Posted on 12/30/2008 2:11:10 PM PST by Joiseydude
Yep...that was a great one.
Regarding the shuttle, it was very early here in California, but I was up and flipped on the NASA channel. Very shortly I got a bad feeling when contact points weren't met.....During this silence period I awoke wifey and told her she'd better join me in the TV room.
Thanks for posting that. I had missed it at the time...
The choice of the particular tile material likely could have been related to environmental concerns. The design using tiles, rather than a heavier, more of a spaceplane type reentry system was due to costcutting, IMHO.
Of course...touche’
If someone said we want you to crew on one of the last flights going up, you could not keep me off that ride...
Would I do it for fame??? Nope...
I would do it because I can, and that there are things you can do and train for that will have long lasting effects on the furture of the program, now and in the future...
Do I understand that the system is still not 100% fool-proof??? You betcha...No system will ever be that way...So you just go with what you know, and understand that there are thousands of people looking at all sorts of aspects of the program that their own little nitch of expertise gather up into a nice big organized hit list of things that need to be discussed and worked on for every single flight...
If you miss one thing, that could very be the one thing that gets you killed...
Obviously we have not seen another Challenger type failure...So we got that fixed...The Columbia accident created a whole slew of procedures that make an assessment of the vehicle, and if there is problem, they go out and fix it...If it is too much to fix, there is some built up time to recover the crew in that case...
You could go on and on...For the most part, it still works...
No worries. Some liberal will eventually require children travelling in cars to be placed in fire and crash-proof capsules along with helmets and Nomex fire suits. And then another liberal will require everyone to do the same.
NASA acknowledged there are voice recordings from the Challenger cabin which survived the explosion intact and had it had an adequate parachute may have allowed some if not all of the crew to survive the event.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE7D61F3AF937A25751C0A965958260
Excerpt: Photos taken by ground-based telescopes on Jan. 28, 1986, when the Challenger exploded shortly after its launching, show that the crew cabin survived the initial explosion and the general breakup of the ship's fuselage. Engineers believe the cabin remained intact throughout its fall to earth, with some astronauts probably conscious until it crashed into the ocean at high speed.
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