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Falling Window Cover Damages Discovery
Mz6 writes "At 5:30PM EDT, one of the space shuttle's protective window covers fell and
struck the left Orbital Maneuvering System engine pod on Discovery today. The window cover hit the carrier panel around the OMS pod. NASA is taking a new panel to the launch pad to replace the one hit by the falling cover. NASA is expected to know by 7 PM EDT if the replacement panel will work and whether launch can proceed tomorrow as planned. The window cover in question is from one of the overhead windows. It fell on its own, not when workers were handling it. The cover was found after it had fallen and hit the orbiter. In addition to the carrier panel that workers plan to replace tonight, engineers are looking for any other damage." Update: 07/13 02:03 GMT by T : RmanB17499 points out a CNN story according to which "the launch of the space shuttle Discovery will go ahead as scheduled Wednesday after technicians replaced two protective tiles damaged near the spacecraft's tail Tuesday, a NASA spokeswoman said."
"Damage" to the space shuttle is common.
Heat tiles are frequently found to be missing when the shuttle lands. Small minor damage is not uncommon. What brought down columbia was more a case of a golden bb than anything else. (Plus it was a heavy object traveling quite fast)
That said, space is a pretty easy environment to survive in. It's the part where you're burning a few thousand tons of explosives, and slowing down from 20,000mph using the atmosphere that are the dangerous parts.
The damage that occured to the space shuttle here is trivial.
Some of my colleagues here have flown several times on one of the KC-135s that NASA has used (until it gets replaced relatively soon) for micro-g experiments. The testing that their research equipment had to go through to even be allowed on the flights were really very rigorous. Each aluminum stay had to withstand so much torque, each bolt had to be tightened just so, the electronics had to take such-and-such a shock, tools have to have velcro on them, and the frame had to have so much of the opposite-gender velcro so that things could be anchored, etc.
What amazed everyone is that one group was not required to pressure-test their pressurized vessel, and a window blew out during one of the flights, sending nice bits of glass all over. Now, how can all of these other (arguably over-specified) aspects of the experiments be so rigidly-controlled (with carefully-worded protocols for everything), and they leave out PRESSURE TESTING GLASS WINDOWS?
So, true, the Shuttle isn't falling apart at the seams. However, the indication is that the engineers either rushed some of the prep work or failed to set adequate precautions in place. In either case, they may have messed up elsewhere and not said.
If you were up there, knowing that the world's media was focussed on your every twitch, knowing that any delay would finish any chance of you having a future but that any unconfessed and unobserved error on your part would be utterly untracable, would you be willing to take the fall?
Given that kind of pressure, I'm not confident that other accidents haven't happened. All I can do is HOPE they haven't and that NASA will take the time to verify as best they can in the time that they haven't.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In fact, to further that point, I used to work at Rockwell-Collins, which was mandated to use very strict time reporting procedures while I was there. Why? They were caught (thankfully!) after several years pulling one over on the government with the Shuttle contract. Whenever any Rockwell project ran overbudget, they charged the hours to the Shuttle. There were so many people working on the shuttle project that even with all of that "dot the i's and cross the t's" paperwork that NASA is famous for, they still couldn't prove that the company was cheating them for several years. Eventually they got a full audit, Rockwell got punished, etc.
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
Not only that, but so many here seem to have the following stupid notion: that you can just "toss junk out the window" in space, or whatnot. To get junk off of, say, ISS, you have to apply significant delta-V to it. That means, bare minimum, you'd have to develop a rocket system that is safe to operate near ISS, and a way to load your trash/experiments into. Soyuz can't keep up with ISS waste; it's cargo return is minimal.
I don't have the exact numbers offhand as to how many satellites (let alone tons of waste) the shuttle has returned, but I recall that it was in the range of 30-40 (many of those being experiment satellites whose design was to have them returned - engineering reentry survival into all of them would have cost an utter fortune).
As for "glide back to earth rather than parachute", I think you should ask the crews of Soyuz 23 or Soyuz 18-1 what they think of parachute landings. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that making capsules reusable is a lot harder than spacecraft, because there's almost always some deformation (and/or saltwater corrosion, depending on the landing site) on impact.
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
It does say much to the integrity of the entire shuttle that something as small as a thin-plastic window cover can damage the shuttle's heat shielding. What if, oh I don't know, a seagull hit the shuttle during liftoff?