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NASA: Discovery crew may have to repair shuttle

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:27 pm
by Apoptosis
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!

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:32 pm
by Knight Who Says Ni!
Yeah, the only thing worst than dying is waiting to die.

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 6:25 pm
by killswitch83
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!

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:34 pm
by bubba
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....

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:39 pm
by Apoptosis
"parts built by the lowest bidder"

Damn, never thought of it that way!

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:41 pm
by killswitch83
that could be read as "outsourced labor and parts"? that sounds about right.

Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:43 am
by -mogwai
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?)