Pics of the Space Shuttle Tile Damage

Started by Atomm · 5 posts · 1,094 views

  2. #2
    Atomm wrote:
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=662

    wow.... This could be another hairy ride back to earth.....

    http://www.myfoxhouston.com/myfox/pages/Ne...mp;pageId=3.2.1

    Their worry was not that Endeavour might be destroyed and its seven astronauts killed in a replay of the Columbia disaster -- the gouge is too small to be catastrophic. They were concerned that the heat of re-entry could weaken the shuttle's aluminum frame at the damaged spot and result in lengthy postflight repairs.


    FWIW - these things seem to change every hour. They evening before you started this thread, they were saying there was nothing to worry about.
  3. #3
    From watching and reading tons of post footage on the Discover incident, the biggest problem gauges like this cause is changing the flow of heat across the belly of the shuttle. I don't know that I would want to chance it.

    I will say this, the shuttle is a flawed experiment and really needs to be replaced now.
  4. #4
    Atomm wrote:
    I will say this, the shuttle is a flawed experiment and really needs to be replaced now.

    The second time in five minutes I'm doing this: Quoted for TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!

    It's time to start looking at the lessons learned and apply them. I've read that we can't even make the Saturn rockets that took us to the moon any longer, at least not as we did before. . .I can't find any cites at the moment, so I could be mistaken. Wish I knew where I got that from. . .
  5. #5
    It's true actually.... The technology is pretty much lost due to a few reasons. One, the engineers that developed it are probably no longer around and two it was all done on paper, which is probably lost as well.....

    I only wish I was a gazillionaire.... I would putting all of my money into space telescopes ala Hubble. What we can do now makes Hubble look like a backyard model, but it's going to be another 8 years before anything gets sent back up.

    Long before we ever venture out into other star systems, we will have the capabilities to observe them in fine detail......