[X] My Assistant

[Drkskywxlt]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19142473/

NASA is studying the rip, but they are not concerned at the moment because the rip is in a non-critical area. Atlantis will reach ISS tomorrow afternoon to add the next set of solar panels.

[dvandorn]

Well, if that's the case, someone should tell the Apollo astronauts, who used what they always called "the gray tape" on the lunar surface very successfully on many, many occasions, that their impromptu repairs really didn't work.

The only reason for tape failure on the lunar missions, AFAIK, was that dust easily stuck to the sticky side and rendered it less than usable. But if you could manage to apply the tape without getting much dust into it, it worked just fine on the Moon. And last time I checked, the lunar surface is in a pretty hard vacuum.

I recall in specific that the cabling from the comm unit (the LCRU) on the Apollo 15 rover was interfering with the TV camera's pan movements. Scott and Irwin simply taped the cabling to a convenient post (the mast for the high gain antenna, IIRC) and voila, no more problems. That tape certainly worked longer than the crew remained on the lunar surface.

-the other Doug

[nprev]

Well, if that's the case, someone should tell the Apollo astronauts, who used what they always called "the gray tape" on the lunar surface very successfully on many, many occasions, that their impromptu repairs really didn't work.

-the other Doug

...yeah. DV is IMHO an unimpeachable authority on the subject of the history of manned spaceflight. The adhesive properties of complex (organic?) compounds should be relatively immune from vacuum alone unless and until extreme thermal conditions arise that drastically alter the physical properties of such substances.

Mr. Shannon may be misinformed, although in all honesty he also may well have more specific and pertinent information than I do on this topic. His response seemed glib, which is fine if it is indeed justifiable.

[dvandorn]

DV is IMHO an unimpeachable authority on the subject of the history of manned spaceflight.

Oh, I'm human, I make mistakes and at times my memory becomes slightly faulty and I confuse a few real facts together to get something that doesn't *quite* live up to my high standards. And I've eaten crow more than once for making minor errors. For example, I recounted some information on the early Apollo crew assignments over on the NASA Spaceflight.com boards, and got a scene from the miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon," which was somewhat dramatized, confused with accounts I thought I had read of the same incident. Had Michael Cassutt, who wrote Deke Slayton's biography, correct me with a bit of a huff... though I still am under the impression there was more fact to the scene in the film than Cassutt gives credit for.

But I have *so much* data crammed into my head about manned spaceflight history (especially pre-Shuttle) that the minor errors are more than compensated for by the vast number of applicable facts I can pull from that era to illustrate processes and happenings that are occurring even today. In that way, I modestly accept your praise -- but warn all and sundry that I am human, and have an age-eroded recall mechanism. I get it right about 96% of the time or so, but I can sure pull some beauts when I get it wrong!!!

That said, I am *confident* that sticky tape, essentially identical to modern duct tape (or duck tape, as you prefer) was used quite successfully several times on the lunar surface. Which was indeed in a vacuum.

-the other Doug