Hate to get this news!
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.
yes, hillary caused Columbia to be destroyed....we all know that.
Hale says Discovery appears to be good shape, but the final rationale for returning to Earth as-is or whether any repairs are necessary will be made later this week.
Hate to get this news!
"LINK please?"
http://www.cnn.com
Yes it is!
We're working on it. CNN.com has the following on the front page of their site - "The shuttle program is being grounded while engineers determine the effects of debris falling from Discovery during blastoff Tuesday, NASA says. More soon." No separate story yet, though.
>http://www.cnn.com
There's nothing there about it.
Justin Ray of Spaceflight Now is live-blogging the NASA Press Conference:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/status.html
And tell him to figure out how to increase it's maximum altitude from 60 miles to 225 miles, and how to re-enter earth's atmosphere from that distance and speed without turning into just another burning streak of composite material.
NASA is saying chance of return flight only fifty-fifty???
"There's nothing there about it."
Sure there is. It's in bright red at the top of the page. You can't miss it.
Drudge also has it up.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Er, they are headed to the ISS! That's Discovery's mission. The foam did not damage Discovery. It fell away from it!
There goes the HST repair mission.
Drudge does have it up, but just the flash. But what does this mean, they are grounded?
They will examine current vehicle "with fine tooth comb" maybe extra spacewalks. If need to abandon ship and use ISS as safe harbor, might wait to come back in simple/reliable Russian capsules or launch Atlantis with plenty of extra tiles, leading edge parts so they could repair any problem.
Old hands are now saying again "why didn't we stay with simple, disposable capsule idea, etc." "Why build spaceplane we never used (capabilities of?)
Is the shuttle program done launching for 2005?
Parsons: "I can't say what the impact of this is." Shuttles can't fly with this large size foam coming off, he added. The problem must be dealt with before the next launch can occur.
Plans had called for Atlantis to launch September 9.
"Drudge does have it up, but just the flash. But what does this mean, they are grounded?"
Honestly don't know the details. I'll wait for things to play out vs. speculate.
I see now. It appears that the concern isn't so much with this flight as it is for later flights due to the large chunks of foam coming off.
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