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NASA Grounds Space Shuttle Fleet
Rytsarsky writes "This story (Reuters) at MSNBC explains why NASA has grounded the fleet. They have been grounded 'indefinitely after finding small cracks in propellant lines on the main engines of two shuttles.' This will 'delay the scheduled July 19 launch of shuttle Columbia.' Good thing this was caught before something catastrophic happened."
It is a good thing the cancelled the launch. Considering the age of the shuttles, I would wager that they will find cracks in Columbia and Endeavour as well. Maybe they will just retire the fleet. Nasa may be ready to unveil the new X-4000 Launch Aparatus
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
What I'm concerned about is what if the Shuttle fleet (probably not from this problem but in the future) is found to have a serious, potentially fatal flaw and has to be withdrawn from service.
This is nearly what happened to Concorde.
Problem is that if the Shuttle or Concorde is grounded there isn't a hope in hell of having anything equivalent up and running within a decade, even if the money is available, which it isn't.
The US is paying the price for putting all its eggs in the one basket (Shuttle). The Shuttle should have been built as a one-off test vehicle with the continued production and use of expendable launchers, NOT pushed straight in as the base launch vehicle.
Ironic, innit, that it's only the Russians who can reach the ISS following the grounding? All those who wish the Russians had never come on board (yes, that's you NASAWatch) should be eating their words.
If it had been all-US, there would have been a single point of failure for resupply of ISS - BAD!!! Remember what happened to Skylab (which was supposed to be boosted to a safe altitude by an early Shuttle flight...).