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  • Shuttle returns to space

    Well, the Discovery made a perfect launch this morning. Let's hope everything goes well. Apparently the fuel sensor glitch didn't show up. They will meet up with the ISS in a couple days and transfer supplies and some new parts.
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    "We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008

  • #2
    Originally posted by highsea
    Well, the Discovery made a perfect launch this morning. Let's hope everything goes well. Apparently the fuel sensor glitch didn't show up. They will meet up with the ISS in a couple days and transfer supplies and some new parts.

    Tried to watch it from work. As soon as it went up, a bunch of us hauled azz out into the parking lot but it was no-go, too hazy I guess.

    Ah well. At least I'll hear it coming back when booms right over my head
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by TopHatter
      ... At least I'll hear it coming back when booms right over my head
      I know what you mean, but you could have picked a better choice of words!!!
      "We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008

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      • #4
        Yay!! :)
        A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by TopHatter
          Ah well. At least I'll hear it coming back when booms right over my head
          LOL. Yeah, definetely wrong choice of words...
          Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

          Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

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          • #6
            well done them, and bon voyage
            In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

            Leibniz

            Comment


            • #7
              Nasa looks into shuttle 'debris'

              Nasa looks into shuttle 'debris'
              By Paul Rincon
              BBC News science reporter, at the Kennedy Space Center



              Nasa is investigating two cases of apparent debris seen falling from the space shuttle Discovery as it blasted off for Earth orbit.

              The events were captured in onboard video and the agency says it now needs to consider their significance.

              In one case, a heat shield tile seems to have been affected on the underside of the shuttle.

              There are now concerns over the news hours after Nasa hailed its first shuttle flight in two-and-a-half years.

              The tip of the shuttle's external fuel tank also hit a bird as it launched from Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday.

              John Shannon, STS-114 mission operations representative, pointed out video frames apparently showing a piece of heat shield tile breaking off from the underside of the shuttle.

              This has left a one-and-a-half inch white spot near the nose landing gear doors.

              "We're very interested in that," he told reporters, "that's something we're going to get better pictures of on flight day three."

              SHUTTLE RETURN TO FLIGHT

              Mission known as STS-114
              Discovery's 31st flight
              17th orbiter flight to ISS
              Payload: Raffaello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module
              Lift-off: 1039 EDT, 26 July
              Location: Kennedy Space Center, Launch Pad 39B
              Discovery crew: Collins, Kelly, Noguchi, Robinson, Thomas, Lawrence and Camarda


              Guide to key shuttle changes

              Mr Shannon said it could simply be that part of the black covering on the orbiter's underside was damaged exposing the heat shield tile.

              But he added that it was equally possible the tile itself had been dented or sheared.

              The missions operations representative also showed journalists video footage of a dark object falling from the external tank.

              Experts cannot yet determine its size, but it did not appear to hit the shuttle, they said.

              News outlets had reported details of this piece of debris falling off the tank earlier in the day.
              I guess the new camera's are going to grt a workout...
              In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

              Leibniz

              Comment


              • #8
                Sounds like they will get a chance to try out that patch kit.
                "We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008

                Comment


                • #9
                  High Quality Shuttle lift off video...

                  http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/micr...nkind_300k.wvx
                  A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Jay
                    High Quality Shuttle lift off video...

                    http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/micr...nkind_300k.wvx
                    Dude, the only shuttle reference there was in memory of the Challenger disaster in the end credits.
                    Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

                    Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by highsea
                      I know what you mean, but you could have picked a better choice of words!!!

                      There is an interesting story behind that but this is not proper place to tell it
                      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Congratulations.


                        "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                        I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                        HAKUNA MATATA

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I have read this in the morning..... I still can't understand why if it takes $3bn to Russians to build a whole new shuttle NASA can't fix the old for $2bn? May be NASA should outsource this job to a cheaper country like China or India? I guess they have reached technological sophistication to take off all tiles and re-fix them anew?

                          Another thing is why did NASA send people on a risky vehicle if experts were not completelly sure that everything is OK?

                          The days of the moon rush is over and this flight was not particularly important..... just like if the show is more important than a cosmonaut's life ....
                          _______________________________

                          NASA grounds future shuttles; Detached foam during launch shows danger persists, officials say

                          By Jeremy Manier, Tribune staff reporter
                          1,033 words
                          28 July 2005
                          Chicago Tribune
                          Chicago Final
                          1
                          English
                          Copyright 2005, Chicago Tribune. All Rights Reserved.

                          In a stunning setback one day after sending the shuttle Discovery into orbit, NASA officials said Wednesday they are suspending shuttle flights because a briefcase-sized chunk of foam fell off the external fuel tank during launch--precisely the type of problem that doomed the Columbia mission.

