
spacecraft to return to Earth."
My question is what would be the options if they did not clear it to return
to earth?

The Space Shuttle has never come close to living up to it's original
stated purpose (cheap, safe, reusable space transport vehicle).  Even
the current "savior" of the program calls is a "camel" (i.e. a horse
designed by committee).

Is that the nose of the shuttle, pointing up-left, with the tail
pointing down-left-away?

Is there over 6 X 10^6 thrust transferred to the shuttle from the ET struts.
Also, is the the same amount of energy exerted against the two SRB nozzles.
Something equivalent to holding up a suspension bridge.
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This is the same quandry as the Penguin.  Let's re-engineer the External
Tank to be Ti/carbon-composite/honeycomb.  And maybe put some large
ceramic tiles (like those that protect the underside of the Shuttles
except that today these tiles are very inexpensive and easy to make in ...

Maybe we just saw the last flight

If the foam is sprayed on to the tank during assembly, then maybe a
sub-surface Kevlar netting that is integrated into the application of
the foam would help.  The netting would be below the surface of the
foam layer (thus eliminating any aerodynamic issues), and it would be

Couldn't you design a metal skin to protect the tiles that would
evaporate during ascent and reduce the stress on the tiles?
You know certain metals evaporate at a certain temperature, you could
possibly control that so that the tiles are protected until reaching