NASA Press Conference LIVE THREAD

Fox, CNN, networks, NASA TV | February 2, 2003 | NASA

[snopercod]

Any time now...

[Pyro7480]

I didn't think it was unneccessary. Jews have religious concerns over burial of their dead, so it was a valid question. They may want to bury him in Israel with hero's honors, since he was not only the first Israeli astronaut, but also one of the pilots on the mission that blew up the Iraqi nuclear reactor back in 1981. I, however, agree with you in thinking that NASA should have been up front about that, but I'm sure the families knew that, and that's the most important thing.

[txradioguy]

I just e-mailed your article to Fox News. Maybe they'll actually read it and use it. have heard lots of mentions of the foam, but nothing about the switch to the "environmentally friendly" PC stuff.

[TLBSHOW]

Columbia had problems
with tiles 6 years ago http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30824

[alancarp]

Except that the initial reports of finding a hand and an arm yesterday morning in San Augustine, TX -- as well as later CBS reports of four confirmed findings of body parts in East Texas -- seem to have been confirmed. Doesn't sound as if they were all in one place.

Yeah, but how do you say "remains from all 7 found" unless you can make positive IDs. That plus the anocdotal reports suggest much fewer than 7 bodies thus far... well, until now. To answer another poster, yeah - maybe the Toledo Lake find - no reason it would have fallen any sooner than anything else.

[DoughtyOne]

I remember now. He provided one government report to prove some point. It listed a number of crashes that were supposed to support his point. I read the list and was moving on when it dawned on my. The report had listed the Valuejet crash (oxygen cannisters, cause) as one of the crashes. It was totally unrelated to the point he was trying to prove, and he didn't even know it. It made him look inspidid to the max.

I doubt he'd ever heard of the Valuejet crash. He likes to dump page after page of information on a thread to disrupt it if things aren't going his way. It's his way of saying, look I've got all this behind me, what do you have? It fools some people. Most of it is essentially worthless data.

[Rafterman1]

...sometimes you need a damn good back-up plan

A thought that seems to have been lost with these guys.

OH, PUHLEEEEZE! Do you really think that no one in the entire NASA organization considered a backup plan? I'm sure there is more to it than your blanket, thinly-veiled accusations...

[Atlas Sneezed]

"NASA could alway develop something so they could do a spacewalk to check for damage. Thruster suit, whatever. If there is a will there is a way to get our pilots home safely."

If they hadn't over-invested in manned spaceflight, they'd already have a football-sized camera pod that can maneuver about and take pictures, untethered. Disposable, so you don't even need to recover it. Works on pressurized gas of whatever is on hand. With padding in case it goes out of control and flies into the spacecraft (and limited rates of acceleration so that it can't fly too fast.)

Geeze, I mean, all you really need is a wireless TV camera (steadicam stabilized to maintiain its attitude) to float out there, and simply thrust the shuttle away from it and into an attitude for inspection.

[mewzilla]

What was the back-up plan, then?

[rs79bm]

I'm sure this was posted much much earlier, but at least the families will be able to give the courageous astronauts a proper and respectful burial service, as remains of all the astronauts have been found.

[Republic of Texas]

The ISS has no engines. Sure you can bring it down, but after that it doesn't come back up. Not to mention these things have a very specific pre-determined orbit, and they are doing it at 20,000 mph.

[snopercod]

There have been plans to mothball Columbia at least since 1986.

If you can imagine the shuttles stipped of the "brickyard look", they are just like an airliner underneath. The same laws of stress, strain and fatigue apply.

Airliners routinely experience tens of thousands of cycles more severe (structurally) than what a shuttle will ever experience normally.

There is absolutely no reason to think that any shuttle should be "mothballed" for structural reasons.

It's always budget reasons driving that response.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Just out of curiosity, how do they know the tiles couldn't have been fixed in orbit

One explaination i heard is that theres no plan in place for repairing tiles in space another is that there is no foot or handholds on the bottom of the spacecraft because it would put to much heat to close to the shell of the craft upon reentry.

[txradioguy]

"Jews have religious concerns over burial of their dead, so it was a valid question."


Next time there's a homicide bomber in Israel. Look closely in the background. There's a special group that comes in and mops up any blood and other little bits of the people killed off the walls and the streets. The Jewish religon stresses that it's important that the entire peson (encluding every drop of blood)is buried.

[bvw]

Regarding the Shuttle, the coolant changes resulting in more tiles being lost, yet the assertion that flight safety would not suffer is passing beyond the pale of can-do-ism into life-disregarding recklessness.

[Atlas Sneezed]

"Why not send up an SR-71 and snap a shot through an up-turned camera?"

VERY clever thinking! Those planes can surely fly inverted up there, where the air is so thin.

[Republic of Texas]

The two most dangerous times are leaving the atmosphere and entering the atmosphere. If something goes wrong at one of those times, there is no backup plan. That only works on Star Trek.

[mewzilla]

Sounds to me, then, like they didn't have a back-up plan for that eventuality anyway.

[Rafterman1]

It may have been possible to reduce the ISS's height, though.

I seriously doubt it. Manuevering in orbit is all about reaction mass (fuel). I'm not aware that the ISS carries anything like the amount of reaction mass that would be required to make those kind of manuevers.

[DoughtyOne]

Well it does a pretty good job on the moon. I think that's a valid question, but I believe I have seen it focus on some things in near earth orbit. We also have some spy satellites that could probably focust on the shuttle.

Isn't the Hubble out at about a 25,000 mile orbit? Seems to me the infinity setting on the optics wouldn't be that much different from the moon or from 24,750 miles or so.

An optics person might shoot me down on this, but I believe I'm right.