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NASA Space Science

NASA Optimistic About Fuel Tank Repairs 104

Posted by CowboyNeal from the good-to-go dept.
DarkNemesis618 writes "NASA is now optimistic Atlantis' fuel tank will be able to be repaired in Florida. Due to a freak hail storm February 26 that had golf-sized hail chunks raining down on the launchpad put several thousand dings in the foam covering the external fuel tank as well as damaging 28 tiles on Atlantis' wing. 20 of the 28 tiles have been repaired and workers have started sanding down the damaged area of the tank itself. After it was decided that Atlantis needed to return to the VAB, NASA was unsure as to whether or not the tank could be repaired. But after bringing it back and doing more extensive inspections, the tank appeared to be in good enough shape that repairs could be done on the spot and a replacement was not necessary. This will allow for Atlantis to be launched late April for its construction mission to the ISS as well as not interfering with the remaining 4 launches planned this year. If the tank needed to be replaced, Atlantis would not have launched until June at the earliest."
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NASA Optimistic About Fuel Tank Repairs More

NASA Optimistic About Fuel Tank Repairs

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  • Just curious (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why would it take less time to repair, rather than replace the tank?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jusdisgi ( 617863 )

      Why would it take less time to repair, rather than replace the tank?

      Well, they got it from NewEgg, they're out-of-stock, so the RMA is backordered. They could go and do a manufacturer replacement, but that could take forever.

    • They don't have another tank available until around June. Hurricane Katrina damaged the tank manufacturing facility at Michoud, LA (not to mention the homes of the workers there). Add to that, the upgrades to the tank that were mandated by the Columbia breakup.

      Flight schedule is already completely booked until shuttle retirement. If they used the next tank for this mission, the next mission launch date would be impacted even more. Best option for them is to repair if possible.

    • Re:Just curious (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DarkNemesis618 ( 908703 ) on Friday March 16, 2007 @03:04AM (#18372065) Homepage
      Like they said, Endeavour's (STS-118) tank would have been used if repair wasn't an option. This tank is scheduled to be completed and arriving at KSC April 12th. By replacing the tank, the remaining 4 launches this year would be pushed back. That's obviously not the preferred option as it would add more complications, but it would have been done should the damage have warranted it. Something else to note is that if they would have needed to replace Atlantis' tank, the tank would have been sent back to the manufacturer, completely repaired there and sent back for use on a later mission. The biggest issue really was whether the VAB and KSC had the ability to repair it on site or not. Luckily for NASA, it can be repaired in the VAB. This is not the first time a shuttle's tank has been damaged by hail, and let's not forget the woodpeckers who somehow thought the fuel tank woulda made a good home. (Both times the stack had been rolled back, repaired, and eventually successfully launched) Now NASA can launch Atlantis late April rather than having to wait til June if replacement was deemed neccessary.

  • The last time. . (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    NASA judged that the Shuttle was ready to fly after freak weather, astronauts lost their lives. I don't care how certain they are that this tank can fly, I think it should be replaced anyway. I just hope that I'm wrong and nothing horrible happens.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by User 956 ( 568564 )
      The last time NASA judged that the Shuttle was ready to fly after freak weather, astronauts lost their lives.

      Yeah, but that was back in the day when space travel was really booming.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by maxume ( 22995 )
      They knew the risks when they strapped in. Space flight is not something that is going to be safe for hundreds of years. The sooner we stop pretending, the sooner we start doing interesting things.
      • They knew the risks when they strapped in.

        "I say, let them crash"

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by maxume ( 22995 )
          No. That isn't even remotely what I said. The astronauts that get in the shuttle are easily among the 10,000 people on the planet who best understand the damn thing, so I am perfectly happy deferring the go/no go question to them; I am sure that they also prefer it that way.
    • The shuttle is a 20-something year old POS. A car manufacturer would have recalled and cancelled anything this bad long ago. Screwing up this badly requires government input. Twenty years back (yes I remember the first shuttle launch), there was a promise of a brave new age with space trips being as simple as regular airline flights (ence the name Shuttle - something like a shuttle bus which just takes you for an easy casual ride from one place to another). Roll forward 20+ years and we're just stuck in a 1

      • Re:Flying lemon (Score:5, Informative)

        by GreggBz ( 777373 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @11:18PM (#18371039) Homepage

        The shuttle is a 20-something year old POS


        compared to what?

        A car manufacturer would have recalled and cancelled anything this bad long ago.


