Posted on 07/27/2005 3:25:59 PM PDT by MindBender26
NASA realizes debris that fell of external fuel tank yesterday came close to causing irrepairable damage to shuttle now in orbit.
Fleet GROUNDED. More later
Chances to return to flight again, no better than 50/50.
thanks for the correction.
What I mean is that they aren't planning on launching anything before this one lands, right? So they could just as easily say they are "grounding" the whole fleet AFTER Discovery lands. My point is that "grounding" the fleet will have not one iota of consequence on the Discovery crew, and will do nothing but scare the he!! out of a bunch of people.
Yes, it is when they do it all the time. The original idea of landing on the airstrip at Cape Canaveral was so they could turn around and relaunch in a couple of weeks. Most launches don't need the crossglide capability.
No problem. Leave the crew at the Space Station and build a Super Wal-Mart in Space where they can buy supplies.
ping
It has nothing to do with the UN, that was merely the venue. We can withdraw, Pres Bush himself can do it with no further action by the Senate, with a one-year notice to the other major parties--Russia and Great Britain.
Dude, see post 156. Putting the shuttle on top was always Von Braun's design from the very beginning. The committee-designed version we have was a change made to save money.
I think the best solution is to find a way to slow the shuttle down to less than 9038479385 miles per hour before hitting the atmosphere.
Shuttle Program Manager Bill Parsons, speaking at a post-MMT press briefing this afternoon said: "We had a debris event on the PAL ramp along the LOX field line - below the point where the LH2 ramp begins. Our expectation is that we would not have an unexpected debris event. The PAL ramp is one area we should have reviewed. We knew we would have to remove the PAL ramp. We did not have enough data to be safe and remove it. We had very few problems with it so we decided that it was safe to fly it as is.Clearly, with the event we had, we were wrong.
We did not contact the orbiter at all. But it does give us pause to go back and look at what it is. Until it is closed we will not fly again. Might as well let that out now. Until we are ready we will not fly again. I do not know when that will be. This is a test flight. Obviously we have more work to do.
This is a test flight. It did not perform as well as we would have liked it to. I cannot say what the impact is until we find out what happened. Obviously we cannot fly with PAL ramps coming off the way that this one did. We need to go off and fix it."
It is true. It was changed to remove I so called ozone depleting substances. Since there are so few Shuttle launches it was an insane decision. It is the same thing as making sure McClarens (!sp!) have EPA emission controls (yea, a few hundred vehicles out of 100's millions) The person who forced this decision on NASA probably feels "it was the right decision."
Yes, but they cant design a new tank covering by then....the tank for Atlantis is probably already in Fla....and the other tanks being assembled in La.
We just gave the africans $50 Billion for nothing.
I find it amazing that with all the technology and expertise available for NASA to use, NASA has apparently not fixed the problems with foam insulation that caused the Columbia disaster. What is the problem with these people? Have they lost their ability to think creatively and solve these problems? I'm stunned by their ineptitude and their inability to permanently solve this problem with foam insulation. (And I don't believe their stupid computer simulations about "global warming" either.)
The Whale is right. "21st Century Manned Spacecraft'" plans have been released. It's sort of a two level Appolo.
The idea is; Send the cargo up on cheap solids. Park it in orbit. Then send crew.
Carol Browner
>>>The person who forced this decision on NASA probably feels "it was the right decision."
oldleft is right, Columbia was always too heavy to dock with the Station, that's why it never went there.
Passengers? Hardly. Trained men and women who were forward-looking explorers and scientists.
Ever see how many military aviators die every year in accidents? More than 14.
If aviation had been treated this way 90 years ago, we would just be introducing the Ford Tri-Motor today.
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