Posted on 06/12/2007 4:48:53 PM PDT by XBob
Space Shuttle's Left Wing May Be Damaged Meteorite, Space Junk May Have Struck Panels
POSTED: 5:13 pm EDT June 12, 2007 UPDATED: 7:00 pm EDT June 12, 2007 Email This Story | Print This Story Sign Up for Breaking News Alerts WASHINGTON -- A meteorite or space junk may have struck Space Shuttle Atlantis' left wing, according to NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbree.
NASA recorded a hit on reinforced carbon panels 7 and 8 on the left wing. The panels keep heat from re-entry from burning the spacecraft.
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This is the same area where foam damaged Columbia's left wing and caused it to break up, killing its crew on Feb. 1, 2003.
In the late '90s, NASA adopted a "faster, better, cheaper" strategy. Small, straightforward probes using off-the-shelf technology and with a relatively narrow focus. I believe Pathfinder/Sojurner cost only (heh) $100 million.
The idea was to split up the tasks into many small missions rather than a single big do-everything machine. That way, if a probe got lost -- as so many Mars probes have -- it would not derail the whole mission.
The rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been the most spectacular successes of this new strategy. Conservatively expected to run for 90 or 180 (I forget) days, they're close to four years and still kicking ass. I so incredibly want a radio-controlled rover replica. With a wireless webcam. Those little buggers rock.
The Cassini/Huygens mission was the last of the do-everything missions; the planning process that began it was obsolete and discontinued by the time it launched. But Cassini, too, performed well beyond expectations.
In the first Star Trek movie, the Big Scary was V'ger -- which turned out to be Voyager VI. I give a little wistful chuckle every time I see that (which isn't often; honestly, it's a pretty crappy movie. Stick with the even-numbered ones). Voyager Six is next to Apollo Twenty in the might-have-been files.
Thank you for sharing that, a great read indeed.
I am not against space exploration.
Do you really think we are ready do colonize the Moon and Mars?
bump for later
My understanding is that the crew cabin remained intact for much of the fall back to Earth. Some of the crew might have survived the explosion, but if so they were likely unconscious and killed instantly on impact with the Atlantic. The supposed transcript of post-explosion tapes from the cockpit that made the rounds a dozen years ago is bogus.
Some of the crew-actuated O2 emergency systems were activated. Others were not. So some of the crew lived at least long enough to know something had gone wrong. NASA hasn't shared the details, and shouldn't.
Cowards never get anywhere first, that is the only difference.
This safety before everything mindset has to be squashed, it is making a generation of utter pansies...
290, 291
Thanks guys for the thoughtful responses. Let me comment on both together.
1. Personnally, I think the whole shuttle program is and always has been a giant boondoggle, and have known it is one from it’s basic inception, as I grew up with the space program, and went to school with the sons and daughters of the engineers and scientists and military men who got us into space, the first time, and I watched Alan Shepard being launched from my high school yard. One of my ‘girl’ friends, not girlfriend, was Sigi Diebus, daughter of Dr. Curt Diebus, 2nd in command under Werner Von Braun. Aand my brother is a (now retired) NASA design engineer. We both personally worked on the shuttle at various tijmes in our careers.
The shuttle was a political abortion from the start, each individual launch costs on an average of $500,000,000.
The all comes about from the initial problem, that the original NASA proposal cost too much (up front), so they had to change to the ‘cheap’ design, (where the costs were backloaded - wouldn’t show up in the initial budget). And to top completely bawdlerize the great engineering aspect capabilities we had at the time, which were to finely demonstrated on the Saturn Project, congress got involved, deeply, because they saw the $$$$$. And in order the get any continuation of a space program beyond the sataturn program, at all, they (NASA) had to design it so that part of the shuttle was ‘built’ (put money into) in 75 separate congressional districts. The abortion that resulted was the shuttle program.
2. Personally, I think our long distance space program is focusing totally in the wrong direction, as we realististically can only take years to send small tinker toys to our solar system. We are concentrating on the wrong thing, rockets will get us only a few miles, and they really hurt you if you don’t ride them just right, and they tak a looooooong time to get anywhere, as the distances are so vast. So we should be investing, seriously, in finding some sort of trancendent propulsion technology such as finding out what gravity is, and how can we cancel it, to move quckly and easily.
However, this has a major drawback, in that if NASA were to find out that, then they could probably figure out how to put it into cars and homes, and so then the huge energy conglolorates, gas, oil, hydro power, states, nations, dams, etc, would no longer have the control/income they need to maintain their grasp on power.
So ....., I do what I can, to keep them from killing our foolish brave space pioneers too fast, and especially too repeatedly, by making the same mistakes over and over.
Both shuttle disasters could have been prevented, and the problems were known years before the accidents, and in the case of the challenger, the fix was designed and sitting on the shelf for 18 months before the disaster, but wasn’t implemented because ‘politically sensitive’ schedules; and the colombia, we all new was an accident waiting to happen, and they just wouldn’t pay any attention. There is lots of stuff I personally saw, that was never reported to the public, and just how close various shuttles came to disaster, by mear seconds, or inches, or luck, is amaing that we have only lost two, so far.
PS Sigi Diebus was a super hot chick in high school, with an IQ of about 150 to boot. Last I heard she was happily married with thre kids. So, don’t tell me all hot chicks are dumb.
“What, just Tesla?”
:)
thanks for the plea, I won’t leave, leave, but I get really tired of reading through all the superficial adolescent smart ass BS on serious threads, to find the good-great posts. participation is another story, FR is particularly important right now, in order to save our country from total disaster at the has of the corrupt greedy ignorant fools in washington who are trying to kill the goose which lays the golden eggs.
to do that, we need credibility, and adolescents acting like they are in the movie “animal house”, and like behaviour doesnt contribute to that image. The fire is good though, and needs to be fed, and trained and focused toward constructive, fodcused, country saving action. Paris Hilton should not be a roll model here/
NoteBob - for some reason my keyboard keeps printing the wrong spellings.
you are welcome. there are many talented space workers who are just strangled by the BURROcracy and politic, and just want to cry at the amount of money they are FORCED to waste. My two personal favorites were my $89 box of a gross of screws (*( for each screw in the box to hold on instrument panel molding, and my $100 per sheet of paper, to keep the dust out of small (2”) exhaust openings (like car tail pipe).
The Shuttle is capable of bringing significant amounts of cargo down from orbit in one piece. It is the only means of accomplishing certain missions; if such missions are necessary and worthwhile, the Shuttle may thus be regarded as cost-effective when used for such missions.
For other missions which focus on simply getting cargo into space, though, the Shuttle is horribly inefficient. Mass-produced one-time-use rockets would be much cheaper and more versatile.
It’s not exploring unless there’s meat attached directly to the end of the flashlight.
You don’t remember the old Apollo splashdowns. Much more nerve wracking. After splashdown, they had to send frogmen to the capsule and open it, and only after every one emerged alive could you take a deep breath.
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