        Oh.. an 86 Ford Econoline van I guess.

        If airlines were as unsafe as the shuttle, every day there'd be 4 plane crashes at LAX before breakfast.


        Good thing those 30 year old 747's and DC-10's don't have to carry large fragile payloads into low Earth orbit. Funny though, they are built by the same companies that build the shuttle. And the shuttle was probably constructed with a lot more care attention and diligence the the jumbo jet they built in march of 1993. Maybe the application is just slightly different.

        Yea, the shuttle is far from perfect. It is expensive and more complex then it should be. It's also constrained to a small very un-glamorous space application. But it's the first vehicle of it's type humans built. And it's the only vehicle we have that can do what it does. The fact that it's still in service after 25 years doing amazing things is a testament to it's design. And I have confidence that NASA could do a whole lot better given more funding and a vision they are allowed to follow through with.

        Enough with the bandwagon, whiney, pessimistic idiotic shuttle bashing. Do some research, and post objectively. Yes, it's time to move on and yes I'd like to see a new space vehicle. Really though, these let's slam the POS shuttle trolls are wearing me the hell out.

        • Yes, I'm yelling, but damned, I'm tired of only hearing people bashing NASA here. What has any other agency private or public done that comes anywhere near the achievements of NASA? When someone is designing an aircraft, where do they go for data to calibrate their simulations? NASA. What agency has launched more successful missions out of Earth's gravity well? None, but NASA. Sure, they're a big, slow moving organization... but try to do what they've done with a smaller organization. It won't work.

          • Re:MOD PARENT UP!!! (Score:4, Informative)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Friday March 16, 2007 @02:27AM (#18371901) Homepage Journal

            Let's see... ESA, RFSA... I'm sure there are others. I'm not saying NASA hasn't done a lot of good work. They have. They aren't by a long shot the only space agency that has done a lot of good work, though.

            The ISS was developed jointly by all of those organizations and others, and was built jointly as well. The shuttle's remote manipulator arm was built by the Canadian Space Sgency, IIRC. As for shuttles, the Russian (nay, Soviet) space agency studied the concept of building a reusable space plane, built one [wikipedia.org], and scrapped it after only a single flight. I suspect that they realized how poor the reusability of the design was, then concluded that it wasn't worth the trouble.

            The shuttle was a classic example of "too many cooks" syndrome. The military's insistence on carrying home satellites (AFAIK, never used during reentry for anything other than Spacelab, which, BTW, was designed by the ESA), coupled with NASA's insistence on maximum reusability resulted in a shuttle in which the orbiter main engines still require a complete tear down between launches, the heat tiles require massive service for every launch, and the external tank still burns up. If someone were designing the shuttle today, it would look very different. It would be at the top of the stack, the orbiter would have no main engines internally, and would be orders of magnitude safer as a result of either one of those changes.

            A shuttle designed today would not be built using steel frames, but would instead be built using more modern materials like carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic, polycarbonate, etc. except for the portions that get to extreme temperatures during reentry. A shuttle today would ideally not use liquid fuel. That stuff is a nightmare, both in terms of safety and in terms of the required facilities to maintain its temperature. Instead, it would solely use solid rockets (or a single solid rocket) with adjustable nozzles. This part would be disposable.

            A shuttle designed today, since it would not have to carry the weight of main engines during reentry, could safely handle the weight of an ablative heat shield under the thermal tiles to ensure a safe return. Fewer thermal tiles (say a fourth as many, but 4x as large) would be a big win in terms of complexity and propensity for failure. Use a more flexible binder so that they don't fall off so often, or better yet, hold them in place with a replaceable steel lattice with pins that stick into the edges of the tiles to anchor them even more securely than any glue (or run pins into them from the back or... fill in the blank.

            A shuttle designed today might even have a rear ablative shield and a switch wing design, falling back-end-first through the upper layers of atmosphere, using the ablative heat shield to handle the heat, then at some known altitude, would use the partially deployed wings to reverse its direction and use a chute to slow its descent. Once its descent slowed to a reasonable level, the chute would be detached (with the ablative shield in tow), and the shuttle would continue to fall nose down, at which point the switch wings would be deployed fully and the shuttle would glide in for a landing. You could even put in some small, in-air-safe engines under the heat shield, with a few minutes of fuel to make landing more manageable.

