CNN/AP: NASA examines pictures of shuttle's heat shield

[DeepModem Mom]

NASA examines pictures of shuttle's heat shield
Astronauts unload cargo, mission extended by one day
Friday, July 7, 2006


Discovery's robot boom arm inspects the craft for damage on the heat shield.

....NASA managers announced that Discovery has enough fuel to stay up for a 13th day to squeeze in a third spacewalk for Sellers and Fossum on July 12....Sellers and Fossum will practice shuttle thermal repairs and perhaps conduct a real fix by yanking out spare gap filler between heat-shield tiles just below the shuttle's nose.

Gap filler is material fitted between tiles to prevent them from rubbing against each other....Early photos showed that the gap filler may be sticking out 0.4 of an inch, and anything more than 0.25 of an inch is unacceptable, lead flight director Tony Ceccacci said Friday. However, the early photos could be off by as much as one-third of an inch, he said.

The gap filler was one of two potential heat shield problems that arose Friday.

Astronauts spent several hours focusing the cameras on six specific "areas of interest" on the shuttle that had been seen in earlier photographs. Engineers need more information about the heat shield to ensure there is no damage like the kind that doomed Columbia's flight in 2003.

Besides the gap filler, NASA is concerned about a white spot on the shuttle's nose cap that engineers have described to the crew as resembling bird droppings -- but not the same as white splotches found earlier on the wing. The concern is that the spot could be a hole in the thermal-protection system and need repair....By Friday afternoon, it was too early to tell if these were serious problems, but NASA managers were optimistic. Spacecraft communicator Lee Archambault told Discovery's crew that early assessments of the photographs were promising....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/07/07/space.shuttle.ap/index.html

[Kutjara]

1. Is anyone else a little depressed that the great dream of...

...manned spaceflight has degenerated into an orbital version of 'Pimp My Ride?' It seems like the only reason they're sending the shuttle up anymore is so they'll have something to fix when they get up there. Meanwhile, the Space Station has been scaled back to the point that it can't accomodate the number of people it takes to both maintain it and perform useful science, so again it's turned into just another expensive fixer-upper.

When I was a child in the late 60s, sitting mesmerized as humanity took its first steps on another world, I thought alot about what the future would be like. Never in my wildest imaginings did I think it would be about sanding gap filler and replacing batteries.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. I did have to edit out much of this article because of DU rules...

but, indeed, the entire article was related to potential repair.

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. "The Future ain't what it used to be"

[onehandle]

7. They promised us moonbases and flying cars.

And corporations took it away.

They have to make a profit on current technology, before they invest in future technology.

Thus, technology is purposely slowed by corporations.

[MGKrebs]

4. I know. But I think this is inevitable.

In a way, it's great that we can actually plan to take repair materials with us to space and fix things "on the fly". Think of early cars or airplanes.

Spaceflight, for a while there, had become so routine that it didn't even get more than a one papragraph teaser on the front page of the papers.

[LiberalPartisan]

5. Let's go fully automated

The shuttle fleet needs to be retired and our reason for continuing manned missions revisited.
Fully automated missions are far more cost effective and yield as much or more science.

[regnaD kciN]

6. I'm all for continuing human-led missions...

...but there never was a good scientific (as opposed to commercial and military) rationale for the shuttle program. We should have continued with exploration efforts after Apollo, not spent three decades of marking time while sending up a series of orbital "tractor-trailers."

[Eugene]

8. VOA: NASA to Decide if Shuttle Needs In-Orbit Repairs

NASA to Decide if Shuttle Needs In-Orbit Repair
By VOA News
09 July 2006

NASA scientists are considering whether astronauts need to remove extra fabric
on the shuttle's heat shield before it returns to earth.

Engineers could decide as early as Sunday, if astronauts will need to make
repairs during a spacewalk later this week.

Initial reports indicate the filler fabric protruding between the shuttle's
insulating tiles does not pose a significant danger.

On Saturday, astronauts completed the first of three scheduled spacewalks,
testing a repair technique that could be used to remove the fabric.

<snip>

Full article: http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-07-09-voa29.cfm

[PerceptionManagement]

9. See, this is a bad thing.

Since the top engineer left before the launch, I wondered if the damn thing was safe.

[Richard Steele]

10. So, there's a spot on the nose that MIGHT be a hole....

Has it occurred to any of these ROCKET SCIENTISTS
that it might be a good idea to have an astronaut
spacewalk out to the nose and FIND OUT?

Or is it just easier to recover another Black Box
and figure it out after the fact?

[Minstrel Boy]

11. Billy Bragg, "The Space Race Is Over"

When I was young I told my mum
I'm going to walk on the Moon someday
Armstrong and Aldrin spoke to me
From Houston and Cape Kennedy
And I watched the Eagle landing
On a night when the Moon was full
And as it tugged at the tides, I knew deep inside
I too could feel its pull
I lay in my bed and dreamed I walked
On the Sea of Tranquillity
I knew that someday soon we'd all sail to the moon
On the high tide of technology
But the dreams have all been taken
And the window seats taken too
And 2001 has almost come and gone
What am I supposed to do?

Now that the space race is over
It's been and it's gone and I'll never get to the moon
Because the space race is over
And I can't help but feel we've all grown up too soon
Now my dreams have all been shattered
And my wings are tattered too
And I can still fly but not half as high
As once I wanted to
Now that the space race is over
It's been and it's gone and I'll never get to the moon
Because the space race is over
And I can't help but feel we've all grown up too soon

My son and I stand beneath the great night sky
And gaze up in wonder
I tell him the tale of Apollo And he says
Why did they ever go?
It may look like some empty gesture
To go all that way just to come back
But don't offer me a place out in cyberspace
Cos where in the hell's that at?

Now that the space race is over
It's been and it's gone and I'll never get out of my room
Because the space race is over
And I can't help but feel we're all just going nowhere

[DeepModem Mom]

12. Sad. Thanks for posting, Minstrel Boy. nt

[truthisfreedom]

13. freakin' cardboard and baling-wire space program. what happened to our

shiny sleek chromed buck rogers spaceships?

[Tesha]

14. We shipped our space program to Iraq in the form of bombs.

> freakin' cardboard and baling-wire space program. what happened to our
> shiny sleek chromed buck rogers spaceships?

We shipped our space program to Iraq in the form of bombs.

Societies make choices as to how they'll spend their resources.
We, as a scoiety, have chosen to spend our resources blowing the
crap out of people instead of educating our kids or stepping off
into space in that 2001 space station or curing disease or any
number of other benevolentthings we might have done with the
trillions that we've squandered on war (and interest payments
on war).

Tesha

[symbolman]

15. A bit of an improvement

I recall that at one point they were begging for answers when they got close to a satellite and couldn't retrieve it..

I wrote to them and told them to take some ROPE with them next time, sounds dumb but the could have REELED the damn satellite IN, or pulled themselves closer so they could reach it.

When I was a kid I sort of dreamed of going into space, I had ALL the models from mercury to Apollo, all painted shiney, snoopy caps, etc.. and thought that some day I might have the chance to "weld" in space, hanging on the outside of a big old 2001 space station..

OR at LEAST at the age of 53 I'd be able to take an orbital flight, maybe even walk on the moon, expensive sure, but some predicted a 200,000 dollar tourist trip to the moon.

Now I'm watching 64 Chevy trucks on blocks sitting in front of trailors (the MIR was literally trailor trash by the time they'd used it up and burned it up).. and of course we're spending a Billion a week to have our troops ride around getting blown to smithereens and killing innocent people - all that money has to go somewhere..

Reminds me of the old bumper sticker in the 80s "My other car is up my nose.." - now it's "My Trillion dollar Treasury Money is in my other Fake pResident's offshore Bank Account.."

Fuckers kill, wreck dreams, and take us back to the 1800's Oil Baron days. Homo Suckass, the ruler of the future.