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| Discovery |
| 2005-07-28 |
| EFL Discovery linked up with the international space station Thursday after performing an unprecedented back flip with a full twist in pike position, rating 9.3 so that the station's crew could snap photographs of the shuttleâs belly and check for signs of damage. About an hour after the 360-degree flip, the shuttle docked with the station. After checking for leaks, the astronauts opened the hatches between the two spacecraft and hugged each other in welcome. âDiscovery, arriving,â station astronaut John Phillips declared as he rang the stationâs bell, following a routine picked up from naval tradition. I actually kind of like that. If we Thursday's linkup comes after a huge setback on Wednesday, when NASA decided to ground future shuttle flights because a chunk of insulating foam flew off Discoveryâs fuel tank during liftoff â as it did in Columbiaâs doomed mission. This time, the foam apparently missed the spacecraft. The space agency thought that it had solved foam problems associated with its external fuel tank, but learned Wednesday that it was wrong. âWe have got to go take a look at this, and we have got to go find a solution to this problem. And we will,â shuttle program manager Bill Parsons said. âWe were very lucky, and we know it,â NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said Thursday on NBCâs âTodayâ show. You are very incompetent and we know it. A crew last visited the outpost in November 2002. Discovery comes loaded with 15 tons of much-needed supplies, including a replacement gyroscope for one that failed in March. Gyroscopes help steer the station. Phillips and station commander Sergei Krikalev, a veteran Russian cosmonaut, used two cameras â one with a 400mm lens and another with an 800mm lens â to snap 100 seconds worth of photos. The photographs were expected to provide resolution similar to a person standing within a few inches of the shuttleâs tiles. âI thought the process went really fine,â Phillips told NASA mission control. âNeither of us saw anything really alarming.â The digital photos, downloaded after docking, are what NASA officials said theyâre most interested in. A team of special analysts at NASAâs Johnson Space Center in Houston plan to examine them for any indications of damage. In addition to the chunk of foam that broke from Discoveryâs external fuel tank during launch, several smaller pieces broke away as well. A thermal tile on Discoveryâs belly was also damaged soon after liftoff. One tile near the doors for Discoveryâs landing gear â a particularly vulnerable spot â lost a 1Âœ-inch piece that was repaired before the flight. Deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said none of the tile damage looked serious and likely wouldnât require the use of untested repair techniques in orbit designed after Columbia. A planned inspection of Discoveryâs wings and nose using a new 50-foot (15-meter), laser-tipped extension to the shuttleâs robotic arm turned up nothing alarming, he said. However, analysis will continue for the next four to five days. |
| Posted by:Thromotle Cleting5515 |
| #8 They also need to get over the old "failure is not an option" mantra that has made the entire organization overly safety concious. Why do we shrug when test pilots die in service but freak out and cancel things for two years when astronauts die? Yeah you want to be safe, but it shouldn't be crippling. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-07-28 22:31 |
| #7 Jackal, I wouldn't go that far, but I would say a government agency needs competition to stay healthy. The US military has that. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are all in pretty good shape. NASA has no competition, they should be split up into at least two (manned and unmanned) and they should not be cooperating so much with other nations and the Air Force. It might seem counterintuitive but sometimes cooperation takes longer and costs more, and for some reason the US always ends up paying the lions share of those costs. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-07-28 22:29 |
| #6 We had an after-hours talk about the Apollo (and Mercury and Gemini) program at work today. They accomplished so much back then and so little now. I really think government agencies can only last 20 years or so. Then you have completely shut them down and start a brand new one, with new people. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-07-28 22:13 |
| #5 Not a bad idea, course the russ gave up on Buran after 1 remote control flight.... |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-07-28 13:54 |
| #4 If true Phil, that's gotta be cheaper to fix than redoing the entire thing. At least short term. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-07-28 12:53 |
| #3 Are you ready for the really big sick joke? The shuttle was built so that the autopilots could handle _everything_ from the reentry burn to the landing on the runway. Except landing gear deployment. Someone argued that if the landing gear were to deploy at Mach 5, due to some sort of malfunction, it would wreck the craft, so it has to be manual. (Never mind that if the autopilot starts malfunctioning at Mach 5 there's probably going to be lots of other stuff going wrong too). Anyway, if you try to land on automatic, the shuttle will do everything flawlessly right up to the point where it pancakes onto the runway because the landing gear didn't come down. Or so I've heard. |
| Posted by: Phil Fraering 2005-07-28 12:49 |
| #2 Mixed emotions. Shuttle was a mistake from the beginning with compromised designs. Still, it is exerating to watch it go up and it is all we have. Hopefully the non-government boys will get some orbital space planes in service soon that can get people up and we can send the equipment in unmanned rockets. Here is a thought, don't ground the shuttle, just run it on autopilot without people and use it to carry bulk stuff up there. i'm thinking water (drink, split for air, and use hyrdogen for fuel) or kerosine (rocket fuel with less bang than hydrogen but also easier to handle and transfer). If the shuttle blows no big whoop, if the shuttle doesn't blow we've got stuff up there that will allow us to build a freaking gas station to tank up and get us out of Low Earth Orbit. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-07-28 11:52 |
| #1 Pics of the external tank just after sep, showing the missing foam: http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/2005/07/shuttle_fleet_g.html |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-07-28 11:49 |