            Anyway, I could rant for hours about all the things NASA (and the military) did wrong in designing and maintaining the shuttle program, but I won't because I'm really glad to see that the current head of NASA doesn't share the rose colored glasses of previous administrators and sees the shuttle for what it is---a good first prototype, but a bad final design. I'm hopeful that eventually we will see something like the shuttle in concept, but radically improved in implementation, even if we do end up stuck with plain old rockets for a while in the interim.

            • Re:MOD PARENT UP!!! (Score:5, Informative)

              by iamlucky13 ( 795185 ) on Friday March 16, 2007 @04:45AM (#18372429)
              Don't get defensive. He wasn't trash talking the ESA or any other space agency. ESA in particular has performed well lately. He was trash talking the people who trash talk NASA without having a freaking clue what they're talking about.

              Part of the reason a shuttle designed today would look very different is because of what we learned from the shuttle. Of course, partially due to limited budgets, we're moving away from the shuttle concept (google CEV if you're unfamiliar).

              That said, I think there's some parts where you're flat out wrong. Rather than deal with the variety of architectures that are possible for a shuttle, I'm going to address them in the context of the shuttle we now have and why it is the way it is.

              The orbiter is not made from steel, it's made from aluminum and titanium. Of course, CF was just budding at the time it was built and was not a feasible technology. It's only now becoming mainstream in planes, but you can expect to see significant amounts of it on future spacecraft, I will grant you that. It will not, however, offer any magical advantages. Merely a little weight-savings.

              The shuttle main engines are liquid fueled because they are significantly more efficient than solid fueled boosters (ISP of about 420 compared to 250 for the SRB's). The solid rocket boosters are desirable because of their extremely high thrust for getting off the ground, but most of the delta V comes from the cryogenic liquid fuels. The wisdom of this choice is reflected in the fact that almost every commercial launcher uses liquid fuel for its core and upper stages, and I think most use LOX (but with kerosene instead of H2). Solid fuels are not without their faults. In addition to low efficiency, their throttling ability is fixed, they can't do a live abort (stop launch once ignition begins), and the fuel can be damaged by excess handling, meaning it needs replacing or the booster may fail.

              The engines are mounted on the orbiter instead of the external tank (as per the Russian Buran shuttle) because NASA was counting on reusing them. At $50 million dollars each x 3 engines (~2005 dollars), reusing them saves $150 million per flight (The Russian engines were cheaper, slightly less efficient).

              There's a lot of room for criticism of the heat shield, but for a winged re-entry vehicle, there wasn't much flexibility for achieving a light weight shield over such a large area. I believe quite a few alternative mounting methods were considered but found infeasible or higher risk, including mounting pins. The size of the tiles was largely affected by the need to flex in flight.

              The Russian space shuttle was scrapped due to lack of money. Given the state of the Soviet Union at the time of its completion and the direction of their space program, it wasn't even worth making do with it after all the money they spent developing it. I don't understand your proposal for a rearward entry or desire for the addition of engines. A rearward entry would not address any of the lessons learned from the shuttle and would only complicate aerodynamics and heat issues. The swing wing would increase mechanical complexity and be difficult to implement for a blunt body re-entry design. No landing attempt has ever come up short, and the size of engines required to enable a fly around would be a significant weight penalty.

              I maintain the view that others have offered. While the shuttle was overly ambitious, represented a needlessly challenging architecture, and did not fit the needs of the space program well as it developed (the shuttle was never meant to be our only manned vehicle), it is an astounding marvel of technology and a fine piece of engineering.

              We may someday see another vehicle like the shuttle, but probably smaller...designed for crew shuttling and maybe as a work platform only. Not for cargo. It will definitely not use the side stack configuration that places the re-entry vehicle at risk from launch damage. That's probably the biggest lesson of the shuttle program.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                All good points. To address a few of those points, I proposed the idea of a switch wing because it makes launch more efficient, turning it into something that approximates a capsule in terms of air flow around it, which would make it easier to have it on top of the stack. It would also mean that you could avoid the heat shielding on the wings almost entirely , as they would not be deployed until a parachute slowed their descent to something more reasonable.

                Fair enough about the liquid fuels versus solid

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rei ( 128717 )
              I agree with most of what you said, but I have a few nits to pick.

              A shuttle today would ideally not use liquid fuel. That stuff is a nightmare, both in terms of safety and in terms of the required facilities to maintain its temperature. Instead, it would solely use solid rockets (or a single solid rocket) with adjustable nozzles. This part would be disposable.

