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Shuttle Set for Launch on Dec 18th, Says NASA
Tony J Case writes "Just a quick note for you guys - According to space.com, NASA's target date for the next shuttle launch is Dec. 18th, with a whole bunch of new guidelines."
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"So when bad stuff happens, someone actually does something about it."
They did do something about it. They asked the engineers if it was a safety problem, and the engineers said "No".
"So when bad stuff happens and someone actually does something about it there's a way home."
Yeah, provided you're willing to risk another orbiter and its crew to fly up there, crossing your fingers that whatever bad stuff happened to the first shuttle won't also happen to the other one. Though if you're going to lose the first shuttle anyway it doesn't really matter what happens to the second once since the shuttle program will be dead, dead, dead whether it's left with one or two orbiters.
"Why was nothing done about this previosly?"
NASA were developing a fix for the problem, which would likely have gone into place sometime next year. No-one was ignoring the problem, it just wasn't considered to be as high a priority as fixing the numerous other problems which haven't destroyed a shuttle yet.
Incidentally, I was under the impression that the only launch possibility at or around Dec 18th was a night launch, so if they have to launch in the day, they can't launch then.
"Didn't NASA used to keep an extra shuttle on standby?"
No. There have been occasions when there were two shuttles on the pads simultaneously, but there's never been an active requirement to have a second ready to launch... more normally, there's one on the pad and one a month or two away from being ready to go.