Possible tire explosion?
Goota go time is money. On long distance line.
WASHINGTON -- A NASA engineer weighed the possibility of a "catastrophic" failure resulting from extreme heat on the shuttle Columbia's tires despite assurances days earlier that possible damage to insulating tiles near the landing gear wouldn't imperil the crew.
In internal e-mails released by NASA on Wednesday, one safety engineer, Robert H. Daugherty, warned that extreme temperatures during a fiery descent could cause the wheel to fail and the tire to burst inside Columbia's wheel well.
"It seems to me that with that much carnage in the wheel well, something could get screwed up enough to prevent deployment and then you are in a world of hurt," Daugherty wrote to officials at Johnson Space Center. He added that such an internal blast "would almost certainly blow the door off the hinges or at least send it out into the slip stream -- catastrophic."
WASHINGTON -- A NASA engineer weighed the possibility of a "catastrophic" failure resulting from extreme heat on the shuttle Columbia's tires despite assurances days earlier that possible damage to insulating tiles near the landing gear wouldn't imperil the crew.
In internal e-mails released by NASA on Wednesday, one safety engineer, Robert H. Daugherty, warned that extreme temperatures during a fiery descent could cause the wheel to fail and the tire to burst inside Columbia's wheel well.
"It seems to me that with that much carnage in the wheel well, something could get screwed up enough to prevent deployment and then you are in a world of hurt," Daugherty wrote to officials at Johnson Space Center. He added that such an internal blast "would almost certainly blow the door off the hinges or at least send it out into the slip stream -- catastrophic."
WASHINGTON -- A NASA engineer weighed the possibility of a "catastrophic" failure resulting from extreme heat on the shuttle Columbia's tires despite assurances days earlier that possible damage to insulating tiles near the landing gear wouldn't imperil the crew.
In internal e-mails released by NASA on Wednesday, one safety engineer, Robert H. Daugherty, warned that extreme temperatures during a fiery descent could cause the wheel to fail and the tire to burst inside Columbia's wheel well.
"It seems to me that with that much carnage in the wheel well, something could get screwed up enough to prevent deployment and then you are in a world of hurt," Daugherty wrote to officials at Johnson Space Center. He added that such an internal blast "would almost certainly blow the door off the hinges or at least send it out into the slip stream -- catastrophic."