NASA: No Flights Until Foam Issue Fixed

The shuttle Discovery, like Columbia, shed a large chunk of foam debris during liftoff that could have threatened the return of the seven astronauts, NASA said Wednesday.

While there are no signs the piece of insulation damaged the spacecraft, NASA is grounding future shuttle flights until the hazard can be fixed.

"Call it luck or whatever, it didn't harm the orbiter," said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. If the foam had broken away earlier in flight, when the atmosphere is thicker increasing the likelihood of impact, it could have caused catastrophic damage to Discovery.

"We think that would have been really bad, so it's not acceptable," said Parsons' deputy, Wayne Hale. But he said early signs are Discovery is safe for its return home.

A large chunk of foam flew off Discovery's redesigned external fuel tank just two minutes after what initially looked like a picture-perfect liftoff Tuesday morning. But in less than an hour NASA had spotted images of a mysterious object whirling away from the tank.

Mission managers did not realize what the object was — or how much havoc it would cause to the shuttle program — until Wednesday after reviewing video and images taken by just a few of the 100-plus cameras in place to watch for such dangers.

Officials do not believe the foam hit the shuttle, posing a threat to the seven astronauts when they return to Earth on Aug. 7. But they plan a closer inspection of the spacecraft in the next few days to be sure.

"You have to admit when you're wrong. We were wrong," Parsons said. "We need to do some work here, and so we're telling you right now that the ... foam should not have come off. It came off. We've got to go do something about that."

The loss of a chunk of debris, a vexing problem NASA thought had been fixed, represents a tremendous setback to a space program that has spent 2 1/2 years and over $1 billion trying to make the 20-year-old shuttles safe to fly.

"We won't be able to fly again," until the hazard is removed, Parsons told reporters in a briefing Wednesday evening.

Engineers believe the foam was 24 to 33 inches long, 10 to 14 inches wide, and anywhere between 2 and 8 inches thick, only somewhat smaller than the chunk that smashed into Columbia's left wing during liftoff in 2003. Its weight was not immediately known.

It broke away from a different part of the tank than the piece that mortally wounded Columbia. After the accident, the tank was redesigned to reduce the risk of foam insulation falling off.

Discovery's astronauts were told of the foam loss before going to sleep Wednesday.

Parsons stressed that Discovery's 12-day mission was a test flight designed to check the safety of future shuttle missions. He refused to give up on the spacecraft that was designed in the 1970s.

"We think we can make this vehicle safe for the next flight," he said, declining to judge the long-term impact on the manned space program. "We will determine if it's safe to fly."

Atlantis was supposed to lift off in September, but that mission is now on indefinite hold. Parsons refused to speculate when a shuttle might fly again, but did not rule out the possibility that Discovery's current mission may be the only one for 2005.

He said it was unlikely that Atlantis would be needed for a rescue mission, in the event Discovery could not return safely to Earth and its astronauts had to move into the international space station. Discovery, fortunately, appears to be in good shape for re-entry, he said.

In addition to the big chunk of foam, several smaller pieces broke off, including at least one from an area of the fuel tank that had been modified in the wake of the Columbia disaster.

Thermal tile was also damaged on Discovery's belly; one tile lost a 1 1/2-inch piece right next to the set of doors for the nose landing gear, a particularly vulnerable area.

Hale said none of the tile damage looked particularly serious, and likely would not require repairs in orbit.

Imagery experts and engineers expect to know by Thursday afternoon whether the gouge left by the missing piece of tile needs a second look. The astronauts have a 100-foot, laser-tipped crane on board that could determine precisely how deep the gouge is.

The tile fragment broke off less than two minutes after liftoff Tuesday and was spotted by a camera mounted on the external fuel tank.

If NASA decides to use its new inspection tool to get a 3-D view of the tile damage, the astronauts will examine the spot on Friday, a day after docking with the international space station.

On Wednesday, Discovery's astronauts spent nearly six hours using the boom to inspect Discovery's wings and nose cap for launch damage. The wings and nose are protected by reinforced carbon panels capable of taking the brunt of the searing re-entry heat.

Hale said the laser inspection turned up nothing alarming, but the analysis is ongoing.