                          Discovery's crew of seven is not in danger, officials said, because the foam did not appear to strike the orbiter. The crew still is examining a small, unrelated gouge in a heat-resistant tile, however.

                          The mishap is an agonizing blow to an agency that just spent 2 1/2 years and more than $1 billion trying to prevent this very thing from happening again. If the problem proves difficult to solve, it could threaten the future of the shuttle program.

                          Despite numerous changes in the methods technicians use to apply the insulating foam, Discovery's tank lost a piece big enough to make the orbiter unfit to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere if it had struck a crucial area, officials said.

                          "Until we fix this, we're not ready to go fly again," shuttle manager Bill Parsons said at an early evening news conference at Houston's Johnson Space Center.

                          The announcement was a solemn contrast to the reassurances NASA officials had given for months about the shuttle's safety improvements. In December, external tank program manager Sandy Coleman declared: "This will be the safest, most reliable tank NASA has ever produced."

                          "You have to admit when you're wrong," Parsons said Wednesday. "We were wrong."

                          The grounding of the two other shuttles--Atlantis and Endeavour--in theory would prevent Atlantis from flying an emergency rescue mission if Discovery were found to have suffered serious damage during launch. NASA developed that contingency plan in the wake of the Columbia accident.

                          The problem also could throw off the launch of Atlantis in September and NASA's plans to use the shuttle fleet to finish construction of the International Space Station.

                          NASA officials said there appears to be no need for a rescue, as the crew's initial inspections have not found major damage to the tiles and carbon panels that protect Discovery from the heat of re-entry.

                          "Right now, based on what we've seen, we think the need for [a rescue mission] is remote," said Wayne Hale, deputy shuttle program manager.

                          If further images reveal more serious problems, officials said they would have to decide how and whether to launch a rescue mission. The astronauts are carrying some experimental tile-repair tools, though several crew members have said they consider that approach unproven.

                          On Friday crew members may use a new laser-tipped mechanical arm to get a better look at a 1 1/2-inch gouge on the heat-resistant tile, damage that was unrelated to the foam that broke loose from the external tank.

                          The debris fell during Discovery's ascent, soon after the solid-rocket boosters separated from the shuttle's external tank. It was clearly visible in video taken by a new camera installed on the external tank, and the footage seemed to show that the debris did not hit the shuttle as it fell.

                          Astronauts on Discovery also spotted the cavity on the external tank in pictures they took of the tank soon after it separated from the orbiter.

                          Hale said the jagged chunk of foam appeared to be 24 to 33 inches long at its widest point, and 10 to 14 inches wide. The foam that fell from Columbia's external tank and struck that orbiter's left wing was about 21 to 27 inches long and 12 to 18 inches wide.

                          Investigators concluded that the Columbia foam ripped a hole in a crucial carbon panel on the wing's leading edge, letting in hot gases during re-entry. The shuttle disintegrated over Texas, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

                          Although NASA officials had warned that they could never completely eliminate foam debris from the external tank, they said the large piece that came off Discovery's tank clearly was too big to accept.

                          Had the foam hit the orbiter, "we think it would have been really bad," Hale said.

                          Experts said the foam problem, coming in the first flight after the Columbia accident, likely will send NASA into turmoil once more.

                          "I'm sure these guys are running scared," said Seymour Himmel, a former member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Board.

                          Himmel said that although he thinks it's possible to make the external tank safe, keeping foam from coming loose during the shuddering of a launch is inherently difficult.

                          "The thing shakes like all get out on the way up, and the tank is a flexible structure," he said.

                          After the Columbia accident NASA removed foam from an area of the tank called the bipod ramp, which was where the foam that hit Columbia came from. The agency also changed other manufacturing procedures at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the tanks are made.

                          The foam that fell off Discovery's tank was from an area called the protuberance air load ramp, which covers electrical cables and tubes that run up the side of the tank. NASA knew that foam had shed from the ramp on previous missions and modified the structure before Discovery's mission.

                          "We've got to find a solution to this problem," Parsons said. "I don't know if that's a month, I don't know if that's three months."

                          NASA said Tuesday it appeared that several smaller pieces of foam also fell from the tank during Discovery's launch, including one piece from the bipod ramp area.

                          "Obviously I'm personally disappointed," Parsons said. At the same time, he said, "I'm glad it did not damage the orbiter, and I'm glad we have an opportunity to go and fix this."
                          Last edited by Garry; 28 Jul 05,, 18:17.

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by bigross86
                            Dude, the only shuttle reference there was in memory of the Challenger disaster in the end credits.
                            My bad... Ill fish for the correct ones...

                            Meanwhile track the ISS and Discovery in space...
                            http://gmaps.tommangan.us/spacecraft_tracking.html :)
                            A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

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                            • #15
                              USA!

                              USA!

                              USA!!

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