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Shuttle Delayed Due to Cloudy Skies

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the pins-and-needles dept.

PunkOfLinux writes "The shuttle won't be coming down until Tuesday, due to a decision by NASA that the weather was not good enough for re-entry. After the first two attempts, at around 4:45 and 6:25 this morning, NASA called off today's landing."

4 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Better safe than sorry by Crixus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's certainly better to be safe than sorry. And NASA is certainly going to be extra careful on this, the first launch after the accident, but I wonder if they would have landed in these conditions before?

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  2. Why the mission has been so eventuful by psyklopz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most would likely agree that this mission has been more 'eventful' than many in the past. And I'm sure most would agree that the general public (if they care at all) are getting more and more of a feeling that the shuttle 'just isn't doing it for me anymore'.

    And that may be exactly the point.

    Now, granted, NASA wants a safe mission. But several of these problems may have simply been overlooked in the past because space exploration is inherently dangerous anyway, so some risks are accepable.

    There is actual politcal value in a mission that seems plagued with problems. I'm getting the general feeling from the media that it's almost all NASA can do to get this thing up in the air one more time.

    If enough people get the same feeling, NASA could seem very justifiable to request mroe money for a shuttle replacement. And maybe that's the real goal of this mission.

    that's my conspiracy theory for the day :)

  3. Rain can damage the tiles. by Shivetya · · Score: 4, Interesting

    NASA did some testing with a P3 Orion to study the effect.

    http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/P-3/HTML/EC 87-0035-001.html

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  4. What to do? by Johnny+Mnemonic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Can anyone point me to a link that describes what the astronauts do with this extra day in orbit? Considering the expense of getting them there, I find it hard to believe that they just sit around for this extra day picking their nose and farting, but it would seem like all of the experiments would have already been stowed.

    Can they make use of this extra day?

    On a related note, I'm well aware that the astronauts have plenty of air+power+water+food for this extra day, but how long could they actually stay in orbit before one of those things ran out? Just curious; mostly to know how conservatively these things are planned.

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