When someone does want to exploit space or Antarctica, when the money is right, they're not gonna let the UN or laws get in the way.

It's Catch-22.

First, assume there is a way to exploit some of the resources of outer space. I have seen both technical and economic analysis that shows it can be done in a businesslike way. The one thing that stands in the way is investment. There is no investment of the kind that would be required, so we should ask why this is so. The answer is that no one will invest without getting an interest in the project. That interest would have to be in the form of collateral. A grant, deed, or contract of charter would be such collateral. There can be no other collateral than property rights. But, property rights are impossible under the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty.

It is possibly amusing to those who think about it that by signing the Treaty agreeing that we would not as a country assert national claim to celestial bodies, we asserted at the same time that we in fact have claimed everything in outer space to the limit of the visible universe if not beyond.

There is opposition, of course. I might mention the Eastern interests that have kept the resources of Alaska virtually frozen excepting oil. It is the same interests that forbad settlement of the Colonies beyond the fall line of the Alleghanies. The same interests do not want development of space resources where it might undercut their established business.

I am an X-prize member by the way. I fully support private industry's efforts.

Glad to hear that you put at least some of your money where your mouth is. I just hope that you didn't join the Ansari X-Prize Foundation as recently as you joined Free Republic. ;)

BTW, I was one of the original X-Prize Foundation members, kicking in $500 back in 1994, when I attended the Foundation's inaugural dinner in St. Louis. Of course I met Burt Rutan (who I had met a decade before) and Dr. Peter Diamandes (who I had met several times before) as well as numerous astronauts (some I had met before) and X-Prize contenders (who I had known for years as well.)

I'm glad that you have come to the commercial space party, albeit a bit late - just stop telling us how wonderful NASA is, when it is apparent that you barely know more about it than the lamestream reporters do.

but they are decades behind what NASA can do.

Last I checked, over the last couple of years both NASA and the commercial guys (Rutan) have sent up two flights each. The commercial vehicle came back safely. The jury is still out on NASA's ability to do the same. Let's hope they improve their record.

Government cont(r)acts to private companies are not necessarily inherently wasteful. If they can somehow avoid all the bureaucracy, they can get the job done efficiently.

Of course, but they type of contract and terms make all the difference in the world. Cost plus contracts generally are bad for larger contracts. One approach that has been advocated for some time has been for the government to offer a prize to whichever entity that can accomplish a stated goal. In this way the government only pays for successes, not failures. It also encourages innovation. It tends to weed out the typical government contractors that are used to generating only paper instead of flying hardware.

There's got to be some lightweight material to make this a weight-neutral solution.

Apparently you haven't followed the ET's tortured history. Originally the ET was built pretty stout - for a structure akin to two giant aluminum balloons stacked upon each other.

They originally painted the ET white to provide some additional thermal protection and match the orbiter, but they later skipped the paint job to save hundreds of pounds of weight.

Then when they decided to bring the Russians into the space station project, they raised the orbital plane of the station to allow the Russians to reach the station from their higher latitude launch range at Balkinour. This meant that the shuttle would have to expend more fuel plane changing to reach that higher inclination orbital plane. Not much could be offloaded from the orbiter (actually they needed to add extra cargo capacity to the orbiter for station), so the ET had to go on an even stricter diet. It was decided to make the ET out of Lithium-Aluminum alloy to lighten it up thousands of pounds. The only problem is that Lithium-Aluminum alloy is tricky to weld and fabricate. It tends to cause stress fractures, which weaken the metal. Eventually NASA/LockMart figured it out (the Russians had been building aircraft out of Lithium-Aluminum alloy for a decade) and they started flying the ET-lite.

Of course all of these post-Columbia safety fixes has added thousands of pounds of extra weight on both the ET and the orbiter. This extra baggage means that much less is left to carry people and cargo up to the space station. NASA desperately wanted to do this "extra-safe" shuttle flight perfect to prove to Washington that every thing is OK now - and then go back to thinning out much of the "extra-safe" dead weight to start restocking and continue building the space station.

Then falling foam happened - again!

NASA is in a tight spot now in so many ways. Merely fixing the ET foam is only a minor (but visible) part of what is going to happen to NASA in the near future.

Washington is not happy. The media is already writing NASA's obituary.

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