news.yahoo.com — A couple of short strips of filler material dangling from Discovery's belly had NASA scrambling Sunday to determine whether the protrusions might endanger the space shuttle during re-entry and whether the astronauts might need to attempt a repair. The potential trouble has nothing to do with launch debris ....
Jul 31, 2005 View in Crawl 4
djmac317Jul 31, 2005
Oy, I wonder why we don't have any new ships.
imtigger2Jul 31, 2005
BILLIONS spent on our space program (which I'm all FOR by the way)... and we use tape, glue and foam on our space vehicles!? What do they expect sending an oversized balsa-wood "kids" model kit into space? The first time I heard about foam 'tiles' being glued to the outside of the shuttle, and that being the protection layer for the ship... it blew me away. Unfortunately, it blew away some astronauts as well. With all the materials available, is this all they've got?
bonlebonJul 31, 2005
maybe they are taking every issue too serious, and who doesn't after what have happened, the shuttle maybe had all those problems in the past and nobody cared about them, shuttles as planes are bound to crash, fail, you name it, ol' Murphy was right for sure.
zoliJul 31, 2005Submitter
I agree with "imtigger2" above, this is pathetic, instead of fooling around with foam, tape, glue and toy models for billion$, it's time to dump the old junk, and get a real space-age vehicle ... which, incidentally is what the Russians and even a British private business are doing. Details here: <a class="user" href="http://digg.com/science/Time_to_Dump_the_Shuttle">http://digg.com/science/Time_to_Dump_the_Shuttle</a>
nickelsaxAug 1, 2005
This not a "NEW" problem... the have discovered this problem before on many of the 111 flights before that landed safely. Yes they are sticking out more than they have in the past BUT in the past they found and measured them AFTER the shuttle SAFELY landed back on Earth, and thus could have stuck out just as much as this time, but burned off a bit in re-entry. Rememebr they are being OVER-causus this time around and checking things they never checked, or never reported widely on the 111 shuttle trips that landed SAFELY. How many of the 114 shuttle trips did foam fall off the tank? Probally most of them, bt one time caused damage.How many hit a bird? Probally most of them, but once caught on cammera.How many had proturtions? Nasa says MANY, but this is the first time they went out in space, saw them and measured them, the rest of the times, it was once they SAFELY landed back home.Space Flight is risky, and thee is always going to be risk, and we should try to reduce that risk, BUT we can never elimitate all risk.Yes we need a new program, as the orbitors are more expensive to fly and take longer to turn arround and put back up than orginally invisioned, and they have been in service for a long time. But they still have some use left, and we should use them, until we have a new craft, and maybe a bit longer if the new craft can't do all the orbitors can.
zoliAug 1, 2005Submitter
about those other 112 flights: "NASA has successfully landed space shuttles 112 times previously, despite sometimes extensive heat shield damage."The Columbia accident made us realize that we had been playing Russian roulette with the shuttle crews," Hale said."<a class="user" href="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20050801/ts_nm/space_shuttle_dc">http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20050801/ts_nm/space_shuttle_dc</a>
logikAug 1, 2005
all this is paranoia because of the media. this has happened before and it hasn't been that big of an issue. after columbia, the media is all over them, and now they look so far into things that there's no doubt they'll find every tiny thing wrong.these people are going to space.. get it? SPACE. it isn't like jumping around here on earth. it's a risk, the astronauts know this, the people on this planet however don't get it. you can't rule everything out. people WILL die, all we can do is try to make it happen less often. next.. rutan designed a plane that simply gets to the brink of space... the very beginning of it. it goes like what.. 3000mph or so. you need to go about 17,000mph to get where the space shuttle is going. sorry, rutan doesn't have what it takes to get there. he's tinkering and nasa is actually doing it. no offense to you guys who believe in rutan, but he's playing a totally different game and you just don't understand.
bloodrainAug 1, 2005
the ship are to dam old to be flying anymore. but nasa is to cheap to build new one or a diffent model.