              What? Solids aren't restartable. I assume you're talking about replacing the OMS. Hopefully you're not talking about replacing the RCS ;) Or are y

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by khallow ( 566160 )

            None, but NASA. Sure, they're a big, slow moving organization... but try to do what they've done with a smaller organization. It won't work.

            A slightly smaller but faster moving organization could have done more. For example, one could have built five or so International Space Stations for the price of the one that was actually built. Space probes are still built using mostly original or "one off" designs. And are built only in singles or pairs so there are no economies of scale exploited. For example, i

      • The Space Shuttle has been dubbed "The Most Complex Machine Ever Built" and that title fits. When you think of how many millions of parts are used to make the shuttle, it's awe-inspiring that they did what they did and in my opinion successfully. Yes, it didn't quite live up to its original expectations, but that doesn't make it a failure. Looking at everything the shuttle HAS done, it's a pretty big list. Not to sound uncaring or callous, but 2 tragedies in 100+ flights is not a failure, (especially co
    • Except the "last time" was due to frozen o-ring seals around the SRBs. However, this isn't the first time hail has golf-balled the ET. STS-96 had a freak hail attack while on the pad, it was repaired and flew successfully. Freak weather != loss of the shuttle.

      NeoThermic

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Wasn't STS-96 the mission where Discovery got hit by flying thermal insulation and they nearly lost the bird due to tile damage? No, wait, that was almost every shuttle mission [floridatoday.com].... That said, STS-96 was #15 in terms of number of impacts among the flights that made it home in one piece, and in terms of major impacts, it was #5. I wonder if there's a temperature correlation in this data. Anybody have a table of shuttle launch temperatures?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ddig83 ( 868776 )
      When speaking to the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP) last year, Mike Griffen was asked about his decision to launch Discovery (July 2006) against the advice of Bryan O'Connor (NASA Chief Safety and Mission Assurance Officer.) Please keep in mind that contrary to popular belief, test pilots are notoriously anal. They will refuse to fly an aircraft for the smallest inconsistencies or defects. Griffen's response (to a highly skeptical audience) was something to the effect of, "Without trying to s
  • Isn't the foam there for insulation of the tank before launch? Would it be possible to blow the foam off just before launch or at the time of ignition? Then they wouldn't have to worry about the quality of the foam or if pieces are going to fall off and cause damage. I'm just asking. I know making it fall apart completely might be nearly as hard as making it stay together, but it seems worth asking.

    • Perhaps I'm mistaken on this, but I think the foam also helps prevent heating of the tank while the shuttle reaches the necessary escape velocity (High Speed + Atmospheric Drag/Friction = Heat). The last thing you want to happen is for the tank to heat up as it starts to get close to empty. When there's less fuel, there's less mass to heat, so it can heat even faster. The result could possibly be a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE), not too much different in principle from when a comprom

      • >The result could possibly be a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE)
        Which we all know means 'to bluff'...
    • iirc the foam is frozen solid, and not anything like styrofoam used to make cheap coolers. remember that pieces of this foam falling at launch broke the heat tiles that caused the last disaster. yes, they were moving at a high rate of speed, but they had to have enough mass to them that they could still do that damage and not just reach a terminal velocity.
      as other people said, it's also possible that the foam is needed during the launch. there has to be a reason that they do not just skin the tank in somet
  • Maybe they should store the shuttle and tanks indoors.
    • I believe it was outside in preparation for launch...

      • Re:so (Score:5, Funny)

        by R3d M3rcury ( 871886 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @08:35PM (#18370031) Journal
        ...maybe they should launch it from indoors?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by CalSolt ( 999365 )
          I've been saying this for years, they need to move the shuttle to California! A launch facility near San Diego would be well supported by the local tech economy AND the weather would be beyond perfect. No more weather delays! So what if it's a little extra fuel. The cost of a slightly bigger rocket would be more than recovered by preventing delays like this.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dpilot ( 134227 )
            I presume you're joking but just in case you're not - you are aware of at least 2 reasons they launch from Florida?

            1: About as far south as you can easily get on the continental US, to get speed benefit out of the Earth's rotation. None at the poles, about 1000mph at the equator, IIRC about 800mph at KSC. That's why the French and British launch at the north end of South America, and why HG Wells launched from Stone Hill in Florida, not that far from KSC, in "From Earth to the Moon." It's also part of why R
        • I don't get why they don't coat that foam in some kind of plastic. Like a thick saran-wrap or something. Wouldn't that prevent 99% of these break-offs?

  • NASA Engineers (Score:4, Funny)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @08:28PM (#18369967)
    Apparently, being a NASA engineer is a tankless job.

