NYT: NASA Confident on Managing Shuttle Ice Problem

[DeepModem Mom]

NASA Confident on Managing Shuttle Ice Problem
By WARREN E. LEARY
Published: June 25, 2005


WASHINGTON, June 24 - Falling ice still poses a risk to the space shuttle at launching, but NASA officials said Friday that they thought they understood the problem well enough to resume flights safely.

Officials met at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., to review the risks of debris' damaging the shuttle after months of efforts to reduce the chances of bits of insulating foam, ice or other particles breaking loose and hitting the vehicle during the launching.

The manager of the shuttle program, William Parsons, said at a telephone news conference after the meeting that the managers felt that current risks from debris were acceptable enough to resume flights for a window that starts on July 13....

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The shuttle fleet has been grounded since the Columbia was destroyed on Feb. 1, 2003, as it returned from a mission. Investigators attributed the accident to a piece of foam that broke loose from the giant external fuel tank at the launching, gashing an unnoticed hole in the edge of a wing that led to hot gases' destroying the craft on re-entry to the atmosphere.

Since then, the fuel tank has been redesigned to reduce foam shedding, and a heater has been installed on a fuel line subject to icing. But recent reviews showed NASA engineers that they knew far less about ice forming on the tank, which holds a half-million pounds of cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and breaking free than dangers of foam shedding....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/25/science/25shuttle.html

[whistle]

1. NASA officials say that, but what do the people at NASA who...

...really understand the problems, the engineers and technicians, what do they say? Money has been tight and NASA management has been cutting corners everywhere it can including comprising safety.