NASA Postpones Shuttle Launch

Mictian writes "NASA has decided to postpone Discovery's upcoming Return to Flight (STS-114) by a week to May 22. This is done in order to give the agency more time to finish paperwork, analyses and reviews of safety changes made. The delay came as no surprise, since the original May 15 date was always considered preliminary. The current launch window extends from May 15 to June 3."

Comments

Re:WTF

[blueturffan]

Would you rather NASA spent hours and hours filling out paper saying how many pins they heard drop this week and how many screws they may have put in the test models or would you rather they spent that time improve technology so we can all bugger off this planet?

I suppose it's a matter of perspective. If I'm strapped to the top of a rocket, I want to be sure that every seemingly trivial detail has been documented and double-checked.

By the way, one of the reasons that NASA was able to return to flight so quickly after the Apollo 13 incident was that they were able to go back and determine exactly what had caused the oxygen tank in the SM to explode. In looking back through the "paperwork", they were able to determine that there were two separate events (tank dropped two inches, and relays not updated to new pad voltage reqirements) that contributed to the explosion. By the way, the tank dropping incident happened two years before the crew was named!

In the Apollo days, they used to joke that they weren't ready to launch until the pile of paperwork matched the height of the rocket. (363 feet)

Re:All for the best, I suppose.

[joeljkp]

Just for the record, the shuttles have collectively flown 113 missions so far.