  • Obligatory (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why can't they just use duct tape ?

    • Speed Tape (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Frosty Piss ( 770223 )
      The funny thing about that is that the Air Force uses something they call "speed tape" to repair minor body damage on their transports, the C-5 / C-17 / C-130's (and before it was retired, the C-141). Speed Tape is just macho duct tape.

  • How big is it? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by R3d M3rcury ( 871886 )

    [...] golf-sized hail chunks [...]
    How big is a golf?

    Volkswagen Golf's are about 5.5, 13 feet long, and about 4.5 feet tall. That's a pretty big hunk of hail.
    • It's part of a NASA-wide phase out of obselete units such as the ft-lb and the Beetle.
    • "How big is a golf?"

      What does your common sense tell you?

      I know it's fun to correct silly little flaws in stories, but you do realize you're stooping down into Forrest Gump terroritory in this case, right?
      • awwww, common sense is no fun, mommy!

        Normally I tell people to grow up (or at least think it at them). In this case though, you should grow back down a little bit. This was not a correction to the story, but a (successful) attempt at a little bit of humor. Perhaps your particular sense of humor doesn't veer this direction, but there are a lot of us who find things like "how big is a golf?" after a minor typo like that in the summary to be moderately humorous. Sorry if you think that's dumb. Deal with
    • Just a little larger than a ping pong but smaller than a tennis.

  • guess what i found on ebay (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    NASA is selling the old tank. I'm going to make a sweet ass bong out of it.

  • Uhh, you know what, guys? (Score:4, Funny)

    by bensafrickingenius ( 828123 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @08:42PM (#18370065)
    I'm feeling a little under the weather. Why don't you all just go on without me, and I'll catch the next shuttle, mkay?
  • Let's all bask in its glory for a few moments, shall we?


    Due to a freak hail storm February 26 that had golf-sized hail chunks raining down on the launchpad put several thousand dings in the foam covering the external fuel tank as well as damaging 28 tiles on Atlantis' wing.

    • Basking under that removed what little tan I had and returned me back to my pale geeky goodness.
    • It's the opposite of a run-on: a fragmented sentence.

      A run-on is a complete sentence that has another sentence (or fragment) added without any punctuation separating the two.

      A run-on: I love run-on sentences do you love run on sentences?

      A fragment: Because I love fragments.

      This opening sentence is just an incredibly long fragment.

      Due to a freak hail storm February 26 that had golf-sized hail chunks raining down on the launchpad put several thousand dings in the foam covering the external fuel tank as well a
    • Here, I'll give it a half-assed parsing for you.

      [[Due [to
      [[a [freak [hail storm]]]_i
      [[!!!] February 26]]
      that []_i
      [had [[golf-sized [hail chunks]]
      [[raining down]
  • Is it just me or is it about fucking time that NASA builds a carport for this multi-billion dollar equipment? Every time they keep something in Florida, it gets hurricaned, hailed on, attacked by gators, or assaulted by old people with canes and walkers.

    Just park the damn thing under a roof for once.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ChrisA90278 ( 905188 )
      "Just park the damn thing under a roof for once."

      Is this a joke or does this person not know not know about the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)?

      Of course they keep it indoors. But of course they take it outside before they light off the big rockets and launch it into space. Makes a mess of the building if you try doing the inside. What happened was they chaecked the weather, it looked good so they took the think outdoors and then unexpectedly they got hailed on.

      The VAB is quite famous. It was built in t
      • Sorry, but you're wrong. The worlds largest enclosed space is a Boing factory. The VAB is 129 million cubic feet, while the Boing plant is 200 million.
        • No, I'm right. My point was that the guy must have been either joking or grossly ignorant not to know about the VAB.

          That I left off the world "one of the" does not matter to the overall point. The building is so well known that people here are able to site specifications on it and it has it's own wikipedia page.

      • "Just park the damn thing under a roof for once." Is this a joke or does this person not know not know about the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)?

        It takes five or more hours to move the shuttle one-way from the VAB to the pad. This is not a practical trip to make every time a thunderstorm appears in the Florida sky.

      • "and was and still is the largest enclosed space in the world."

