Astronauts uncover long line of nicks on shuttle

[FourScore]

Source: AP

The Atlantis astronauts have uncovered a long stretch of nicks on their space shuttle, the result of launch debris.

They were inspecting their ship Tuesday for signs of launch damage when they came across the nicks. Mission Control informed the crew that it's a 21-inch stretch of nicks over four to five thermal tiles on the right side of Atlantis. The damage is where the right wing joins the fuselage.

Mission Control says it could be related to debris that came off the fuel tank almost two minutes after liftoff.

SNIP

Atlantis blasted off Monday on a risky repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Endeavour is on standby in case a rescue is needed.





Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090512/ap_on_sc/us_shuttle_hubble

[Blandocyte]

1. Holy crap!

That doesn't sound good at all. Besides weakening them and their hold on the shuttle, probably will make those tiles less aerodynamic, maybe lead to them falling off during re-entry. Yikes.

[damntexdem]

18. I hope they took some heat-resistant grout with them.

It's always hard to find a hardware store up there.

[joshcryer]

22. Nah, they are nicked because they were considered to be a less important zone and...

...aren't made of reenforced carbon-carbon. NASA isn't freaking out about this as much as the news wants to.

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. A wee "nick" reentering at 17,000 miles an hour could be a problem

.
.
.

and then there is that heat thing

WHY was there so much debris at/after the launch?

Are they gonna fix that problem before they may have to launch the other shuttle for a rescue?

I thought they should have that launch thing down to a perfect science by now

guess not . . .

[Ezlivin]

3. What if Endeavour has to launch and then it also is damaged?

The idea that you launch one shuttle to rescue the crew of another is fine as long as the problem that beset the first shuttle no longer exists. But it appears that NASA never did solve the problems with debris.

The shuttle program should have ended long ago. I only wish we'd kept our Saturn 5 technology viable; it was an excellent (and safe) heavy lift rocket.

[Javaman]

13. well, then things would get very interesting. nt

[joshcryer]

24. The problem with the debris has been essentially solved to the constraints of the engineered system.

The whole point for these inspections is to learn more about the system. However, so far predictions on various tile nicks have come out quite accurate, so we know their behavior. These nicks in question are nothing to be overly concerned about.

Wait until after the servicing mission tile inspection (they will do another one before reentering the atmosphere).

[HopeHoops]

4. Fuckity fuck fuck FUCK!

They had better have some of that Gorilla Glue shit handy!

[Dogtown]

5. They got keyed!!??

Damn!!




seriously, bad news. glad they were spotted.

[Baclava]

9. Looks like it...

Minor tile damage found during Atlantis inspections

Engineers at the Johnson Space Center are evaluating a small area of tile damage on the forward part of the shuttle Atlantis' right wing where it joins the ship's fuselage. The nicked tiles, apparently damaged during launch by a debris impact around 106 seconds after liftoff, were spotted during an ongoing heat shield inspection by the Atlantis astronauts.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/

[RandomThoughts]

6. First off, I hope for the safety and success of the mission.

I have read this space shuttle mission is a bit more risky then some of the others. So God Speed and good wishes to the shuttle crews on their repair mission.

In a somewhat of a segway, relating in metaphor more then actually relating to the current flight. I wanted to play this clip from a movie, it is the only movie I remember that is set in current time and has two shuttles in it.

But even though it is unrelated to the current mission spoken of in the post, it seems to be in some way, a bit related to current situations and challenges in the USA and around the world.

And it has a few other things said and shown in it that are interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn75xgjYnnk

[RandomThoughts]

10. How many easter eggs can you find.

Stars above the head, rockhound name tag, phone booth symbol, Harry name tag, cooking, max Q, convoy, go freedom, for all mankind, the song, the speeches, truman.

Lots of them...

[RandomThoughts]

20. No comments?

Ok since its all interpretation anyway, how about the La Pate egg and Steven Colbert show...
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=227417 May 11

Is it pate or dog food?????

Whats your interpretation?????

(Edit: I like Steven Colbert and his show :) No offense to him if some find it possible to interpret the comment badly to Colbert. I havn't found a way to think of it that way.)

[Vinca]

7. My prediction from the start of this mission is that NASA intends

to stage a heart wrenching, nation grabbing event - no matter how minor the scrapes on the shuttle - in order to get more money out of Obama. The second shuttle will be deployed, we'll all gather around the television for the risky retrieval of the first crew and when they're back on earth we'll be so bloody full of that red, white and blue "can do" spirit that NASA will get a blank check. (The Bush years turned me into a cynical, old bat. Sorry.)

[tj2001]

12. Sure looks like it

Make it exciting and news worthy - and throw in some hero worshipping. I'm sure that the program reliability engineers have run their calculations and approved the risk.

[ConcernedCanuk]

14. I even pondered a worse scenario - letting BOTH shuttles get destroyed in space

.
.
.

Heck, the shuttle was damaged before it ever left earth space,

they shoulda brought it back before it ever got out of the atmosphere.

