Posted on 08/16/2007 6:51:13 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA decided Thursday that no repairs are needed for a deep gouge in Endeavour's belly and the space shuttle is safe to fly home. Mission Control notified the seven shuttle astronauts of the decision right before they went to sleep, putting an end to a week of engineering analyses and anxious uncertainty — both in orbit and on Earth.
"Please pass along our thanks for all the hard work," radioed Endeavour's commander, Scott Kelly.
Mission Control replied, "It's great we finally have a decision and we can press forward."
The astronauts had spent much of the day running through the never-before-attempted repair methods, just in case they were ordered up.
After meeting for five hours, mission managers opted Thursday night against any risky spacewalk repairs, after receiving the results of one final thermal test. The massive amount of data indicated Endeavour would suffer no serious structural damage during next week's re-entry.
Their worry was not that Endeavour might be destroyed and its seven astronauts killed in a replay of the Columbia disaster — the gouge is too small to be catastrophic. They were concerned that the heat of re-entry could weaken the shuttle's aluminum frame at the damaged spot and result in lengthy postflight repairs.
Endeavour's bottom thermal shielding was pierced by a piece of debris that broke off the external fuel tank shortly after liftoff last week. The debris, either foam insulation, ice or a combination of both, weighed just one-third of an ounce but packed enough punch to carve out a 3 1/2-inch-long, 2-inch-wide gouge and dig all the way through the thermal tiles. Left completely exposed was a narrow 1-inch strip of the overlying felt fabric, the last barrier before the shuttle's aluminum structure.
The only way to fix the gouge would have been to send a pair of spacewalking astronauts out with black paint and caulk-like goo, and maneuver them beneath the shuttle on the end of a 100-foot robotic arm and extension boom, with few if any close-up camera views of the work.
The spacewalk would have had added risk, so much so that mission managers did not want to attempt it unless absolutely necessary. Wednesday's spacewalk, cut short by an astronaut's ripped glove, showed how hazardous even a relatively routine spacewalk can be.
Earlier, astronaut Alvin Drew said from Endeavour that he was comfortable with the prospect of flying back to Earth in a gouged ship. Engineers seem confident, he said, "and I trust their confidence that we can get home safely even with the divot that we have in the belly."
"Spaceflight is risky," noted astronaut Barbara Morgan, the backup teacher for Challenger's doomed mission, "but we have all confidence that we're going to be able to do the right thing."
But a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who served on the Columbia investigation board four years ago, Stanford University's Douglas Osheroff, questioned NASA's hesitancy to perform the repairs since they "can only increase their chances of making it down."
I don't see why NASA is going to invent a fix and not use it," Osheroff said. He added: "This attitude of, 'It looks like it's OK, let's not do anything about it,' it seems like the Columbia NASA."
In a poignant reminder of NASA's other shuttle accident, the 1986 Challenger launch explosion, Morgan — Christa McAuliffe's backup — answered questions from youngsters gathered at the Challenger Center for Space Science Education in Alexandria, Va.
The moderator was June Scobee Rodgers, the widow of Challenger's commander and the founding chairman of the Challenger center's board. "Barb, we have been standing by waiting for your signal from space for 21 years," she said.
One girl asked if Morgan had a special teacher or mentor when she was young.
"Some of my mentors that have meant more than anything to me are seven very special people who I believe are mentors to you, too, and that was the Challenger crew," Morgan replied.
Morgan closed the teaching session by holding up an emblem of the Challenger crew's mission patch.
___
Associated Press writers Liz Austin Peterson in Houston and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.
I wouldn’t agree.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
You and me both brother.
Those d-mned tiles have been a nightmare since before the first shuttle launch?
I think they’re wrong!
I pray that I am!
If this shuttle burns up on re-entry fire NASA executives and charge them with murder. How hard would it be to send them out to put that goo stuff in the hole? I know EVA’s are dangerous..but so is a ship coming in with damaged heat tiles.
I am sure they have agonized and perhaps gone toe to toe in coming to this decision.
We have an opportunity to provide an additional level of confidence by putting some epoxy on it,, the main concern is that were they to actually cause more damage by accidentally hitting some other tiles, they could actually make it worse... the teacher is running the arm or is one of the main operators, If I am not mistaken.
The location is not in an area that will be subjected to as much heat in the areodynamic flow as it is on some spots on the shuttle on re-entry.
Touch call.
They are on an aggressive launch program, having this thing offline for repairs either way is bad enough, that’s why they get paid the big bucks.
They’ll be fine.
Thanks, Yes , there is lots of crud in that big blue sky they fly off into and then plummet down back thru, I reckun.. as the picture shows. ;-)
NASA cannot afford Space Shuttle repair costs. The administrators have spent their funds on bogus Global Warming research!
This all started right after they quit using the politically incorrect freon to apply the foam on the external tank. Their inability to go back to that method (political correctness) is going to shut them down, but not until they kill a few more.
Aluminum melts at 1220 degrees F
The reentry temperatures to the bottom side of the shuttle exceeds 2000 degrees
Don’t forget diapers for sex depraved fly girls.....
Every dollar counts!
I don’t think there is any real alternative to the tiles.
The external tank insulation, on the other hand, has been a PITA from about day one.
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