NASA wants to kill the astronaut

After days of tests and hours of debate, NASA decided on Wednesday to leave a deep gouge in the shuttle Endeavour's belly tiles alone — and not attempt a potentially risky repair in orbit.

www.blogowogo.com...

Do they want to kill them? looks like it. That little hole will begn to burn in re-entry. Do they have a second coating under it? if not then what's to prevent a fire on re-entry from causing the damage to widen and a repeat of the Columbia?

[edit on 16-8-2007 by Gorman91]


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[edit on 17-8-2007 by Duzey]

The problem is in an area that sees much less heat pressure than the rest of the Shuttles
heat shield, and it's really not big enough to be a problem, in fact if I'm not mistaken,
the last Shuttle landing we had, which was successful landed with a larger gouge,
so they are relatively safe.

Add to that that they could actually do more damage by trying to repair it, so it's a
matter of choosing between the options of leaving it, or trying to fix it and risking
causing a great deal more damage.

It's worrisome, but remember we aren't privy to the testing they did.

Painting, gooping or patching could raise an area of resistance and cause the tiles to peel off in one big sticky strip, making matters worse.

What concerns some people is that there was a dissenting opinion on that call by an agency that normally is highly regarded, the JSC Engineering Team.

(You might want to move this discussion over to the STS-118 Omnibus thread where this is being discussed

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It's sad that the media has having so much fun tearing NASA to shreds since Columbia - I really wish they'd give it up and not even make these things public for the feeding frenzy. NASA does the best it can, as the astronaut crew does mean a lot to them, trust me.

What you must understand, also, is that astronauts fully understand the risks involved in every mission - they aren't idiots. Having known astronauts personally, ones that both have not and have been in space, they have always defended, and will continue defending, the space program we've built here.