But then that would just be a FAIL without deaths

gotta have them deaths for the sympathy thing.

worked for 911 real good, didn't it??

no apologies for my cynicism

shock and awe did its job

I'm still shocked

[joshcryer]

23. Not going to happen seeing as how STS-125 is doing just fine.

[joshcryer]

21. UGH. The media is sensationalist. NASA is calm and collected over the matter. Fact is...

...the nicks are "no cause for focused inspection," thus, are essentially non-issues!

[Fumesucker]

27. They were calm and collected about freezing temps and brittle o rings too..

Or at least the ones wearing management hats were..

The engineers, not so much.

[EndersDame]

29. Hell they need to get more money

Nasa is using 20th century tech in the 21st. I think it would be a good idea to put money into the space program and upgrade our technology and start Boldly Going. The Great Robert Heinlein wrote a book called Job and postulated alternate realities and one of which Kennedy did not get assassinated and our space program flourished. Our space program is seriously lagging right now

[Dappleganger]

35. I agree

they need more money. I'm still wanting a space elevator to take us up to check out the sky lab, lol.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Phoonzang]

8. Really whose idea was it to put the shuttle BELOW the foam incrusted fuel tank?

About as smart as using explosive solid rocket boosters.

[Octafish]

11. Nixon

Nixon couldn't stand NASA or the space program because going to the moon and peaceful exploration of the New Frontier were President Kennedy's ideas.

The original plan for the shuttle was to have it boosted into orbit atop a manned, liquid fueled rocket. That was deemed too expensive, so it was Plan D, the cheapest stack they could get off the ground and reuse.

Joseph Trento and his wife wrote an excellent book about the subject, "Presciption for Disaster."

[Phoonzang]

16. Yep, he ended Apollo and set us on the path to

stagnation. I always find it amusing when Republicans claim to be the ones who are interested in space exploration when one of their own stuck us with the Shuttle.

Anyway...I don't know why the hell we're sticking with SRBs launch our "next generation" spacecraft when we know that liquid fueled rockets are superior..

[sofa king]

36. Yep.

Not only that, but that asshole William Proxmire rode the project so hard that one by one they stripped away a dozen safety features: making the front end an escape capsule, ejection seats, emergency landing abort rockets, landing at Edwards or White Sands where the landing strips are wide and not surrounded by jungle, and so on. Proxmire's waving of the fleece got so bad that one annoyed magazine editor proposed fueling the Shuttle with butter, the better to silence the Wisconsin Senator.

Every Shuttle mission ever flown has been a dance on the razor's edge of safety.

[yellowcanine]

15. Was the shuttle anywhere near Cheney and his shotgun? There should be an investigation. Seriously.

[Brother Buzz]

17. Duct Tape

NASCAR has stuff that works at 200 miles per hour and the U.S. Air Force claims it has tape that has passed the test at 1000 miles an hour.

Why hasn't NASA developed 10,000 MPH tape?

[endarkenment]

19. "The damage is where the right wing joins the fuselage"

the damage is almost always where the right wing gets involved with anything.

[FourScore]

31. LOL. That was good. Really good. n/t

[Mind_your_head]

32. DUzy!

:rofl: :thumbsup:

[Phoonzang]

33. It actually took me a day to "get" this.

I'm ashamed.

[Baclava]

25. If you don't like rockets, then you aint' shit

We'll teach them alien bastards watching us, yeah, we'll spread our seed to stars yet, you bastards.

[IndianaGreen]

26. Update: Shuttle's Heat Shield Dings Appear to be Minor, NASA Says

Shuttle's Heat Shield Dings Appear to be Minor, NASA Says

By Tariq Malik
Senior Editor
posted: 12 May 2009
07:49 pm ET

HOUSTON - Astronauts discovered a trail of small dings in the vital heat shield of their space shuttle Atlantis on Tuesday, but NASA said the damage appears only minor and is not expected to be a concern.

The dings were caused by launch debris that fell from the shuttle's external tank as Atlantis rocketed toward the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday afternoon. Astronauts spotted the damage while scanning Atlantis with an inspection pole tipped with cameras and laser sensors.

LeRoy Cain, NASA's deputy shuttle program manager, said that even though the damage to Atlantis appears minor, a crack team of image analysis experts is hard at work evaluating the pictures beamed to Earth by shuttle astronauts during an in-depth inspection today.

"This is not something that we're very concerned about but we want the team to do our normal assessment and evaluation of it," Cain told reporters here at NASA's Johnson Space Center. "And we'll do that overnight tonight."

NASA has Atlantis' sister ship, the shuttle Endeavour, ready to launch as soon as Monday in the unlikely event that Atlantis is damaged beyond repair and its crew needs to be rescued in space. But Cain said that so far, nothing found on Atlantis has given NASA any reason to even consider a rescue mission.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090512-sts125-heat-shield-update.html

[EndersDame]

28. Fuck the Shuttle.. It is soooo 20th Cent.

Seriously it is time to upgrade.

[Phoonzang]

34. This is NASA's idea of an upgrade: