It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
In the 2 1/2 years since Columbia plummeted from the sky in a cascade of flames and halted U.S. space travel, NASA has stripped its fuel tanks of excess foam insulation and added launch-surveillance cameras.
It's toughened up the spacecraft and cracked down on know-it-all managers. It's created a laser-tipped boom to scour the shuttles' thermal skin for cracks and developed bandages for these ominous sores.
It's done everything it can to make the shuttles safer.
Yet even after all this -- an overhaul exceeding $1 billion -- the space shuttle is still vulnerable, unpredictable, dangerous, unforgiving.
That's not the claim of critics.
It's NASA's.
www.courierpress.com...
NASA Vehicle Manager Stephanie Stillson holds a carrier panel similar to the one damaged Tuesday on the Space Shuttle Discovery at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Stillson said thermal tiles that were damaged when a window cover fell had been repaired and would not delay the Wednesday launch of the Discovery. (AP Photo/Bill Sikes, POOL)
abcnews.go.com...
Originally posted by XPhiles
Why they pick Friday 13th ?
Originally posted by RebelSaint
13th hour