[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

The current occupants of the ISS could have eyeballed the wing as Columbia flew in formation close to the station.

Future missions (if ever continued) should include tile repair kits.

Autos have been equipped with spare tires for nearly a century.

[Alberta's Child]

I read somewhere that Columbia was not capable of flying high enough to dock with the ISS due to some kind of technological impediment.

[EggsAckley]

I read in an earlier post that the repairing of the tiles in space was impossible due to the cold.

[SSN558]

"Future missions (if ever continued) should include tile repair kits."

The shuttle filghts used to have tile repair kits, for some reason the practice was discontinued.

[Gorzaloon]

Future missions (if ever continued) should include tile repair kits. Autos have been equipped with spare tires for nearly a century. But autos have four identical tires. All the tiles are different. Though epoxies will cure in vacuum, and were used as ablation shields in the early Mercury and Gemini programs, so, Yes, they could make "Blowout" kits. But someone would have to go outside to use it.

Not me, I hate heights.

[SarahW]

I don't understand why any shuttle, ever, was allowed to go into space without some means of repairing damaged tiles having been developed.

It's time to re-engineer new shuttles.

[Salgak]

Good idea, but impractical. I had a friend in the USAF who worked Shuttle Ops. Tiles differ in size, shape, and thickness, depending on where they're placed. Mounting a replacement tile is a multi-week iteration. And in any case, the shuttle lacked EVA suits sufficient to even TRY such repairs. . .

[DAnconia55]

Future missions (if ever continued) should include tile repair kits.

Can't repair the tiles in the cold. Need heat to bond them.

[r9etb]

The current occupants of the ISS could have eyeballed the wing as Columbia flew in formation close to the station.

The ISS flies at about 52 degrees inclination at an altitude of about 205 nautical miles. The Columbia was flying at 39 degrees inclination, at an altitude of 1f0 nm. The distance and relative speed (roughly 20,000 mph) precludes a manageable "eyeballing."

There are means of trying to do this, however, and NASA should have at least attempted it -- easy to say in hindsight.

[Dialup Llama]

>Future missions (if ever continued) should include tile repair kits.

I saw the super slow mo video of the debris hitting the left wing. It hit really hard and created a huge cloud of pulverized heat tiles.

NASA said it was no problem and never looked at the tiles with satellites. BS. On the NASA news conference I heard some unusual statments. The first statement was that there was no possiblity of repairing the tiles. The second statement was strange- it was to the effect that the engineers had 'convinced' themselves that the tile damage was not a problem. They 'convinced' themselves because they had no alternative.