Drudge has the little siren wailing about with the following text-
Crack found in foam of space shuttle’s external fuel tank... Developing...
Posted on 07/03/2006 6:53:33 AM PDT by new cruelty
Engineers inspecting the shuttle Discovery's external tank following Sunday's launch scrub found a crack in the tank's foam insulation near a bracket holding a 17-inch oxygen feed line in place. Some engineers believe the crack must be repaired but senior managers say a variety of options are on the table, from fly as is to making repairs.
As of this writing, no decisions have been made about how to proceed and it's not known what impact the work might have on plans to make a third attempt to launch Discovery Tuesday.
Engineers also found a small piece of foam insulation resting on the surface of Discovery's mobile launch platform that may be associated with the crack. The crack is located near a bracket toward the top of the hydrogen section of the external tank that holds the liquid oxygen feedline in place. It is not yet known what might have caused the crack, although extreme temperature differences because of the presence of super-cold propellants could have played a role.
"We've got a crack on the feedline bracket area at the top of the LOX feedline where it attaches to the hydrogen tank," said NASA spokeswoman June Malone. "It's the top bracket. I heard four to five inches (long). I don't know that we've not seen this before. The feedline has to flex, it has some bare metal there by design, you've got differences in temperatures."
Updates will be posted here as information becomes available.
Drudge has the little siren wailing about with the following text-
Crack found in foam of space shuttle’s external fuel tank... Developing...
Are they still using that environmentally friendlier foam on the ET? If so, isn't that stuff less durable than the foam they were using before?
Oh, I thought they were talkiing about crack cocaine. H-M-M. Bummer about the crack though.
"...engineers believe the crack must be repaired but senior managers say..."
engineers or senior managers.......I'd bet MY life on the opinion of the engineers, but not politico whores
Somebody say crack cocaine?
Once all the shuttles blow up or go down in flames (God forbid), we won't have to bother discussing how safe they are anymore. NASA must have its way. Flying on this thing must be like playing Russian roulette.
"The B!tch Set Me Up."
NASA: please ground this turkey before more people get killed.
It's long past time to rethink the mission. Interplanetary exploration and development is the future of human beings in space. Enough of the orbiting gymnasiums and high school science projects. Now: cut off the Federal spigot and let private enterprise get to work.
"De B!Tch set me up!"
We really do not need more jokes about NASA standing for Need Another Seven Astronauts. I hope they fix it.
When you run out of tape...
The first tanks were painted white and the paint acted as a seal to strengthen the foam. Then NASA decided to eliminate the paint to gain 2000lbs of additional payload. NOTE: in all the flights the shuttle has never carried its 60,000 payload capacity! So the payload gain is meaningless. In addition, the upgraded SSMEs increase the payload capacity so the simple answer that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to discern is
Paint the d@mn tank!
I think the answer to your questions are: Yes and Yes. I leave it to the real shuttle wizards to give you a definitive answer.
"Crack is whack!"
Maybe they should use a clear plasic wrap to keep the foam from getting ripped off and hold loose pieces from falling off.
Mr. Ridge? Is that you?
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