Damn, what a wild ride the last two days have been! A couple of things to clear up that no doubt the press has overblown: 1) The tile damage up to this point has been quite benign - even the chip lost on the aft edge of the NLGD. Interestingly, ascent imagery does not reveal any impactors in that location at that time, meaning that the tile broke for other reasons, proably deflections induced to the structure (when it broke the Orbiter was experiencing some of the worst loads on ascent, called MaxQ). That all being said, starting very early tomorrow morning we'll see the rest of the underbelly as the Orbiter rolls for pictures as it approaches the ISS. 2) The foam piece lost is monstrous! Estimated to be almost 3 ft long - if the 107 piece was a briefcase, this is a suitcase. This could not be caused by any of the physics as of yet determined to cause foam loss on the tank - meaning that we have some serious work cut out ahead of us to figure out whtat the hell happened. The places that were fixed have actually performed fairly well, other than the bipod, where a couple of bigger pieces did fall off again. 3) The scans of the RCC have gone well, with no serious concerns. Basically, since that huge piece was released we have been lucky. More later...
Seems like they should use ships that arent 20-30 years old. One would think that they could develop a new ship by now.
They are only noticing all of this stuff now because of the extra scrutiny after the reentry break up. Can you imagine how many bits and pieces were falling off those early shuttle missions 20 years ago? Pure luck they didn’t blow up during reentry prior to Columbia. ____________ Discovery crew may have to repair shuttle HOUSTON (Reuters) 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 on Sunday. The space agency is working on plans for spacewalkers to fix the parts if engineers decide they pose a threat to the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia accident, said Flight Director Paul Hill. 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. "We have a team of folks working aggressively at options to go and make that gap filler safe if we decide it's an issue," said Hill at a news conference. The protruding parts of Discovery's heat shield are not the result of debris impacts, which damaged Columbia's heat shield and caused it to break up over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003. Seven astronauts died in the accident, prompting a major safety overhaul. But large bits of debris still came off Discovery's fuel tank when it blasted off, prompting NASA to ground the entire shuttle fleet. CONCERN OVER GAP FILLER Now there is concern that the protruding gap filler could generate extreme heat that would make the shuttle's belly, where there may be some minor damage caused by debris, more vulnerable on re-entry. NASA is now targeting Discovery's landing for Aug. 8, a day later than planned so that the crew will have more time to finish transferring equipment to the orbiting space station, which likely will be without shuttle servicing missions for a while. Repair options include removing the protruding fillers, tacking them back down or trimming them, Hill said. Any work would be done by shuttle Discovery's two trained spacewalkers, Soichi Noguchi of Japan and NASA's Steve Robinson. They completed the first of three planned outings on Saturday and their second spacewalk to replace a failed steering device on the space station was scheduled for Monday. Hill said there was a remote possibility the crew would be asked to make an unplanned fourth spacewalk on Friday to work on the gap fillers. However, it was more likely they would do the work during their third spacewalk on Wednesday, if it became necessary, he said. The astronauts spent Sunday transferring about 15 tons of equipment and supplies to the space station and preparing for Monday's spacewalk. In television interviews from the shuttle, the Discovery crew expressed confidence they would return safely. "From all indications, it looks like it's a clean vehicle and we're good to go to return home," said mission specialist Charles Camarda. link
Sure. Cut that stupidly huge defense budget, give the money to NASA, and we can do that while operating the shuttle.
The LM model shown in popular mechanics is really just an old OSP design they had modded to get a "mars-capable design" for the least amount of money. Basically, Lockheed is betting that the mars project gets canceled and is not about to waste loads of money on it until a contract is signed.
