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Shuttles Grounded Once Again

Posted by samzenpus on from the ground-control dept.

PipianJ writes "After discovering that the piece of the shuttle that fell off mysteriously, not actually striking it, (as reported earlier) was a piece of foam insulation not unlike the piece that ended up in the destruction of Columbia, Yahoo News reports that NASA has once again grounded the shuttle fleet."

3 of 685 comments (clear)

  1. So they still haven't learned... by denelson83 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    ...how to keep the external tank completely intact, eh?

  2. Jesus H. Christ by multiplexo · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    stick a goddamned fork in the Shuttle program already and terminate the fucking thing. There is no scientific value in launching astronauts up to ISS. None whatsoever, it's an orbiting boondoggle that exists to give the Shuttle somewhere to go. Hire the Russians to boost ISS into a higher orbit and then mothball it. Then cancel the Shuttle program, fire everyone who works for it and let out bids for a new manned spacecraft. I know that there are some shittleheads who will cry and whine about this and about how wonderful ISS is because the astronauts do experiments with crystals up there, but it's a waste of money and for those of us who actually want to see the US doing something in space an insult to boot.

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    cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
  3. Re:FP? by ciscoguy01 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Ok, a better question....WHY IS IT MADE OF FOAM?

    The better question is this: The space shuttle fleet has been flying for 25 years, and nothing like this happened until about 2-3 years ago.

    What has changed? The foam never fell off and damaged the orbiter until the last few years!

    Here's what changed, and they are not talking about this:
    Obviously what happened is they changed the formula of the foam insulation.

    Now why would they do that? It worked OK before, right?

    The foam must have contained something that was *harmful* to the environment. It contained solvents, VOCs, some sort of toxic adhesive, something like that. They must have switched to new "environmentally friendly" foam. And it just doesn't stick like the old stuff did.

    Now with 3 or 4 space shuttles in the whole world how much environmental harm could all that foam cause? None.

    Ridiculous.

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