NASA: Discovery crew may have to repair shuttle

Post by **Apoptosis** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:27 pm

NASA is trying to determine if two bits of material sticking up from the shuttle Discovery's thermal tiles present an unacceptable risk of overheating when the shuttle returns to Earth, the flight director said just a couple hours ago. NASA has had a rough time lately and this is only going to make matters worse. I hope that the Discovery crew comes home safe and sound. For NASA's sake they better pray they don't lose this shuttle because if it is lost I believe the current Space Shuttle and programs are going to be canceled.

NASA managers already have deemed 90 percent of Discovery's heat shield able to withstand the tremendous forces and high heat of atmospheric re-entry on Aug. 8.

But NASA has discovered two protruding gap fillers, which is material used to fill any minute gaps between heat shield tiles. A decision about whether the crew will be asked to fix them is expected on Monday, Hill said.

Source: Reuters News

I would hate to be stuck in outer space and waiting on the NASA research teams to look at pictures and see if I was going to make it home. Talking about not being able to sleep because of stress!

Knight Who Says Ni! · Post by **Knight Who Says Ni!** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:32 pm

Yeah, the only thing worst than dying is waiting to die.

killswitch83 · Post by **killswitch83** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:25 pm

Damn bureaucratic processes, personally I would try my best to reroute the camera they have on that robot arm on the outside of the ship to survey the damaged areas, and then I would patch them (if I had the stuff to do it with); to hell with waiting on NASA, govt. agencies tend to take too long on everything!

bubba · Post by **bubba** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:34 pm

sucks to be stuck in space in a tin can that was put together with over 10,000 parts all built by the lowest bidder....

Post by **Apoptosis** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:39 pm

"parts built by the lowest bidder"

Damn, never thought of it that way!

killswitch83 · Post by **killswitch83** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:41 pm

that could be read as "outsourced labor and parts"? that sounds about right.

-mogwai · Post by **-mogwai** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:43 am

nasa is about as high as my ankle on the credibility scale....

that's what you get for gathering up a bunch of stoners to work at nasa....

to my knowledge, only the pilots of spacecraft are subjected to stringent drug testing.... not those who build the spacecraft or do the math on how to safely land equipment on mars (remember the error where nasa forgot to convert meters into feet or something and the rover crashed hardcore onto the mars surface?)