[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.

[nprev]

105, actually...but don't think I can afford (more properly, achieve) a ticket now. How important it is indeed to spend one's youth wisely, but of course luck is always there and always unpredictable as well.

Don't envy the last Shuttle astronauts, just want them to do well and get home all right. Hopefully, I'll live long enough to someday see a 'Shuttle' Mark II making manned spaceflight at last as routine and safe as air travel...quite a dream, but undoubtedly achievable in some way.

EDIT: Not to say I told ya so, but I told ya so...they're going to try a repair on the dislodged heat blanket. This action is almost certainly not in response to calculated flight safety risk. The PR implications of failing to take action are potentially formidable, and NASA's supervision is acting accordingly. System boundaries must always include evaluation of human factors at all levels...

[dvandorn]

EDIT: Not to say I told ya so, but I told ya so...they're going to try a repair on the dislodged heat blanket. This action is almost certainly not in response to calculated flight safety risk. The PR implications of failing to take action are potentially formidable, and NASA's supervision is acting accordingly. System boundaries must always include evaluation of human factors at all levels...

Well -- you also can't underestimate the potential hazards. For many, many years, the orbiters came back with varying degrees of damage to the TPS, and had only minor damage. One flight even came back with burn-throughs down to the aluminum airframe in a couple of places (I want to say it was STS-37, but I'm working from memory and could be wrong). All of them survived, though, so it was believed that the TPS could sustain pretty much *any* damage that foam strikes could inflict and still survive.

That belief was tragically wrong.

Just because every Shuttle that has sustained damage to the TPS on the OMS pods (including the very first flight of Columbia) has come back without mishap doesn't mean you can make the same mistake that was made on STS-107. You can't even risk the remote possibility that something worse could happen *this time* than has ever happened before. Remember, those pods are literally *glued* onto the Shuttle main airframe for each and every flight -- even one instance of thermally-initiated debonding could result in a partial or complete separation of the pod from the vehicle, and if that were to happen at *any* point in the descent trajectory, you're talking about a Very Bad Day.

It's not just that they want to make for good PR -- this is an example of how decision-making has necessarily been adjusted based on lessons learned during the investigation of the Columbia accident. Even if you don't believe that something like this loose blanket can pose a risk of loss of vehicle and crew, you have to admit in your decision-making process that you cannot ever be *certain* of that. So, you do what you can to make the vehicle as clean as possible prior to de-orbit.

I wouldn't have expected any other decision.

-the other Doug