Replies

"there was some reason his manager overruled him"

Yes, he thought the guy was wrong. If he thought he was right, the launch would have been scrubbed. They might have waited two days, launched on a warm day, and the o rings might have rolled in their seats and let some exhaust out and ...... we'll never know.

Don't assume that these people want to take chances, they don't, but they would like to launch a rocket every once in a while. They make difficult decisions that you don't have to ..... be greatful.

unforseeable problems, like Apollo 13 are a little easier for me to understand ... fortunately there was no loss of life ... the mission and the equipment mean nothing compared to the lives of the astronauts to me ...

of course, I would ask hard questions of airline mechanics too ... if you remember AA191 out of Chicago in 1979, the engine / pylon to wing assembly was done outside of design specs ... my buddy was there when it went down ... they attached the engine to the pylon and then the pylon to the wing, but they were supposed to put the pylon on the wing and then attach the engine to avoid damaging the pylon ...

BTW, it was William Burroughs who reported that Teal Blue or Teal Amber (don't remember which one) was used to image the orbiter back in the '80's ...

there's some info on Teal Blue and Teal Amber near the bottom of this page ...

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/track/overview.htm

just caught this on MSNBC.Com ... says there was the rumor of the spy birds and ground space surveillance cameras used back in the '80's that I referred to earlier ... FWIW ...

There have long been reports that both Keyhole spy satellites, operated by the supersecret National Reconnaissance Office in Virginia, and two sophisticated ground cameras in Florida and Hawaii, operated by the Air Force Space Command, have taken snapshots of the shuttle to help NASA assess safety concerns, primarily on Columbia’s first mission in 1981, when tile damage was a major concern.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/867770.asp?0cv=CB10