        No matter how you define "largest", it's still wrong.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_build ings_in_the_world [wikipedia.org]
    • Maybe they can sell a couple extra units to the public to defray the cost of repairs? I know that every time it hails here, Crazy Bob's Ford sells dozens more vehicles to people just waiting for such an act of God. So what if it's a little beat up, and of course it is still 10% over invoice sticker, and you gotta sign a waiver, and the insurance company makes sure you never file a silver paint claim ... but your neighbors will be so jealous when you're the first on your block.
    • I don't understand why they can't do something like this:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Centre/ [wikipedia.org]

      It only takes 20 minutes to retract the roof, so it could be left closed until just before launch.

    • I think the problem here is less with the parking and more with Florida. Too many people, too many alligators, and too much weather. Why don't we launch from the Arizona desert or something? The couple degrees of latitude couldn't make that much difference.

  • I've often wondered if there is any possible explanation for the shuttle being so damage-prone that a chunk of foam would damage it.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by regularstranger ( 1074000 )
      Wonder no more, there is a possible explanation. Adding armour to a shuttle would make it heavier, and heavier things have a hard time flying, especially into space. It's not the foam by itself that is so damaging, it is the foam moving at high velocity that is so damaging. If you have better solutions, (and a demonstation of your solution) I'm sure NASA would like to hear you out. They do, after all, need some fresh new ideas when it comes to human spaceflight.

  • ahem (Score:2)

    by skogs ( 628589 )
    Seriously. The stiff, insulation foam....it is dented.

    Is this really going to cause the liquid fuel inside to change one bit? nope.

    Is it going to cause big, ice covered, hunks to fall off? nope.

    Is it going to save a dozen or two people's butts if something freakish did happen? Yup.

    There you go. CYA.

    No matter what, the government workers will ALWAYS cover their behinds.

    CYA gentlemen.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by feronti ( 413011 )
      And of course, a private engineer would never CYA. No matter if there's a failure, he'd be legally liable, he sure as well wouldn't CYA. If you're not sure what the effect is, it's better to err on the side of caution, especially when lives are at stake. Now, stop being a dumbass; this is a good engineering decision... they've assessed the risk, and they don't have to replace the tank.
      • It was a good engineering decision. They didn't just look at the tank at the pad and make the decision. They brought it back to the VAB and gave it a much more thorough inspection up close to see what the full impact of the damage was. Sure they said at the pad that the tank should be repairable pending a closer look, but the key word and phrase there was "should" and "pending a closer look". Never once have they ever ruled out replacement. They always kept replacement as a backup option.
    • I'm sure the astronauts would be oh so relieved to know that you can't see any reason why damage to their spacecraft won't endanger their lives. I'm sure you will put your livelihood on the line as proof of your earnestness. The engineers who bear actual responsibility for human lives in their decisions, on the other hand, aren't so sure there's no problem.

      You're not wrong that CYA is endemic in government work. You could have added, just as much, in private enterprise. But this has nothing to do with C
  • If I were an astronaut and I found out that there were damaged tiles, a possibly failing tank, I might drive 900 miles cross country strapped into a diaper just so I wouldn't have to report to work.

  • golf-sized hail

    I'm sorry, but I'm confused...

    How big is a "golf" exactly?

    Is it about the size of a "jog"?
    • Its a small-medium sized German car. I for one am more concerned about the hail that size than I am about the shuttle.
  • I wonder if the folks that will be strapped into Atlantis share the same optimism.....
  • The words "NASA confident that..." just don't make me feel all warm and fuzzy anymore.

    Unless of course, those words are followed by, "...they're not quite sure what's going to happen."
  • Have you seen the size of the VW Golf? That's gotta make a mess of any fuel tank.

    Now if it was golf BALL sized hail...

    =V=
  • workers have started sanding down the damaged area of the tank itself.

    So sanding down the dings on a high pressure tank is a good idea?

  • My wife, an engineer who worked at the Cape for 17 years, immediately cried "bullshit". She says that we get hailstorms like that every year or so, and it's happened enough times before. A friend who still works at KSC, as a tech, verifies this.

    The dithering is because KSC is now staffed overwhelmingly by mostly Republican and fundamentalist types who don't, in fact, know engineering, and *certainly* don't believe in the buck stopping at their desk.

    Then, of course, the GOP has *never* liked the space progra
    • She says that we get hailstorms like that every year or so, and it's happened enough times before. A friend who still works at KSC, as a tech, verifies this.

      Not to the same order of magnitude, however. There are more than dings in the foam, there are actual cracks in the foam. Which is a much bigger problem in high-speed high-temperature flow.

      Then, of course, the GOP has *never* liked the space program

      Do what now? GW Bush asked for a bigger budget next year than NASA proposed, guess who shot it down

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